Terdema Ussery, former president and CEO of the Dallas Mavericks, has been accused of multiple incidents of inappropriate behavior toward female employees during his 18-year tenure with the franchise.

Ussery was allowed to continue to work for the Mavericks despite numerous complaints to their human resources department.

The Mavericks issued a statement that said they had launched an investigation into allegations of "various acts of inappropriate conduct toward women over a period of years" by a former officer of the organization. The team said the former employee in question left the club almost three years ago and that the organization was only made aware of the allegations in the past few days. It did not name the employee.

"The Mavericks organization takes these allegations extremely seriously," the team said in the statement. "Yesterday we notified the league office and immediately hired outside counsel to conduct a thorough and independent investigation."

“It was a real life Animal House,” says one former organization employee who left recently after spending roughly five years with the Mavs. “And I only say ‘was’ because I’m not there anymore. I’m sure it’s still going on.”

Interviews with more than a dozen former and current Mavericks employees in different departments, conducted during a months-long investigation depict a picture of a corporate culture filled with misogyny and predatory sexual behavior. 

While sources referred to the Mavericks office as a “locker room culture,” the team’s actual locker room was a refuge. Says one female former senior staffer: “I dealt with players all the time. I had hundreds of interactions with players and never once had an issue…they always knew how to treat people. Then I'd go to the office and it was this zoo, this complete shitshow. My anxiety would go down dealing with players; it would go up when I got to my desk.”

Earl K. Sneed, the team reporter for Mavericks.com, was accused in 2014 of hitting a female colleague with whom he had a relationship, just two years after he had pleaded guilty to assaulting a girlfriend.

The report says that employees became frustrated by the inaction of Mavericks human resources head Buddy Pittman, who has since been fired.

Mark Cuban has not been accused of any sexual harassment himself but he's also known to be a heavily involved owner in all aspects of his franchise.

“Trust me, Mark knows everything that goes on,” says one longtime former Mavericks employee. “Of course Mark knew [about the instances of harassment and assault]. Everyone knew.”

“This is all new to me,” Cuban told Sports Illustrated on Monday. “The only awareness I have is because I heard you guys were looking into some things….  Based off of what I’ve read here, we just fired our HR person. I don’t have any tolerance for what I’ve read.”

Cuban continued in an emotional response: “It’s wrong. It’s abhorrent. It’s not a situation we condone. I can’t tell you how many times, particularly since all this [#MeToo] stuff has been coming out recently I asked our HR director, ‘Do we have a problem? Do we have any issues I have to be aware of?’ And the answer was no.”

Cuban said that the Mavs were establishing a hotline for counseling and support services for past and current team employees. He is mandating sensitivity training for all employees, himself included.

“I want to deal with this issue,” Cuban told SI. “I mean, this is, obviously there’s a problem in the Mavericks organization and we’ve got to fix it. That’s it. And we’re going to take every step. It’s not something we tolerate. I don’t want it. It’s not something that’s acceptable. I’m embarrassed, to be honest with you, that it happened under my ownership, and it needs to be fixed. Period. End of story.”