Paige Shiver says her nearly four-year relationship with former Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore began as a consensual workplace romance and ended with her feeling trapped, controlled and afraid for her life. She spoke publicly this week for the first time since Moore’s arrest last December, saying the relationship was an “open secret” inside the athletics department.
Shiver, 32, said Moore had told her he was in a loveless marriage and would soon divorce his wife. She said the dynamic changed as she tried to leave. “He had complete control over me, over my emotions, over my career, and he knew that, and he used it against me,” she said in describing what happened after the relationship started in January 2022.
The account arrives as Moore, 40, faces the end of a case that has already cost him his job. He was sentenced this month to 18 months of probation after pleading no contest to trespassing and malicious use of a telecommunications device. A felony home invasion charge was dropped under a plea deal, and he was also fired over the relationship, putting an official end to the tenure that once made him one of the most prominent figures in Michigan football.
Shiver’s story is tied to the same chain of events that began inside the program in October 2021, when she joined as an intern, and escalated after she was promoted to Moore’s executive assistant in 2024 when he became head coach. She said senior coaches told her to console Moore when he was upset, a detail that underscores how the relationship blurred personal and professional lines inside the department. The university has said it terminated Moore promptly after discovering an undisclosed workplace relationship with a direct report, and that his conduct violated policy.
That public account stands in sharp contrast to what Shiver says she experienced behind the scenes. She said Moore threatened suicide or pleaded with her not to leave whenever she tried to end the relationship, and that police said he entered her apartment on Dec. 10, the same day he was fired. Police said he blamed her for his firing and threatened to kill himself with butter knives. Shiver said she repeatedly asked him to leave and feared for her life.
She also said Moore’s emotional pressure was relentless, recalling that he told her, “I hate you,” and, “My blood is on your hands.” In one account of the confrontation, she said he came toward her “with his hood up, looking down at me, saying I ruined his life and is crying.” She said, “No one cared about my feelings,” adding that he knew he had power over her and used it.
Moore’s sentence brings the criminal case to a close, but Shiver’s public account pushes the broader question into the open: how a relationship she says began with consent could continue for years in a setting where, she says, other adults knew enough to tell her to keep him calm. Michigan said it expected more from its leaders. Shiver’s answer, at least for now, is that the cost of silence fell on her first.
