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 trusted staying within the good graces of the workforce physician, Richard Strauss, who might withhold permission for them to compete, Feeney didn’t have to steer himself that what Strauss did was OK.
He didn’t need to faux it was OK that Strauss was always 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 instructed wrestling coach Russ Hellickson and assistant wrestling coach Jim Jordan what had occurred.
Each coaches shrugged, mentioned Feeney, who added that Jordan instructed him, “It’s Strauss. You already know what he does.”
Dan Ritchie, who stop the wrestling workforce in his third yr as a result of he might now not tolerate Strauss’ sexual abuse — which included forcing athletes to drop their pants and endure genital and rectal exams once they noticed him, for even probably the most minor grievance — mentioned that Jordan as soon as instructed 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 understanding 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 is predicated on the Sports activities Illustrated 2020 investigation, “Why Aren’t Extra Folks Speaking In regards to 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 experiences of sexual assault was the norm at Ohio State. Whereas directors deflected experiences about Strauss for years, claiming they had been simply rumors, the college’s 2019 investigation, carried out by an outdoor regulation agency, discovered that in his 1978-1996 tenure within the athletics division and on the scholar well being heart, Strauss assaulted a minimum of 177 college students 1000’s of instances.
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 brought about the college to take away him as a treating doctor at OSU in 1996, however he was nonetheless a tenured school 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 outdated coach, Hellickson, in an emotional encounter. Hellickson promised to jot down 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 might have allowed Strauss’ victims to sue OSU for damages, that Jordan referred to as him “crying, groveling … begging me to go towards my brother.” Jordan has denied that dialog happened.
It appears to me {that a} regular human being, working from a spot of empathy, may categorical emotions of sorrow that the younger male athletes in his cost had been abused to the purpose that some thought of suicide and others stop sports activities altogether, as a substitute of accusing them of mendacity. Ritchie, for instance, mentioned his father was so disillusioned about his resolution to stop 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’d have performed 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 happening 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.
Up to now, OSU has settled with almost 300 abuse survivors, every receiving a mean of $252,000. However many usually are not keen to accept what they contemplate peanuts and observe 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 concerning the allegations that he knew concerning 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, instructed 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 solution to put it.”
Bluesky: @rabcarian
Threads: @rabcarian
