Please note this story contains mention of rape, sexual assault and suicide. If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual violence, help is available through OhioHealth Sexual Assault Response Network of Central Ohio, whose helpline can be reached at (844) 644-6435.

The former Ohio State physician was responsible for 17 years of institutional sexual abuse at the university, yet his name has faded from the school’s recent history. 

Strauss sexually abused at least 177 students — mostly male athletes — during his employment from 1978-98. Reports of his abuse were made to university staff multiple times, as early as 1979, yet the revelation of his conduct didn’t become public until over a decade after he died by suicide in 2005.

Since 2018, more survivors have come forward and are now locked in legal battles over Ohio State’s handling of Strauss’ abuse. The university has faced a total of 37 lawsuits — five of which are still ongoing — and it has consistently challenged survivors’ legal claims. 

Almost nothing has been shared publicly since June 2023, when the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Ohio State’s appeal over the statute of limitations on survivors’ claims, sending their lawsuits back into Ohio courts for further proceedings.

Now, nearly eight years after filing their initial lawsuits, 235 survivors still await their first day in court, seeking accountability and compensation for the damages they allege Ohio State has caused them. 

Steve Snyder-Hill, one of the lead plaintiffs who attended Ohio State from 1991 to 2000, said though Strauss’ abuse occurred decades ago, the university’s response and actions in court continue to traumatize him and other survivors to this day.

“What Strauss did to us was disgusting,” Snyder-Hill said. “What [Ohio State] is doing to us, to me, is just as gross because they’ve continued to violate and traumatize us for eight years. Strauss did this one time for me.”

After a nearly two-year standstill in the pre-trial phase, two survivors will finally step foot in the courtroom — with one trial beginning in October 2026 and the other in April 2027. The arguments and evidence presented in these trials, as well as the jury’s responses, could potentially guide the remaining cases to a resolution.

While Ohio State has already given over $60 million in settlements to survivors of Strauss, universities with similar sexual abuse cases have reached larger settlements. Michigan State paid $500 million to survivors of Larry Nassar in 2018, the University of California had a $1 billion payout to victims of Dr. George Tyndall in 2021 and the University of Michigan offered $490 million in settlements to survivors of Robert Anderson in 2022.

University spokesperson Ben Johnson said in an email Ohio State acknowledges Strauss’ abuse and reaffirms its public apology.

“We express our deep regret and apologies to all who experienced Strauss’ abuse, and we have welcomed survivors to share their experiences with university leadership and the Board of Trustees,” Johnson wrote. “Ohio State will be forever grateful to the survivors who participated in the independent Perkins Coie investigation. It could not have been completed without their strength and courage.”

But for survivors, after nearly eight years since Strauss’ actions became known, they are facing the reality that many students on campus have little knowledge about their ongoing cases. Now, The Lantern offers a comprehensive update on what has happened in these lawsuits, what is next and why it matters.

The law firm’s year-long investigation included 520 interviews with former students, student-athletes, university employees and other individuals. The investigation concluded in 2019.

In an email, Johnson said Ohio State “led the effort to investigate and expose Richard Strauss” by hiring Perkins Coie and encouraging 115 thousand alumni and 147 thousand current students, faculty and staff to share information with the law firm. He said the university maintained an open line of communication with the broader community throughout the investigation and published its findings and relevant public records, which can be found in a 2019 news release.

Perkins Coie concluded in its report that Strauss had sexually abused at least 177 male student-patients during his time of employment, though the actual number of survivors is likely higher, as the Perkins report states many “never responded to [their] outreach attempts,” “declined to participate” or “were deceased.” Ohio State released these findings on its Strauss Investigation website.

For some survivors, the Perkins report brought about memories that had been suppressed by trauma and the passage of time. Snyder-Hill recalls the moment he recognized Strauss in the news coverage following the report.

“As early as 1979, personnel in the University’s Sports Medicine program and Athletics Department were aware that Strauss was conducting genital examinations on male athletes that were unusually prolonged, and that Strauss refused to allow athletic training staff to be present for these protracted genital examinations,” the Perkins report states. 

According to the Perkins report, complaints about these exams were met with “no meaningful action by [Ohio State] to investigate or address the concerns” until 1996, when a series of reports led to disciplinary action. 

The Perkins report states in 1994, Ohio State’s then-director of sports medicine and head team physician conducted an investigation into male student fencers’ reports of Strauss’ abuse. The investigation found this abuse to be “unfounded rumors,” and the matter was not escalated beyond the Athletics Department to university staff. 

