Landon School lacrosse coach Rob Bordley says former player David Evans told him he was innocent of rape, and he believes him.
But Bordley believes some “regrettable behavior” took place in the house just outside Duke University’s campus March 13.
Evans, 23, was indicted Monday on charges that he raped a 27-year-old exotic dancer during a party at the house he rented with two other lacrosse players. Two sophomore teammates, Reade Seligmann, 20, of New Jersey, and Collin Finnerty, 19, of New York, have already been indicted.
Evans, who graduated from Duke on Sunday, called his former coach that night to tell him he thought he was going to be charged.
“That was very revealing to me,” Bordley said. “I’ll go to my grave believing … I heard the truth.”
Bordley also coached Evans, a co-captain of the Duke team, in football and had him in his history class at the exclusive all-boys academy in Bethesda. He called him a “quiet, unassuming leader.”
Evans was one of five Landon lacrosse players who played on the 2006 Duke team. Bordley coached them all.
“They were all there [at the party],” Bordley said. “Some of them left early. I’ve asked a couple of them, ‘Could something have happened that you weren’t aware of?’ ”
All of the men told Bordley, “No way.”
“That made me feel good,” he said. “From the get-go, I’ve refused to believe that my kids, our kids, could be a party to this.”
But the Duke scandal adds more cracks to a legacy of excellence at Landon — with 24 championship titles in the 25-year history of the Interstate Athletic Conference, which includes six of the area’s elite prep schools — that has already been shaken by scandal and tragedy. Since 2003, the team has seen the accidental deaths of two former players and an SAT scandal that involved 10 players, five of whom were senior lacrosse players.
Bordley did not want to comment Tuesday on the details that have surfaced about the Duke party but did question the men’s judgment on that night.
“I don’t think it’s shown a lot of judgment having strippers, paid strippers, entertaining young men,” he said. “I think there was some regrettable behavior there.”
Evans, flanked by parents David and Rae Forker Evans, in Durham, N.C., on Monday called the charges “fantastic lies.” He was released after posting $400,000 bond. His next court date has been set for the week of June 19.
