Former Ohio State official testified he doesn’t believe Rep. Jim Jordan’s denials about Strauss abuse
A former Ohio State University athletic director said in a deposition that, in his opinion, Rep. Jim Jordan “probably knew” that campus doctor Richard Strauss was abusing the wrestlers Jordan coached more than two decades ago.
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“I believe that the conversation about Dr. Strauss was active — with the wrestlers,” Andy Geiger testified in a sworn deposition unsealed Monday by the Southern District of Ohio. “Particularly loud and clear, I heard all about the unhappiness with the showering situation.”
“For somebody who was part of the program, it doesn’t seem credible to me” that Jordan was unaware that Strauss allegedly preyed on male athletes, Geiger said in the deposition.
“I don’t know for sure,” Geiger added. “But my opinion is that he probably knew.”
“Meaning Jim Jordan?” attorney Ilann Maazel, who represents the former students, asked.
“Right,” Geiger replied.
Geiger’s July testimony was included, along with other school officials’, in thousands of pages of deposition transcripts unsealed Monday in the combined federal civil lawsuit against OSU brought by more than 200 former OSU students who say they were sexually abused by Strauss when they were students, mostly under the guise of physical exams.
Strauss preyed on hundreds of men from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s, according to the findings of an independent investigation. He died by suicide in 2005.
Dr. Richard Strauss from a 1978 Ohio State University employment application.Ohio State University
Jordan, now chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, was OSU’s assistant wrestling coach from 1986 to 1994 during the time when Strauss allegedly abused athletes and other students. He was deposed in July in connection with the remaining lawsuits against OSU, but his deposition remains sealed.
Jordan has long maintained that he was unaware of any abuse that took place while he worked at OSU.
“As has been stated repeatedly, Chairman Jordan never saw or heard of any abuse, and if he had, he would have dealt with it,” Jordan’s spokesperson said via email Tuesday returning a request for comment on Geiger’s testimony.
In July 2018, when a group of former OSU wrestlers came forward and publicly accused the powerful Republican congressman of turning a blind eye to the alleged abuse, Jordan insisted he had no knowledge of what Strauss allegedly did.
Geiger started at the university in 1994, when Jordan was in his final year as the school’s assistant wrestling coach. He served as athletic director until 2005.
In a 2023 Washington Post profile of Jordan, Geiger was quoted as saying that Jordan had “no culpability whatsoever” in the Strauss scandal. But he also said he did not believe the congressman’s denials.
“To say that you didn’t know or were totally unaware is not credible,” he said in that article.
During his deposition, Geiger said he had been quoted accurately in The Washington Post article.
OSU has been battling lawsuits since 2018, when a former OSU wrestler named Mike DiSabato went public with allegations that Strauss sexually abused him and hundreds of other athletes, and that the school knew about it but did nothing to stop him.
In 2019, investigators from Perkins Coie, the law firm that conducted an independent investigation of the abuse allegations, concluded that “Strauss sexually abused at least 177 male student-patients.”
Perkins Coie also determined that coaches and administrators knew Strauss was abusing male students but failed to stop it.
When asked for comment on the information in the depositions, Ohio State University said it could not comment on pending litigation.
“Since 2018, Ohio State has sincerely and persistently tried to reconcile with survivors through monetary and non-monetary means, including settlements, counseling services and other medical treatment. As of April 15, we have settled with 317 survivors for more than $61 million, and we remain actively engaged in mediation,” a spokesperson for the school said in a statement Wednesday.
Since the release of the Perkins Coie report, OSU and its former president have publicly apologized “to each person who endured” abuse at the hands of Strauss. The university is still contending with five active lawsuits filed by 236 men alleging Strauss abused them.
Also included in the trove of unsealed documents in the case were depositions by former Ohio State medical director Dr. John Lombardo, former OSU attorney Helen Ninos, former athletic director Rick Bay and former associate athletic director and star OSU football player Archie Griffin.
Bay and Griffin testified they did not know Strauss was abusing OSU athletes.
Lombardo testified that he worked for the university from 1990 to 2004 and supervised Strauss for part of that time. In his deposition, he said that he learned in the early 1990s that Strauss was showering with athletes at Larkins Hall and told him to stop. He said he didn’t know he should have reported the allegations to law enforcement.
“That wasn’t something they discussed in the 1990s,” Lombardo said.
But Ninos testified in her deposition that she told Lombardo and other top university officials in the mid-1990s they needed to “get rid” of Strauss following three complaints against Strauss at Student Health.
“That was enough to get rid of him,” Ninos testified.