In 1995, two male patients from Ohio State’s Student Health Men’s Clinic reported Strauss’ inappropriate genital exams on separate occasions. The Perkins report stated “Strauss denied impropriety,” and Student Health took no further action beyond implementing a “quasi ‘chaperoning’ policy” for Strauss’ exams. 

Former Student Health Director Dr. Ted Grace also falsely told one of these patients they “had never received a complaint about Strauss” in the years prior, according to the Perkins report. 

Snyder-Hill said he reported Strauss’ sexual abuse to the Student Health Center in 1995. In response, he said Grace “looked [him] in the eye and told [him] nobody had ever complained” of Strauss’ behavior. 

The Lantern previously reported a student had made a complaint about Strauss’ abuse just days before Snyder-Hill.  

In 1996, the Perkins report states a third male patient from Ohio State’s Student Health Men’s Clinic reported being fondled by Strauss during a medical exam. Ohio State “took disciplinary action against Strauss” within days of the complaint and put him on administrative leave. 

The report also concluded the university “had knowledge of Strauss’ sexually abusive treatment” because of these complaints; however, they were not escalated to university personnel outside of the Athletics Department or Student Health until 1996.

“Ohio State has reached settlement agreements with more than half of the plaintiffs, 296 survivors, for more than $60 million,” Johnson said. “All male students who filed lawsuits have been offered the opportunity to settle.”

The Lantern reported the average settlement offered to these survivors was $252,000 per person. 

Rick Schulte, the lead negotiator for the firms of survivors who have settled with the university, said in a 2020 Ohio State News release these settlement amounts were determined by an “independent confidential process” — established by Schulte and the university — that evaluated each survivor’s claim and accounted for “wide variations in abuse.”

Per prior Lantern reporting, other universities have paid significantly more to survivors of similar abuse cases: Michigan State paid an average of $1.2 million to each of 332 survivors, while the University of Southern California paid the same average amount to each of 710 survivors. At the University of Michigan, more than 1,000 survivors received an average of $438,000 each.

“After extensive negotiations, we were able to reach a settlement on behalf of our clients,” Schulte said. “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.”

Debbie Greenberger — partner of New York-based law firm Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward and Maazel — said she is representing Snyder-Hill and others in their legal proceedings against Ohio State. She said the university’s settlement offers for survivors were inadequate, as the offers “demanded a gag order” preventing them from criticizing Ohio State’s handling of Strauss from 2018 onwards. 

The Strauss Individual Settlement Program — one of Ohio State’s five settlement offers that is no longer active — detailed similar conditions to participate in the program, as it required survivors to “cease, and not engage in the future, in any disparagement of Ohio State’s handling of this matter since March 2018.” Participating survivors were also required to waive their right to sue the university for Strauss-related claims and were not guaranteed settlement payments just because they participated in the program.

In an email, Johnson said “the settlement agreements do not prohibit survivors from talking about Strauss’ abuse publicly.” 

Snyder-Hill said he and other survivors have not settled with Ohio State because the program’s conditions left room for the university to silence survivors’ criticisms of how their claims were handled, while also denying them monetary compensation for the abuse they faced. 

“Yes, we chose not to settle, but [Ohio State] didn’t say that then, that [the university] could have just [given] us the middle finger and told us we don’t get anything,” Snyder-Hill said. “Because that’s exactly what could have happened.”

Snyder-Hill’s case — which began in July 2018 — is the largest of the five, involving 107 survivors in the “Public Justice” group, represented by law firms Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady War and Maazel, Public Justice and Scott Smith, according to Greenberger.

The Lantern reached out to Ohio State’s attorneys for comment on the Snyder-Hill lawsuit; however, Johnson said in an email they are unable to do so because of the ongoing litigation status.  

In the same year of Snyder-Hill’s filing, Ohio State argued for the case’s dismissal, citing Ohio’s two-year statute of limitations for Title IX claims. In September 2021, Southern Ohio District Judge Michael H. Watson granted this dismissal, and all survivors’ cases were dropped. 

For survivors, Ohio State’s focus on the expiration of their claims was damaging. Snyder-Hill said though the university didn’t deny survivors’ claims, its successful attempt at getting them thrown out felt like a dismissal of the abuse they faced.

“The district court erred,” Moore said, according to court records. “The plaintiffs adequately allege that they did not know and could not reasonably have known that Ohio State injured them until 2018.”

Ohio State filed a petition for a writ of certiorari — a review by a higher court — to the U.S. Supreme Court in March 2023, asking them to overturn the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit’s reversal. 

