One year later: How $2.75M fine against Jerry Richardson is being spent

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — It’s been just over a year since a workplace misconduct investigation was launched against former Carolina Panthers owner Jerry Richardson.

Since then, Richardson stepped down, sold the team and paid $2.75 million in fines.

[Ex-Panthers owner Richardson fined $2.75M for workplace misconduct]

A portion of that fine went to Charlotte-based nonprofit Beauty for Ashes Ministry Inc., an organization providing resources and spiritual support to victims of abuse and their families.

“I never dreamed that it would come in the way that it did, the provision,” said founder Rev. Marguerite Lee. “It had been 10 years, of waiting.”

Lee received the money on Dec. 31 and started the search for a house the next day. She’s been working to secure the house for women transitioning from an abusive relationship to life on their own.

[Panthers owner Jerry Richardson to sell team at end of season]

Lee said it will be called The Chrysalis.

“The Chrysalis is the third-life stage of the butterfly. It's the place where it rests. It's the place where most of the changes take place, and it's a safe place.”

Lee is also an abuse survivor. She said she was molested as a child and raped as a teenager.

“You don't forget it because I haven't forgotten it, but you learn to move past the pain and moving past my pain, I found purpose,” she said.

Tony Porter works as an advisor to the NFL and helped decide where money from Richardson’s fine would go.

At his suggestion, Porter said the NFL intentionally chose groups like Lee’s with some led by women of color or groups that aren’t still at the grassroots level and may otherwise not receive funding.

“My conversation with the NFL was unless someone takes a risk, there’s no opportunity to get well established,” he said.

Porter also founded A Call to Men, an organization that specializes in sexual and domestic violence prevention training.

“If women could end the violence on their own, they would have already,” Porter said. “It's also important to mention that all men don’t do all things, but there is this collective socialization that teaches men to have less value in women -- to view women as sexual objects and also to view women as the property of men.”

One of his primary responsibilities as an advisor is to help develop the annual training that all NFL staff receive. With money from Richardson’s fine, Porter is helping to create training sessions that address sexual harassment.

“Our training doesn’t look at their individual behavior as much as we really focus on the influence and the platform that they have,” Porter said of the league training. “When they speak, young men sit up and listen.”

Porter vividly recalls the moment he felt he should have spoken up. He described an experience in his Bronx neighborhood as a child when a boy he looked up to had raped a girl and invited Porter and others to do the same.

“While I did not do anything in response to touching her, but I also did not protect her,” he said. “That haunted me. It haunted me for many years.”

What haunted him then, is driving him now.

“We have to really challenge the silence of men,” he added. “Every place where you find men, which is everywhere, we're trying to be in those spaces.”

In the meantime, Lee is focused on securing a safe space for survivors after viewing more than a half dozen houses.

“A little bit of frustration I will say, but not enough to stop me,” she said. “I know that the house is out there.”

Cox Media Group