Yet another former wrestler has come forward to say that Rep. Jim Jordan, who continues to be protected by his fellow Republicans, knew about sexual abuse in the Ohio State University athletic program during his time as an assistant coach there. Not just that Jordan knew—the former student-athlete, who is remaining anonymous, said he told Jordan directly and that Jordan is “sitting here and directly lying”:
"I remember coming up and saying, 'Strauss held my balls longer than normal.' He just snickered."
The former wrestler recalled one time when he went into the wrestling room at OSU and a few athletes and Jordan were "clumped together." He said he remembered saying, "something to the effect of 'his hands are cold as s**t; he checked out every hair on my ball,'" and said Jordan replied, "I have nothing to do with this" and walked away.
Jordan has deflected by saying that “Conversations in a locker room are a lot different than allegations of abuse or reported abuse to us,” but that’s two former wrestlers who have come forward to say that they told Jordan directly that they felt Dr. Richard Strauss was sexually inappropriate in his exams.
Jordan can now point in his own defense to a statement by six former coaches, including head coach Russ Hellickson, that “We all worked on the wrestling coaching staff during Jim’s tenure at The Ohio State University. None of us saw or heard of abuse of OSU wrestlers.” There’s a small problem with this statement, beyond the obvious incentive of the coaches to cover their own asses. The problem here? Hellickson has previously said that he talked to Strauss both about his inappropriately “hands on” physical exams and his habit of showering with the team for an hour at a time.
It’s clear that everyone knew what was going on. Maybe the coaches were too invested in being big bad wrestlers to understand it as sexual abuse, but they knew what Strauss was doing, they knew that it was making the students they coached uncomfortable, and Hellickson even tried to intervene, however halfheartedly. To claim now that they never saw anything or knew anything is just not credible.