In a statement published in an Ohio State News release, Ohio State said this petition “does not question survivors’ accounts of sexual abuse” by Strauss. Instead, it was asking the U.S. Supreme Court to “uphold commitment to statutes of limitations that begin when an injury occurs — not decades later.” 

Ohio State’s petition was denied in June 2023, leaving the previous ruling intact and permitting the survivors’ cases to proceed with litigation.

Since the release of the Perkins report and the U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of the university’s petition, Ohio State has continued to publicly condemn both Strauss’ abuse and the university’s lack of preventative measures at the time. 

Greenberger, however, said in an email these statements contradict the university’s legal arguments in court — starting with its attempt to dismiss the Perkins report as evidence.

The Perkins report is a key document that supports the survivors’ claims of sexual abuse. The survivors’ attorneys wanted this report to be filed as evidence, but Ohio State argued it was “inadmissible hearsay.”

Ohio State maintained that though the report was used to “bring closure and attempt reconciliation” for survivors, it was unreliable because of unavailable documents, witnesses and other material due to time passage. 

Greenberger said in an email the Perkins report is not hearsay since Ohio State hired the law firm to investigate complaints of Strauss’ abuse, act as its agent in the matter and adopt its findings by publishing its conclusions. 

The court has yet to rule on the admissibility of the Perkins report, but Greenberger wrote that this decision will be made closer to the 2026 and 2027 trials.

Since 2023, attorneys for both Ohio State and survivors have been preparing for a bellwether trial — a “test” case that helps streamline the 107 total cases — to help determine how a jury will react to the survivors’ claims.

Greenberger said in an email the bellwether process will involve two survivors, known as “bellwethers,” going to separate trials — one selected by the plaintiffs’ attorneys and the other selected by Ohio State’s counsel. 

These two survivors will be picked from a larger pool of 20 — 10 chosen by the plaintiffs and the other 10 selected by Ohio State — that have undergone “full discovery,” a process of gathering detailed information about each survivor’s case. 

This type of trial was chosen to expedite the court process for the survivors. There will be two trials, and Greenberger said the arguments presented, jury reactions and trial conclusions will help determine how Ohio State and the remaining survivors will proceed with potential settlement offers or further litigation.

The PFS included a question — Question 46 — asking plaintiffs to provide a monetary value of compensation they are seeking for Strauss’ abuse. According to court records, many survivors gave a general response or left this question blank, as their counsel stated in July 2024 this estimate was “for experts and/or the jury to decide.” 

Ohio State’s attorney argued “Question 46 [was] not unusual or out of the ordinary,” and more sufficient responses were “crucial for moving these cases forward.” 

In August 2024, Judge Michael Watson decided survivors must provide a monetary estimate in response to this question for the court to proceed with the bellwether selection process. 

 Following the judge’s ruling, Ohio State requested records — relating to survivors’ graduation, medical and employment history — to evaluate plaintiffs’ estimated damages and proceed with the bellwether selection process. Greenberger said because these records are decades old, their potential inaccessibility can further delay the survivors’ litigation. 

“Many of these records are decades old. They’ll never be located,” Greenberger said in a November 27, 2024 status conference transcript. “We’re not saying there shouldn’t be a continuing attempt to collect those records, but that can happen as we’re going through the bellwether process.”

Greenberger said Ohio State has the information needed to adequately select its bellwethers; however, Michael Carpenter — an attorney representing Ohio State in Snyder-Hill and other related litigation — stated in a Nov. 27, 2024 status conference transcript they have only received a fraction of the requested records and cannot fairly make this selection.

Greenberger also said survivors feel this prolonged process of bellwether selection suggests “Ohio State’s goal is to delay the case and avoid accountability” in the courts.

Snyder-Hill agreed, and said the drawn-out cases have led to little knowledge of Strauss’ abuse in the Ohio State community. 

“If you do what [Ohio State] has done, and you just delay it and you string this out for eight years, the people that are there now don’t even — they don’t even probably remember when all this happened,” Snyder-Hill said. “Because that’s two iterations of students ago.”

For the survivors, the prolonged cases and legal arguments have taken a heavy emotional toll. Snyder-Hill said these delays have resulted in frustration and retraumatization.

For these survivors, this will be the first time — after nearly a decade — their attorneys will “question Ohio State’s employees under oath,” according to Greenberger. They will be asked about their knowledge and “why they did not protect students from Dr. Strauss.”

The two bellwethers will not be selected from this pool until April 2026, after full discovery. According to court records, the first bellwether — selected by the plaintiffs’ attorneys — is not expected to go to trial until October 2026. 

