“Surviving Ohio State,” a documentary about Strauss and his decades-long abuse, aired Tuesday at 9 p.m. on HBO. Credit: Courtesy of Caleb Blake
This story contains mentions and details of rape, sexual abuse and suicide. If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual violence, help is available through the National Sexual Assault Hotline, which can be reached at (800) 656-4673 or via their online chat hotline.
From wrestling, to hockey, to fencing and then the average student, Dr. Richard Strauss had a traumatic impact on those affected by him.
“Surviving Ohio State,” a documentary about Strauss and his decades-long abuse—which he carried out under the guise of medical treatment—aired Tuesday at 9 p.m. on HBO, as well as their streaming service, Max. The film recounts the stories of the abuse, told by the survivors and journalists.
Over 2,800 instances of alleged sexual misconduct were found to be perpetrated by Strauss, and over 170 of those instances were rape, according to the documentary.
Dan Ritchie, a former Ohio State wrestler from 1988-92 and Strauss survivor interviewed in the documentary, remembered the first time he heard that someone finally spoke out about their abuse publicly. He was not planning on saying anything until he was on break at the school where he taught, and overheard his male colleagues talking about the scandal.
“One day, I’m sitting in our teachers’ lounge, and some of the other guys are talking about it and one of the male teachers, an older guy, he said, ‘Well, I can’t believe that, man. You know, if I was there, if this happened to me, I’d kick that guy’s ass.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Man, you have no idea what you’re talking about,’” Ritchie said in the documentary.
Several survivors referred to Strauss’ conduct as an “open secret.” Rocky Ratliff, a former Ohio State wrestler from 1995-97, said in the documentary that the other guys would often crack jokes about Strauss, who was known to perform unnecessary genital exams on the athletes.
“Guys would joke all the time, like, ‘Hey, I need to go see the doc,’ and if there was a group of us, we would say, ‘Hey, watch your nuts,’” Ratliff said.
Will Knight, former Ohio State wrestler from 1991-96, said the student-athletes would joke because they were unaware of what they were going through.
“It was a dirty little secret that we all just tip-toed around and dealt with it,” Knight said. “Because we’re Buckeyes.”
Ritchie said there was no avoiding Strauss’ examinations.
“Dr. Strauss was our team doctor, and that’s what we had. I mean, if we had an illness, he’s the one that we went to. If we needed medication for something, he’s the one that we went to. If we had an injury, he’s the one that we went to,” Ritchie said. “And each and every time, it was a full-body check that resulted in a genital check, without fail. And the man never wore gloves. It was always skin on skin.”
Strauss died by suicide in 2005, making this case different from that of which inspired the victims to come forward with their stories: the Larry Nassar trial.
Nassar was the former sports physician for the USA Gymnastics team and Michigan State University. He was sentenced to 40 to 175 years in prison in 2018 for sexually assaulting hundreds of women and girls over the past two decades, according to CNN, after 156 of them testified against him in court. He was also sentenced to 60 years on child pornography charges.
Similarly, the survivors accused the organizations involved — USA Gymnastics, the US Olympic Committee and MSU — of ignoring complaints tied to his conduct. All three organizations have denied any wrongdoing, saying that they reported their complaints to the authorities, the CNN article states.
“Ohio State led the effort to investigate and expose Richard Strauss, and we express our deep regret and apologies to all who experienced Strauss’ abuse,” Ben Johnson, university spokesperson, said in a statement.
Here are the main takeaways from the documentary.
Strauss’ abuse went outside of just the athletic department, and the university
Strauss held a position as a team doctor as well as a physician for the Student Health Center, per prior Lantern reporting. He was also faculty at the School of Public Health and the university’s College of Medicine.
Stephen Snyder-Hill, an Ohio State student from 1991-2000, reached out to the Office of Student Life after he experienced an incident in the Student Health Services center with Strauss. He originally went into the appointment for an exam due to a lump on his chest, but ended up being told to de-robe.
