[2] Richard Strauss (1938–2005) received his medical degree from the University of Chicago in 1964, and interned at the associated hospital system until June 1965.
Afterward, he served as a lieutenant in the Medical Corps of the United States Navy from 1966 to 1968, and received an honorable discharge.
[3]: 2 Between 1979 and 1996, multiple students complained about Strauss's excessive and unnecessary genital examinations, but no action was taken by OSU until January 1996, when he was placed on administrative leave in response to patient complaints.
[3]: 2–3 Larkins Hall, which served OSU as its physical education facility and natatorium, was perceived as a sexualized environment, and multiple witnesses reported that voyeurism and public sex acts occurred there from the early 1980s to the late 1990s.
[3]: 166–167 The building was completed in 1932, named for retired OSU Athletic Director Dick Larkins in 1976, expanded in 1977, and demolished in 2005.
[14] He also continued as a tenured faculty member in the School of Public Health until his voluntary retirement on March 1, 1998, upon which he gained emeritus status.
[3]: 28–29 In 2019, OSU published its annual campus safety report, which reflected that Strauss committed 1,430 instances of fondling and 47 rapes during his tenure.
[17] He first requested information about Strauss in January 2018 via a letter to the university; after failing to get a timely response, he approached The Columbus Dispatch with the allegations of abuse in April.
[19] At the time, DiSabato did not recognize Strauss's behavior as sexual abuse and that it was considered an "open secret" amongst the wrestling team.
[22] OSU President Michael Drake sent an email in May 2018 to more than 100,000 alumni asking them to contact Perkins Coie with any allegations of abuse.
[23] Based on the evidence uncovered, Perkins Coie expanded the scope of the investigation to include Strauss's examinations of high school students in June 2018.
[10] The Office for Civil Rights (OCR) of the United States Department of Education announced it had opened a separate investigation into the university's response in August 2018.
[26][27] Several advocacy groups had sent a letter to OCR earlier in August, alleging that OSU's actions violated Title IX regulations.
[28] The Ohio State Medical Board confirmed that it had received complaints about Strauss and had turned over confidential records to OSU lawyers in December 2018.
[36] In total, more than 20 school officials and staff were named as knowing of complaints about Strauss's abuse but failing to stop him.
[37] In June 2020, Ohio State University agreed to pay $40.9 million to settle the lawsuits of 162 men who alleged sexual abuse during Strauss's tenure.
[42] In June 2023, the Supreme Court rejected the university's appeal of the September 2022 ruling, allowing the lawsuits to proceed.
[48] Former wrestling team members David Range,[47] Mike DiSabato and Dunyasha Yetts asserted that Jordan knew of Strauss's misconduct.
[74][75] In February 2021, The Hollywood Reporter reported that George Clooney's film production company Smokehouse Pictures would be teaming with Sports Illustrated Studios and 101 Studios to produce a docuseries about the scandal, and that the series would be based on an October 2020 Sports Illustrated article by Jon Wertheim detailing Strauss's abuse.