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Richard Strauss, a doctor who worked for Ohio State University, was alleged to have committed more than 1,400 assaults on students from 1978 to 1998. None of this information was made public until a few Buckeyes wrestlers came forward and forced Ohio State to commission an independent investigation in 2018.
However, it still took until 2020 for the alleged crimes to garner any real attention. That’s when Sports Illustrated writer Jon Wertheim wrote a story titled “Why Aren’t More People Talking About the Ohio State Sex Abuse Scandal?”
And even then, as Wertheim called it, “the most sweeping sex abuse scandal in the history of American higher education” was still widely ignored. One person who didn’t ignore it was a guy most people have heard of: George Clooney.
In 2021, Clooney signed on to produce a documentary about the Ohio State abuse scandal. This week, Surviving Ohio State began airing on HBO.
Now, people like Mike Schyck, who wrestled for OSU from 1990 to 1993, are finally being heard.
“Reading things on social media, it almost feels like I’m not the victim, that I was the problem,” Schyck told the Columbus Dispatch this week. “I’m not the problem. We’re not the problem. Some bad man was the problem.”
“A lot of people know about (the case), there’s a lot of people that don’t know about it,” Al Novakowski, a former OSU hockey player, told Fox 28 News in Columbus. “It was people I’ve never met reaching out and saying, you know, we’re proud of you, you’re brave, you’re a hero.”
This week, WBNS News reports, a judge ordered the appointment of a mediator to assist in the litigation between Ohio State University and hundreds of former athletes who say they were abused by Richard Strauss. The Disptach reports that school has already paid settlements worth more than a combined $60 million to 296 victims, but the legal battle is far from over.
“We will try it every which way the mediator wants to try it whether it’s individually, or whether it’s going to be based on tears, whether it’s based on groups of people who were like-kind abused, or it’s gonna be individuals and go strictly from the facts of each individual’s case, which is what I’d prefer,” said Scott Elliot Smith, a defense attorney in the case.
“It didn’t feel right, but I just accepted it,” NCAA wrestling champion and former UFC champion Mark Coleman said in Surviving Ohio State. “It’s not something we’re gonna sit around and have a bunch of conversations about.”
Richard Strauss died by suicide in 2005, so he can no longer be held accountable, but others still can. The State Medical Board of Ohio first became aware of alleged misconduct by Strauss in 1996 and never took any action. Former Ohio State director of student health services Dr. Ted Grace was stripped of his medical license by the State Medical Board of Ohio in 2021 for failing to report Strauss to the board. And the Ohio State athletics department allegedly did nothing despite numerous complaints.
“It was a total and complete cover-up at the highest levels of the university. I mean, if there’s one thing OSU is good at, other than football, it’s deceit,” said Ilann Maazel, a lawyer involved in the civil litigation against Ohio State University.