Ohio State University reaches $100 million settlement in sex abuse lawsuits

Ohio State University has agreed to pay $100 million in damages to 279 former students who said a campus doctor sexually assaulted them decades ago.

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Just one of the former students who were part of five active federal lawsuits against Ohio State did not sign on to the agreement, the university and the lawyers for the accusers said in a statement.

Details of the settlement were being finalized, the joint statement said. It did not divulge the name of the holdout.

The announcement appeared to be a significant step toward ending the eight-year legal battle in the Southern District of Ohio to get Ohio State to pay damages over allegations that it knew Dr. Richard Strauss was preying on students, the majority of whom were also athletes, but did nothing to stop him.

In the coming weeks, a special master appointed by the court is expected to interview each of the men involved in the litigation to determine the level of harm and how much settlement money they will receive.

“The survivors of the Strauss abuse are all Buckeyes,” OSU President Ravi Bellamkonda said Wednesday at a university board meeting where the settlement was announced. “We continue to be very grateful to them for their courage in coming forward, and reaching a final resolution is very important to us and is an important step forward.”

Before the settlement, OSU had settled Strauss abuse claims with 317 other survivors for more than $61 million. Both OSU and its former president have publicly apologized “to each person who endured” abuse at the hands of Strauss, who died by suicide in 2005.

OSU has been battling Strauss-related lawsuits since 2018, when a whistleblowing former wrestler named Mike DiSabato came forward with allegations that Strauss sexually abused him and hundreds of other male athletes under the guise of physical exams.

Pushed by DiSabato, OSU hired the law firm Perkins Coie to conduct an independent investigation. The firm concluded in May 2019 that Strauss sexually abused at least 177 male athletes and other students from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s and that coaches and administrators knew about it for two decades but failed to stop him.

U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan , the powerful Republican congressman from Ohio, was among the former coaches DiSabato and numerous other former OSU wrestlers accused of having done nothing to stop Strauss from abusing them. Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1986 to 1994.

He has repeatedly denied any knowledge of what Strauss is alleged to have done to the athletes.

Last month, Jordan issued another denial after deposition transcripts revealed that ex-OSU athletic director Andy Geiger testified under oath that Jordan “probably knew” that Strauss was abusing the wrestlers.

Jordan had also been deposed as part of the newly settled lawsuits. His testimony remains under seal. He did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment about the settlement Wednesday.