Lawyer: Some ex-OSU players were abused

Associated Press

COLUMBUS

An attorney preparing a lawsuit against Ohio State University on behalf of more than 50 former athletes who claim they were sexually abused by a team physician told The Associated Press on Saturday that most of those clients were football players from the school’s storied program, including some who went on to play in the NFL.

The proposed lawsuit suggests there were far more victims of Dr. Richard Strauss than investigators detailed in a 232-page report made public Friday by a law firm hired by the university. The report found that Strauss sexually abused at least 177 male students but made only one specific reference to football players while listing how many athletes from each team were abused.

Dayton attorney Michael Wright said Strauss’ abuse of football players and other athletes he’s representing occurred during required physical examinations at the Woody Hayes Athletic Center and during treatment for injuries and ailments at Strauss’ off-campus clinic and at his home, where he insisted they be seen.

Strauss, a physician at Ohio State for nearly 20 years, killed himself in 2005 nearly a decade after he was allowed to retire with honors.

An Ohio State spokesman declined to comment.

Investigators found that Strauss’ abuse went on from 1979 to 1997 and took place at various locations across campus, including examining rooms, locker rooms, showers and saunas. Strauss contrived, among other things, to get young men to strip naked and he groped them sexually.

The report concluded that scores of Ohio State personnel knew of complaints and concerns about Strauss’ conduct as early as 1979 but failed for years to investigate or take meaningful action.

Wright said he plans to file the lawsuit late next week and, for now, that his clients prefer to remain anonymous.

Some of Strauss’ victims remain angry in the aftermath of the report’s release about how Ohio State has treated them in the decades after he ogled and groped them during physical examinations and medical treatment.

Former nursing student Brian Garrett said he worked for a short time at an off-campus clinic Strauss opened after he was ousted at Ohio State in the late 1990s. But Garrett quit after witnessing abuse by Strauss and then experiencing it himself.

The investigation, he said, left him angrier than before.

“We knew that it was systemic and it had been reported,” Garrett said Friday. “It’s even more widespread than we knew.”