OSU Survivors File Joint Brief Regarding Which University Officials Had Authority to Stop Strauss Abuse
Today, survivors from the three largest lawsuits against The Ohio State University jointly filed a brief regarding which OSU officials had authority to stop Dr. Richard Strauss’s abuse during his tenure at the University.
“Seven years ago, Ohio State University’s commissioned Perkins Coie report established that the University knew about Dr. Richard Strauss’s sexual misconduct as early as 1979. Throughout Strauss’s tenure, that knowledge was not unique to one person, but to dozens of OSU employees — ranging from multiple administrators in the athletics department, sports medicine directors, student health directors, and many high-level administrators — that, at any time, could have acted upon this knowledge and stopped Strauss’s abuse.
The University is now trying to narrow the scope of which administrators had authority to stop Strauss’s abuse. In doing so, they are attempting to rewrite their own history — a history that includes its own commissioned investigation that determined University personnel knew and failed to take action, the University publicly apologizing for those failures, and its own past president Michael Drake admitting that “many people over many years failed to meet a standard that we would hold” to take corrective action.
The University does not get to revise its past or sidestep liability. It knew. It failed to act. And we will continue to expose its hypocrisy and hold the University accountable.”
– Public Justice, Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP, and Scott Elliot Smith, LPA, counsel for the plaintiffs in Snyder-Hill v. The Ohio State University