Skip to content
An HBO documentary premiering today highlights one of the most sweeping campus sexual abuse scandals in American history, a longer report from The Guardian reveals. The scandal unfolded over decades at one of the nation’s largest universities, under the watch of officials who allegedly looked the other way.
Surviving Ohio State, directed by Eva Orner (Bikram, Taxi to the Dark Side), explores the horrifying legacy of Dr. Richard Strauss, a physician at The Ohio State University who sexually abused at least 177 male students between 1978 and 1998, mostly during routine athletic physicals and clinic visits. An independent investigation commissioned by the university found Strauss had been reported as early as 1979, yet he remained in contact with students until 1996 and retained his faculty status until retirement.
Many of Strauss’s victims were student-athletes—wrestlers, football players, swimmers, gymnasts—who say they endured not only abuse but betrayal by a system designed to protect them. Some, like former wrestling stars Mike DiSabato and Mark Coleman, came forward publicly years later, only to be met with skepticism, legal resistance, and emotional devastation.
The documentary premiered at Tribeca ahead of its June 17 release on HBO and challenges viewers to reconsider how institutions respond when male survivors speak out. In one of the film’s most harrowing accounts, a former Buckeyes hockey player alleges Strauss drugged and raped him. Others recount how Strauss earned nicknames like “Jellypaws” and was openly joked about—signs, survivors say, that the abuse was normalized within OSU culture.
Adding to the controversy is the presence of high-profile figures like Jim Jordan, now a prominent congressman, who was an assistant wrestling coach during Strauss’s tenure. Several former wrestlers allege that Jordan knew about the abuse and urged them to stay quiet.
Unlike Michigan State, which paid $500 million to the survivors of Larry Nassar and issued a sweeping apology, Ohio State has settled for $60 million and continues to deny legal responsibility, despite its own commissioned findings.
Strauss died by suicide in 2005—13 years before many survivors learned he was even dead. His death means no criminal charges were ever filed, and no criminal court ever heard the survivors’ testimony. The documentary, then, becomes something more than a film: a surrogate courtroom, and a public reckoning long denied.
