DALLAS — The Cowboys paid a confidential $2.4 million settlement in May 2016 in response to four cheerleaders’ allegations that Rich Dalrymple, the team’s longtime public relations chief who recently retired, filmed them as they changed clothing inside a locker room before a 2015 event in Arlington, ESPN reported Wednesday.
Two separate voyeurism allegations, one involving the cheerleaders and the other a Cowboys senior executive, are included in the report. Dalrymple, who spent 32 years with the franchise, declined both accusations to ESPN in a statement.
Dalrymple announced his retirement on Feb. 2 as senior vice president of public relations and communications.
“People who know me, co-workers, the media and colleagues, know who I am and what I’m about,” Dalrymple said in his statement to ESPN. “I understand the very serious nature of these claims and do not take them lightly. The accusations are, however, false. One was accidental and the other simply did not happen. Everything that was alleged was thoroughly investigated years ago, and I cooperated fully.”
On Sept. 2, 2015, the Cowboys held their annual season kickoff event at AT&T Stadium. Dalrymple entered the cheerleaders’ dressing room where sources told ESPN the cheerleaders, upon hearing the door open, shouted, “We’re in here!” The cheerleaders assumed that whomever had entered, presumably a security guard, quickly exited the area, per ESPN.
According to the cheerleaders’ same account, several minutes later, one cheerleader alleged seeing a man holding a cell phone pointed at the other three cheerleaders. She approached him and testified that she immediately recognized the man, who fled quickly, as Dalrymple.
The team became aware of the incident that day and launched an investigation into the accusation.
Cowboys PR consultant Jim Wilkinson told ESPN that Dalrymple acknowledged entering the cheerleaders’ locker room, but Dalrymple said that he thought the room was empty and entered it only to use the restroom. Dalrymple denied the voyeurism.
The Cowboys declined to disclose more detailed information to ESPN, such as the key-card time stamps that would indicate when Dalrymple entered and exited the area.
“The organization took these allegations extremely seriously and moved immediately to thoroughly investigate this matter,” Wilkinson said to The Dallas Morning News. “The investigation was handled consistent with best legal and HR practices and the investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing. If any wrongdoing had been found Rich would have been terminated immediately.
“The cheerleaders are a vital part of the Dallas Cowboys family, and in terms of the settlement, the organization wanted to go above and beyond to ensure the cheerleaders knew that their allegations had been taken extremely seriously, and immediately and thoroughly investigated. Everyone involved felt just terrible about this unfortunate incident.”
The other allegation occurred months earlier on April 30, 2015. Randy Horton, a man described in the ESPN report as a Louisiana schoolteacher and “lifelong Cowboys fan,” said he noticed on the Cowboys’ draft-day war-room video livestream that Dalrymple took upskirt photos of Cowboys executive Charlotte Jones. She is team owner Jerry Jones’ daughter.
Horton said that he and his wife both saw Dalrymple snap multiple photographs with his cell phone while team officials celebrated the first-round selection of former Connecticut defensive back Byron Jones.
“I’ll never forget what I saw,” Horton said to ESPN. “The first time he reached out from a sitting position behind her, and she is standing with her back to him, and did it once. ... He looked at the screen, touched the screen and then did it again. The second time, he’s sitting in a chair at the corner of the table on the left and he held his phone beneath the corner of the table with the camera side facing up where she was standing. And did it again.
“I have no doubt in my mind of what it was he was doing. It was obvious.”
According to ESPN, Horton sent a Facebook message to Charlotte Jones about what he believed he’d witnessed. He also posted a message to that effect on a television news station’s Facebook page, and a separate Facebook user posted as having seen the same.
A team source told ESPN the Cowboys’ human relations department investigated the allegation weeks later, in May 2015. That source said that HR found no wrongdoing by Dalrymple upon reviewing the livestream video.
“The most basic common sense tells you that if Jerry Jones believed in any way that someone had even remotely done something like that to any member of his family,” Wilkinson said to The News, “that person would have been fired immediately.”