The trial for the second bellwether — selected by Ohio State’s attorneys — will follow in April 2027.

Greenberger said in an email she and her team are “disappointed” in the drawn-out phases of this case, but “ultimately, Ohio State will face accountability in the courts.”

In addition, the university created a Task Force on Sexual Abuse that includes a Strauss survivor, according to Ohio State’s Strauss Investigation website. 

Snyder-Hill said he does not believe Ohio State’s changes were meaningful, stating they did not adequately prevent sexual abuse from occurring on campus. 

Greenberger said in an email “Ohio State’s toxic culture, which has drawn the attention and censure of the federal government, continues to thrive to this day,” and referenced multiple incidents — found in Snyder-Hill’s court complaint — since Strauss where the university did not protect students from sexual abuse.

“In 2014, the federal government announced that Ohio State had violated Title IX because students were confused about how and where to report incidents of sexual harassment and assault, and its procedures, ‘inappropriately suggest and, in some instances, seem to require that parties work out alleged sexual harassment directly with the accused harasser prior to filing a complaint with the University,’” Greenberger said in an email.

In another incident, Greenberger said Ohio State was aware of a “sexually hostile environment” in its marching band but took no action to address or prevent it in 2014. 

“[Ohio State] had an internal investigation — which it launched after the federal government’s investigation — which found that the marching band’s culture facilitated sexual harassment, and created a sexually hostile environment for its students,” Greenberger said. “It also found that [the university] had notice of the hostile environment but had failed to do anything about it.”

In the same year, Greenberger stated Ohio State received a report that former assistant diving coach William Bohonyi was sexually abusing a minor in the university’s diving club and forcing her to take inappropriate photos. Ohio State allegedly addressed this abuse with the victim during a diving meet. 

“Inexplicably, [the university] allegedly sent the victim — not the perpetrator — home from the meet,” Greenberger said. “[Ohio State] then allegedly failed to take action to address the hundreds of naked photographs of the victim engaged in sexual acts that Coach Bohonyi had forced her to take. These photographs — child pornography — allegedly sat in [Ohio State’s] possession for some four years.”

Ohio State’s Sexual Civility and Empowerment — or SCE — unit was shut down in 2018 over concerns regarding the employee’s treatment of survivors. Greenberger said “employees told victims of abuse they were ‘lying,’ ‘delusional’ and had ‘an active imagination.’” She said victims were also denied services if they did not disclose their attacker’s identity.  

In an email, Johnson said Ohio State’s disciplinary action in response to each of these instances highlights the fundamental difference in how the university now responds to sexual abuse. 

“In each case, the university quickly took action and thoroughly investigated,” Johnson said. “When appropriate, the responsible individuals were terminated and/or charged with a crime. For example, Will Bohonyi was immediately placed on leave, and Ohio State notified Franklin County Children’s Services, USA Diving and all appropriate law enforcement agencies. Bohonyi was terminated, charged, convicted and sentenced to prison.”

Survivors feel the university’s prevention efforts have been inadequate, even with the changes, as the complaint states students have continued to be sexually abused even after Strauss left Ohio State. Snyder-Hill said he feels the university is not taking this abuse seriously and has yet to prove that it is truly different than it was in the past.

“They’ve never proven to us that they’re fundamentally a different place,” Snyder-Hill said. “They say that. They say that on paper. But then I look back, and I see a band coach. I see the diving coach.” 

Snyder-Hill said the university’s response to Strauss and his eight-year legal battle has left him concerned for the broader Ohio State community. He said students deserve to have full awareness of what has happened, as it can prevent them from facing the same struggles he has grappled with for nearly the last decade.

“Survivors want reforms to assure current and future students will be protected by Ohio State and never face a serial sexual abuser like Strauss,” Greenberger said. “Survivors want compensation that recognizes and acknowledges Ohio State’s facilitation, enabling, and concealing of Strauss’s abuse and for the havoc that the abuse wreaked on the survivors’ lives in the decades since.”

Though Snyder-Hill wants Ohio State to take accountability and ensure preventative measures against sexual abuse, he is unsure of what justice looks like after the emotional costs of the last 20 years and legal battles.

“I don’t know,” Snyder-Hill said. “I don’t know what [justice] could be — because there’s nothing that I can really tell you that would satisfy me right now for all the turmoil that they put us through.”

Snyder-Hill said he is a survivor of Strauss’ abuse, but a victim of Ohio State’s actions in the years since.