A sports talk show producer has released audio he says is from a phone conversation with Dr. Jamie Naughright, the former University of Tennessee trainer who accused Peyton Manning of a 1996 sexual assault, in which she says that she wants the NFL quarterback to admit he’s gay.
The recording was made by Tom Stokes, who operates a sports entertainment company called Sports Plus.
The Daily Caller has not been able to independently confirm that the recording is of Naughright. But if it is, it would do great damage to her story and possibly violate a non-disclosure agreement she signed with Manning.
“I want him to go on record that he likes penis,” the woman Stokes claims is Naughright says in the recording.
“You want Peyton Manning to come out of the closet?” Stokes asks.
“Yeah, it’s very simple,” Naughright replies.
Manning married his wife Ashley in 2001. The couple have two children, a boy and a girl.
Asked if he could share more audio from the interview, Stokes told TheDC, “I can’t right now.”
“There’s a lot at stake but in time I will blow everyone’s mind,” he said.
The woman in the phone recording does sound similar to Naughright, who is seen speaking in a 2014 Youtube video. Stokes also claimed on Twitter that he can provide records to prove that he spoke on the phone with Naughright. Asked about that in a series of follow-up questions, Stokes did not respond by press time.
LISTEN (Warning: Extremely Graphic):
Stokes’ conversation with Naughright allegedly took place on Feb. 13, the day that the New York Daily News’ Shaun King published an article revisiting a 74-page document Naughright filed against Manning in 2003. The document was part of a defamation lawsuit that Naughright had filed the year before against Manning and his father, former NFL quarterback Archie Manning.
In a tweet to Fox Sports commentator Clay Travis, Stokes claimed that Naughright told him that she contacted King about the story. She said that she hoped to get more money out of the case, Stokes claims.
TheDC is also not able to confirm that claim.
Stokes and Naughright were friends on Facebook when the story broke, he said in a post on his company’s website. He says that he messaged Naughright out of curiosity and that she said that she was the woman in the article.
That article laid out Naughright’s claim that in March 1996, when Manning was starting quarterback at the University of Tennessee, he placed his buttocks, testicles, and rectum on her face while she was inspecting his ankle during a training session. Naughright called the school’s sexual assault crisis center that night.
And though Manning claimed at the time that he had merely pulled down his pants to “moon” another athlete, witnesses to the incident refuted that claim. The witnesses stated that Manning did more than moon Naughright, though none said that he sexually assaulted her. Naughright did not initially claim that Manning made contact with her during the training session. She made that allegation in the 2002 lawsuit.
The University of Tennessee ruled the incident “horseplay,” but settled with Naughright for $300,000 in 1997. As part of the deal, she left the school and all parties signed non-disclosure agreements. But Manning referred to the incident in a book he co-wrote with his father in 2001. Though the book does not mention Naughright by name, the Mannings wrote that the trainer had a “vulgar mouth.”
The Mannings settled with Naughright in that case. She sued again in 2005 after Manning discussed the case during an interview with ESPN.
Stokes, who admits on his website that he has long been a fan of Manning, writes that he published the recording “so that people would at least realize that something isn’t right here.” He also writes that he believes that Naughright “is making another attempt at grabbing money.”
He also asserts that because of Naughright’s non-disclosure agreement with the Mannings, “she cannot talk about it in public.”
Naughright has filed at least two other lawsuits against parties other than the Mannings. She sued Donna Karan in 2010 for negligence after she says she suffered injuries from a massage she received at the fashion designer’s home.
And records obtained by The Daily Caller this week show that she sued a Florida delicatessen the same year, claiming that four years before, in 2006, she hurt herself after slipping in a puddle outside of the store. In both cases she claimed that she was unable to return to work because of her injuries.
Stokes, who posted a picture of Naughright on his website he says is from her now-deleted Facebook account, asserts that Naughright’s comments during their conversation were “way too crazy to even comprehend” and that there is “something is seriously wrong with this women [sic].”
During the conversation Stokes presents himself as supportive of Naughright and says he is worried for her safety.
“This doesn’t surprise me, and yet, it’s like, there’s a part of me that says, ‘damn it, isn’t there anybody really decent?'” Stokes says at one point in the edited recording.
Stokes says that he will be releasing other installments of the conversation and that he spoke to Naughright several times via phone, text message and Facebook. He says that the first installment of the conversation was edited in parts because it contains information that he cannot yet disclose.
But Stokes is apparently comfortable releasing parts of their conversation in which he says Naughright strongly implies that Manning is gay.
“He sucks cock,” the woman in the recording says at one point in the conversation.
“Who does?” Stokes asks as the woman erupts in laughter.
When Stokes directly asks if she believes Manning is gay the woman he says is Naughright concludes their chat.
“Alright, Tom, we’re going to end this conversation,” she says while offering to talk later.
TheDC reached out to Ari Fleischer, the former Bush administration press secretary who now handles PR for Manning. He did not respond to a request for comment by press time.
TheDC attempted to contact Naughright through an attorney on one of her lawsuits, but he said he no longer represents her.
This post has been updated.