Ohio State Sports Doctor Sexually Abused at Least 177 Men

Ohio State U. via AP Images

For almost two decades, it was an open secret on the Ohio State University campus. There was something odd in how the physician Richard H. Strauss examined male athletes.

“The student-athletes we interviewed described how certain aspects of Strauss’ behavior were broadly witnessed and discussed in the athletics department,” states a long-awaited independent investigator’s report, released on Friday. “Including the fact that Strauss habitually showered with the male student-athletes, and that he frequently performed lengthy or medically unnecessary genital exams on male student-athletes, regardless of what injury or illness was presented to him.”

So if everyone in athletics knew, why did no one stop it? That fundamental question is at the heart of the troubling 182-page investigative report, produced by the Seattle-based Perkins Coie law firm. The report comes more than 13 months after Ohio State announced the first allegations against Strauss, and the university’s investigation is expected to cost at least $6.2 million.

Investigators found that Strauss began abusing patients in 1979 — within a year of being hired at the university. But “complaints and reports about Strauss’ conduct were not elevated beyond the athletics department or student health until 1996,” the report states.

Strauss voluntarily retired in 1998. He committed suicide in 2005.

For years, students and athletics-staff members at Ohio State joked about the abusive exams, which frequently included groping of the genital area for maladies such as cauliflower ear, strep throat, or a common cold. Going to see Strauss, students would say, meant “drop their pants,” the report states.

More than 50 former athletics-department employees corroborated the students’ accounts, investigators wrote. But many of those staffers took no action to stop the doctor. Sometimes the jokes were interpreted as merely a knock on Strauss’ suspected homosexuality, and nothing to be taken seriously.

A few staffers raised concerns, but even then there was a glaring lack of urgency.

For example, the report cites an unnamed head coach in athletics who first heard rumors about Strauss in the late 1980s. When the coach discovered that Strauss was lifting up players’ penises during hernia exams, he told investigators that he “announced very loudly, such that he believed Strauss could hear him, that the students should let him know if anything happened and stated, ‘That’s not happening on my watch.’”

The coach thought this would put the doctor “on notice” — and discourage further misconduct. It didn’t.

The independent report includes a host of statistics that show the human cost of the university’s inaction:

16 Sports Teams Affected

The investigators found that Strauss abused at least 177 men, including athletes on 16 different sports, from 1979 to 1997. More than 120 athletes complained of genital groping, or medically unnecessary genital or rectal exams, or both. In one instance, Strauss placed his stethoscope on a patient’s penis. Seventy students described how Strauss would sit on a stool and position his face close to their genitals. Once student recalled “feeling Strauss’ breath on his penis, due to the close proximity.” The sports teams affected included wrestling (48 victims), gymnastics (16 victims), swimming and diving (15 victims), soccer (13 victims), and lacrosse (10 victims).

In an interview with The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio State’s president, Michael V. Drake, called the doctor’s history of abuse “shocking” and “horrifying.”

“There was a consistent institutional failure over the many years by multiple people to carry out their minimum responsibilities, and that led to this tragedy,” Drake said.

Strauss has been compared to the Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar, who was accused of molesting more than 300 women and girls. Nassar is now in prison, where he will most likely remain for the rest of his life.

Michigan State reached a $500-million settlement with Nassar’s victims.

Three federal lawsuits have been filed so far against Ohio State, seeking unspecified damages.

But for Strauss’ victims, there will be no opportunity to confront their abuser in court. His suicide precluded his criminal prosecution.

“We did not get to put him on trial. The police did not get to investigate. That’s why it’s worse than the MSU case,” Brian Garrett, a former nursing student who is among Strauss’ accusers, told the Associated Press. “He took the easy way out.”

Another difference in the Strauss scandal: The victims appear to have all been men. The doctor’s exams with young men were noticeably longer than normal. The investigators wrote that “male survivors of sex abuse often experience shame or self-doubt about the involuntary physiological arousal that can result from unwanted or unexpected sexual touching (i.e., erection or ejaculation), contributing to a fear of reporting such abuse due to related social stigmatization.”

One former athlete told investigators about a series of abusive exams with Strauss — culminating with the doctor’s “putting his mouth on the student’s penis to perform oral sex.” The student left the examination room and, shortly thereafter, quit the team. But he never reported the incidents to his coach or others, and he told investigators that athletes were expected to be “the manliest of men.”

By 1994, Ohio State’s fencing coach, Charlotte Remenyik, wanted Strauss to be kept away from her athletes. The coach was granted her request, but a letter written by John Lombardo, then the university’s medical director and head team physician, concluded that the coach’s concerns had been “based on rumors which have been generated for 10 years with no foundation.” Lombardo described the rumors as “unfounded,” and wrote that there was no need for “further investigation of this situation.”

Lombardo declined to be interviewed by investigators.

The Doctor Is a ‘Pervert’

In 1996 three separate student complaints prompted the university to finally remove Strauss from his role in treating patients. In the third of those incidents, Strauss fondled a student’s genitals until he ejaculated. The student told Strauss that what he’d just done was “wrong,” according to the investigative report. Strauss responded by telling the student that it seemed as if he’d enjoyed it.

After leaving the exam room, the alarmed student tried to warn others sitting in the waiting area. The doctor is a “pervert,” he yelled, and everyone should “all get out of there right away.”

Strauss was questioned by Ted W. Grace, then director of Ohio State’s student-health services, about the exam. He told Grace that it was common for males to get erections during genital exams, and “that some are bound to ejaculate.”

“Grace responded that he thought it was ‘pretty unusual’ to have a patient ejaculate during an exam,” investigators wrote.

Citing the three student complaints that occured within roughly a year’s time, Ohio State removed Strauss as an on-campus doctor that year. But he was allowed to keep his status as a tenured professor.

Strauss then opened an off-campus men’s clinic where the abuse continued. One former employee at the clinic told investigators that he witnessed the sexual abuse of patients — and that he was also abused by Strauss.

Strauss advertised his clinic in Ohio State’s student newspaper and at bars popular with the college crowd.

The clinic said it offered prompt treatment of common genital and urinary problems, with experienced doctors.

“STUDENT DISCOUNTS,” the ads proclaimed, in bold, black letters.

Michael Vasquez is a senior investigative reporter. Follow him on Twitter @MrMikeVasquez, or email him at michael.vasquez@chronicle.com.