Actor George Clooney is producing documentation on decades of sexual abuse reported to athletes at Ohio State University, where Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was once an assistant coach of the wrestling team.
The series will be based on a Sports Illustrated article by writer Jon Wertheim last year that dealt with allegations against the late Ohio state sports physician Richard Strauss and the lack of response from officials.
The university said in its annual crime report in 2019 that Strauss committed at least 1,429 sexual assaults and 47 rapes during his 20-year term. Strauss was never charged and committed suicide in 2005.
The docuseries may not be welcome news for Jordan, who was the assistant coach of the Ohio State wrestling team from 1987 to 1995. At least three athletes and a referee alleged that they discussed the abuses directly with Jordan, but that goes no action to stop him. Jordan has denied that he has been informed of any abuse or even known.
One of the victims in the Sports Illustrated story claimed that Jordan consciously ignored Strauss’s abuses.
A single Jordan team captain said in an interview with MSNBC’s Joy Reid last year that the scandal will only “get worse” for Jordan.
Former wrestler Adam DiSabato told Reid that Jordan called him repeatedly to ask him to contradict DiSabato’s own brother’s account in 2018 that he told Jordan of sexual abuse. DiSabato said Jordan was fully aware that Strauss was bothering athletes during exercise.
He told Reid that sexual abuse was “blatant knowledge of our entire wrestling team.”
Hundreds of athletes have filed lawsuits against the university for ignoring allegations of sexual abuse. A lawsuit cites cases of Strauss “drugging and raping athletes” and claims that Strauss also took advantage of underage boys who participated in athletic events on campus.
A referee said in a 2019 lawsuit that Strauss masturbated in front of him in a shower after a wrestling match at the university and denounced the match to Jordan. “Yes, that’s Strauss,” Jordan and then-head coach Russ Hellickson replied, according to the lawsuit.
The state of Ohio agreed last May to pay $ 41 million to resolve claims from 162 victims.
Sports Illustrated Studios and 101 Studios are producing the series about the scandal with Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures, Variety reported. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the docuseries have yet to find a way out.
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