“He had me get completely naked, which just seemed very weird to me as well, but again, he’s a medical doctor, I was a kid, you know?” Snyder-Hill said in the documentary. “I thought, ‘I gotta listen to whatever this guy says to do.’ He proceeded to give me a genital examination, and I don’t remember any gloves being used. I can remember his breath on my genitals when he was examining them.”
That is when Snyder-Hill realized something was off. Strauss then proceeded to “thrust his pelvis” into his side, and he could tell that “he had an erection.” Snyder-Hill said he was “mortified” and was just trying to escape the situation the best way he could.
After Snyder-Hill went to student life, Grace assured him that nobody else had complained about Strauss’ misconduct before.
In a letter addressed to Snyder-Hill on Jan. 26, 1995, Grace wrote, “I want to assure you that we had never received a complaint about Dr. Strauss before, although we have had several positive comments.”
However, three days before Snyder-Hill’s original complaint, another student complained about Strauss. Ilan Maazel, an attorney who deposed Grace, said that he believes this was so Snyder-Hill would drop any charges against the university.
Al Novakowski, a former Ohio State hockey player from 1987-88, said he was kicked off the team as a result of his response to Strauss’s assault. After reporting his behavior to his coach, Novakowski said he was told to “not worry about the doctor” and to “focus on playing.” His performance slipped and he was cut as a result, losing his scholarship.
That wasn’t the end of Novakowski’s experience with Strauss. After Strauss’s promotion to working at Student Health Services, Novakowski was once again under his care after he was having trouble swallowing.
Strauss did not perform a genital exam this time and quickly diagnosed Novakowski as having an epiglottis — cartilage in the back of the throat that protects the lungs from inhaling food — spasm.
“It was a very quick examination … Doc said, ‘You know, in order to get rid of the spasm, we’re gonna sedate you. We’ll give you a sedative, it’ll relax you and it’ll come out of spasm,’” Novakowski said in the documentary. “I was thankful. You know, like, thank you for being a doctor.”
After administering the shot, which Novakowski said essentially paralyzed him, Strauss offered him a ride home. He said Strauss then took him up to his room and raped him. After an interview with NBC4’s Colleen Marshall, who was investigating the scandal, Novakowski said he discovered that he was the 48th known rape victim.
Strauss’ abuse also went outside of the university. Fred Feeney, a wrestling referee from 1988-2024, said he was sexually assaulted by Strauss after a wrestling match.
Feeney said that he said hello to Strauss, since everybody knew who he was. Strauss followed him into the locker room and then began to strip with him, saying that he has to shower since he has plans later.
Feeney, though he thought it was weird, ignored this. Strauss then followed Feeney into the shower and took the one directly next to him. It wasn’t until Feeney looked over that he realized that Strauss was masturbating.
When Feeney asked what he was doing, Strauss just said that he was washing himself up. Feeney then turned away, where Strauss proceeded to then place his hand on Feeney’s butt.
“It affected me so bad that I didn’t even respond to him, when I should’ve knocked him on his ass at that point. But I didn’t,” Feeney said in the film.
Though he notified the current Ohio State wrestling coaches of the incident, he said nothing changed.
The abuse students faced from Strauss was an “open secret” between athletes, coaches and staff
Despite public denials of being aware about the Strauss abuse, Jim Jordan, previous assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1987-1994 and current U.S. House of Representatives member, takes an active seat in this story.
As shown in the documentary, on-air and in interviews, Rep. Jordan denied knowing of the abuse that his athletes faced when Strauss was their team doctor. Russ Hellickson, head wrestling coach at Ohio State from 1986-2006, also said in the documentary that Strauss was just much too invasive for the athletes’ liking.
The experiences from these survivors say otherwise.
Ritchie recounts memories of his teammates talking about the abuse they faced to their coaches.
