For greater than 30 years, Fred Feeney refereed matches for the Ohio State College’s powerhouse wrestling workforce.
In contrast to the handfuls of younger males whose athletic scholarships relied on staying within the good graces of the workforce physician, Richard Strauss, who may withhold permission for them to compete, Feeney didn’t have to steer himself that what Strauss did was OK.
He didn’t must faux it was OK that Strauss was consistently taking showers with athletes. Or that it was OK when, after a match, Strauss masturbated subsequent to Feeney within the bathe, then grabbed the ref’s ass.
A visibly shaken Feeney recounts within the new documentary, “Surviving Ohio State,” that he left the locker room that day in misery and instantly informed wrestling coach Russ Hellickson and assistant wrestling coach Jim Jordan what had occurred.
Each coaches shrugged, mentioned Feeney, who added that Jordan informed him, “It’s Strauss. You already know what he does.”
Dan Ritchie, who give up the wrestling workforce in his third yr as a result of he may now not tolerate Strauss’ sexual abuse — which included forcing athletes to drop their pants and endure genital and rectal exams after they noticed him, for even probably the most minor grievance — mentioned that Jordan as soon as informed him, “If he ever did that to me, I’d snap his neck like a stick of dry balsa wooden.”
However Jordan, now the highly effective chairman of the Home Judiciary Committee and an unwavering ally of President Trump, has assiduously denied ever seeing or figuring out about assaults dedicated by Strauss throughout Jordan’s eight years with the workforce.
He emerges as one of many dangerous guys within the new movie, which relies on the Sports activities Illustrated 2020 investigation, “Why Aren’t Extra Folks Speaking Concerning the Ohio State Intercourse Abuse Scandal?” Produced by the Oscar-winning documentarian Eva Orner and George Clooney’s manufacturing firm, it debuted on HBO Max in June.
“To say that [Jordan] knew nothing, that nothing ever occurred, it’s a flat out lie,” Ritchie says within the documentary.
A callous response to studies of sexual assault was the norm at Ohio State. Whereas directors deflected studies about Strauss for years, claiming they have been simply rumors, the college’s 2019 investigation, carried out by an outdoor legislation agency, discovered that in his 1978-1996 tenure within the athletics division and on the pupil well being heart, Strauss assaulted no less than 177 college students hundreds of occasions.
The college’s fencing coach, Charlotte Remenyik, complained about Strauss for 10 years till he was lastly eliminated as her groups’ physician. (In response to her efforts to guard her athletes, Strauss accused her of waging a vendetta towards him.)
A grievance lastly triggered the college to take away him as a treating doctor at OSU in 1996, however he was nonetheless a tenured college member when he retired, with “emeritus” standing, in 1998. He died by suicide in 2005.
It was not till the Larry Nassar gymnastics abuse scandal exploded between 2016 and 2018 that the previous Ohio State wrestlers understood that they, too, had been victimized by their workforce physician, and that there have been most likely much more of them than anybody realized.
“I mentioned, ‘Wow, that’s us,’” mentioned former OSU wrestler Michael DiSabato, one of many first to go public. “It unlocked one thing in me.”
A bunch of former teammates met in 2018, then later sat down with their previous coach, Hellickson, in an emotional encounter. Hellickson promised to put in writing letters supporting them, the wrestlers mentioned, then ghosted them. He didn’t reply to filmmakers’ requests to be interviewed.
Likewise, Jordan shunned requests for interviews, and he has appeared exasperated in information clips when questioned about what he knew. He’s not a defendant in any of the abuse lawsuits filed towards OSU.
In 2020, Michael DiSabato’s brother, Adam, a former wrestler and workforce captain, testified below oath throughout a listening to on an Ohio invoice that will have allowed Strauss’ victims to sue OSU for damages, that Jordan known as him “crying, groveling … begging me to go towards my brother.” Jordan has denied that dialog passed off.
It appears to me {that a} regular human being, working from a spot of empathy, would possibly categorical emotions of sorrow that the younger male athletes in his cost have been abused to the purpose that some thought of suicide and others give up sports activities altogether, as a substitute of accusing them of mendacity. Ritchie, for instance, mentioned his father was so upset about his choice to give up wrestling — he couldn’t deliver himself to inform his father why — that it completely overshadowed their relationship.
I discover no proof that Jordan ever expressed emotions of remorse for his wrestlers, although he did insist to Politico in 2018, “I by no means knew about any kind of abuse. If I did, I might have executed one thing about it. And look, if there are people who find themselves abused, then that’s horrible and we would like justice to occur.” If?
Though the explosive new documentary has been overshadowed by the implosion going down in MAGA world over the “Jeffrey Epstein recordsdata” and questions on Trump’s relationship with the serial sexual predator, the OSU scandal is much from being yesterday’s information.
To date, OSU has settled with almost 300 abuse survivors, every receiving a median of $252,000. However many are usually not prepared to accept what they contemplate peanuts and word that the common payout to Nassar’s sufferer is greater than $1 million.
On Friday, as a part of a federal civil lawsuit filed by a few of them, Jordan was reportedly as a consequence of be deposed below oath for the primary time in regards to the allegations that he knew in regards to the abuse and failed to guard his wrestlers.
Steve Snyder-Hill, one of many first OSU non-athletes to report that he’d been assaulted by Strauss in 1995, informed NBC that he deliberate to be current for Jordan’s deposition.
“I anticipate him to lie below oath,” mentioned Snyder-Hill. “I don’t know a nicer method to put it.”
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