James Franklin testified during a pretrial hearing in the rape case against four of his former Vanderbilt players today, saying that he never saw a video of the alleged assault despite telling his team otherwise because he didn’t want to “water down” the message.

Here are the tweets from Tennessean reporter Tony Gonzalez:

Franklin: “To this day, I still have never seen any of the videos.”

— Tony Gonzalez (@TGonzalez) October 8, 2014

Defense challenges Franklin on whether he saw the video, because he has said before that he did see “disgusting” video.

— Tony Gonzalez (@TGonzalez) October 8, 2014

Franklin in team mtg.: “I spoke as if I had seen the video. I didn’t want to water down the message to them.” — Tony Gonzalez (@TGonzalez) October 8, 2014

Franklin provided some more background about his handling of the accusations, too. He said he was notified of the alleged incident while he was on vacation in Florida. He was told to come home, and when he got there, he was informed that the investigation was already underway and he should stay out. Then came the meeting in question, during which Franklin apprised the team of the problem and said he had video of the alleged rape.

He said a number of the players involved came to his office to plead their case, when he told them that “they better be honest, they better tell their parents, they better take this seriously…because they’re going to be dealing with this for the rest of their life.” He said the conversations were brief because he couldn’t discuss the details of the case. 

Brandon Vandenberg, Corey Batey, Brandon Banks, and Jaborian McKenzie are charged with aggravated rape and aggravated sexual battery charges after an alleged incident in a Vanderbilt dorm room. In April, a report surfaced that Franklin contacted the alleged victim, to which he responded that he cooperated fully with authorities in the matter.

 Here’s the video of Franklin’s 15-minute testimony from WKRN: WKRN News 2