Appeals court rules in favor of Strauss victims, revives lawsuits against Ohio State

A federal appeals court ruling Wednesday revived unsettled lawsuits against Ohio State University over decades-old sexual abuse by former university doctor Richard Strauss.

Judge Michael Watson, of the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of Ohio in Columbus, had dismissed most of the unsettled cases in September 2021, acknowledging that hundreds of young men were abused by the late doctor — who died by suicide in 2005 — but agreeing with the university's argument that the statute of limitations had expired.

The plaintiffs had argued that the clock didn't start until the allegations first came to light in the spring of 2018, when Ohio State announced an investigation into Strauss.

Two of the three judges on the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that heard the case agreed with them, saying in a ruling issued Wednesday that the men "plausibly allege a decades-long cover up," and "adequately allege that they did not know and could not reasonably have known that Ohio State injured them until 2018."

"This alone provides sufficient grounds to delay the accrual of their Title IX claims," Judge Karen Nelson Moore wrote in the decision.

Steve Snyder-Hill, a former Ohio State athlete who said he was sexually abused by Strauss decades ago, said the thousands of students who attend the university are "just a little bit safer" as a result of the ruling.

"Because I can guarantee, I know if another Richard Strauss was there today how OSU would act,'" Snyder-Hill said in an email. "They successfully covered it up, silenced us, lied to the court, lied to the public, broke public records laws, and waged a war on survivors all while calling us brave.

"Today was a good day. But this has been a five-year fight," he said.

Judge Ralph B. Guy Jr. dissented with the decision, writing that the clock on the claims ran out decades ago and that the court’s decision “effectively nullifies any statute of limitations for Title IX claims based on sexual harassment.”

Title IX actions do not have their own statute of limitations and thus defer to the state statute of limitations for personal injuries, which in Ohio is two years.

Ohio State is reviewing the ruling, university spokesman Benjamin Johnson said by email.

While employed at Ohio State from 1978 to 1998, Strauss abused at least 177 male students, according to a report issued in May of 2019, about 13 months after Ohio State first announced the allegations against Strauss.

The 230-page investigative report from Seattle-based law firm Perkins Coie concluded that university officials were aware of complaints against Strauss. Investigators found that university personnel knew about Strauss' "sexually abusive treatment" of male student-patients as early as 1979, but "complaints and reports about Strauss' conduct were not elevated beyond the Athletics Department or Student Health until 1996."

Strauss abused students under the guise of medical examinations.

Most plaintiffs alleged in their lawsuits that they did not know they were abused until 2018, Moore said in the recent ruling.

"At the time of the abuse, they were teenagers and young adults and did not know what was medically appropriate," Moore wrote. "Strauss gave pretextual and false medical explanations for the abuse."

"Although plaintiffs differ as to whether they knew at the time that Strauss abused them, all allege that they could not have known about Ohio State’s responsibility for the abuse. They did not have reason to know that others had previously complained to Ohio State about Strauss’s conduct, let alone how Ohio State had responded to any previous complaints."

Ohio State has so far settled with nearly 300 survivors, representing more than half of the outstanding plaintiffs.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Monroe Trombly covers breaking and trending news for The Dispatch.

mtrombly@dispatch.com

@monroetrombly

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Strauss victims win appeal, can go ahead with case against Ohio State