“Our coaches knew. We had guys complaining about Dr. Strauss to Jim Jordan,” Ritchie said in the documentary. Jim Jordan was the assistant wrestling coach at the time. “One of the wrestlers said, ‘Dude, why does this guy have to constantly check our nuts, check our d**k?’ He said Jim Jordan’s response was, ‘If he ever did that to me, I’d snap his neck like a stick of dry balsa wood.’ So he knew about it. And Russ knew.”
According to the documentary, Hellickson allowed Strauss to have a locker in the team’s locker room, where Strauss would watch the men get undressed. He would also proceed to take showers with the team for hours at a time. When Hellickson was asked in a 2018 interview about this, he said that he confronted Strauss.
“I said, ‘Doc, you make the guys nervous that you shower with ‘em,’ and his response was, ‘Coach, you shower with your guys all the time,’” Hellickson said in a 2018 interview. “I said, ‘Yeah, not for an hour, Doc.’ It was obvious, you know, Dr. Strauss liked to be in the shower room a lot with the athletes, so he was doing a lot of showering.”
According to the documentary, Strauss had a locker in several different athletic teams’ locker rooms, including wrestling, football, fencing, gymnastics—even the swim team.
Feeney also recounts telling Hellickson about his own experience. When he told Hellickson and Jordan about his experience with Strauss in the showers, they shrugged it off.
The only response Feeney got to his experience was from Jordan saying, “It’s Strauss. You know what he does,” and Hellickson agreed.
Mike Schyck, an Ohio State wrestler from 1988-93, said he was a firm believer that Hellickson would stand by them when they brought up the lawsuit. Hellickson even met with the team, told them that he had their back and would write a letter of support to “whoever they needed” to stand by them. A letter was never written.
“My mom said this to me one time,” Schyck said in the documentary. “She asked me if Russ or Jim, ‘Did you tell them the stuff that we’re finding out now?’ And I’m like, ‘Telling would imply that they didn’t know.’”
The athletes affected were afraid to address their abuse due to the culture they grew up around.
“I’ve never looked at myself like a victim,” Schyck said in the documentary. “I mean, I come from the athlete’s mentality, where if it’s bad, you problem solve and you fix it. The way I think we kind of fixed it as athletes, was you kind of made light of it. It was out in the open like that, making light of it.”
The university still has an ongoing lawsuit regarding Strauss
While over half of the plaintiffs have settled, there is still an ongoing lawsuit regarding the Strauss investigation.
According to the documentary, Ohio State has paid out an average of $250,000 per survivor. This number is vastly smaller than that of Michigan State University, Dr. Larry Nassar abuse scandal, where the university paid out $1.2 million per survivor, according to the film.
The documentary, through quotes from Maazel, takes an accusatory stance by stating that while the university seemed supportive to the survivors in public, they were fighting the lawsuit behind their backs, claiming the statute of limitations.
“If there’s one thing Ohio State is good at other than football, it’s deceit,” Maazel said in the film.
Ohio State brought the case to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2023, asking to have it reviewed by the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on the statue of limitations of sexual abuse. The Court declined.
The lawsuit, which currently has more than 230 men involved, is still underway.
“Since 2018, Ohio State has reached settlement agreements with more than half of the plaintiffs, 296 survivors, for more than $60 million,” Ben Johnson, university spokesperson, said in a statement.
Rick Schulte, attorney and the lead negotiator for the plaintiffs’ firms, said that he appreciated that Ohio State took initiative in working towards a solution.
“After extensive negotiations, we were able to reach a settlement on behalf of our clients,” Schulte said in a press release. “The bravery of our clients is humbling. We are pleased that Ohio State stepped forward and did the right thing. This settlement will help our clients move forward with the healing process.”
All male students who filed a lawsuit were given the option to settle from the university, Johnson said in a statement.
The Lantern will be updating its coverage on the HBO documentary tomorrow with a story about the university’s response to the Strauss scandal throughout the years.
