Ohio
Men abused by Ohio State doctor ask court to revive lawsuits
Attorneys for some of the men who sued Ohio State University over decades-old sexual abuse by a team doctor argued Tuesday that a federal appeals court should overturn a judge’s dismissal and let the lawsuits continue toward trial.
But a lawyer for the school contends their claims were made years too late. If the doctor’s behavior and Ohio State’s inaction during his tenure were as egregious as alleged, he argued, the students knew enough that, legally speaking, they should have started looking into further recourse back then.
Hundreds of alumni have alleged the late Dr. Richard Strauss abused them throughout his two decades at the school, and that Ohio State officials knew of complaints but failed to stop him. The university publicly apologized and said it has tried to respond with transparency and empathy while trying to resolve the cases through settlements, which so far total more than $60 million for 296 survivors.
A judge dismissed most of the unsettled cases, acknowledging that abuse occurred but agreeing with the school’s argument that the legal time limit for the claims had long passed. Two groups totaling more than 100 survivors appealed that decision, contending the two-year window for that didn’t start until the allegations were brought to light in 2018 when the men began to speak out and the school hired a law firm to investigate.
Most didn’t recognize their experiences as abuse until then, and any who did recognize it earlier still didn’t know until a few years ago that the university was a cause of the abuse through its inaction, an attorney for the plaintiffs argued Tuesday before a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The students didn’t know during Strauss’ tenure that OSU’s indifference allowed abuse to continue because the school concealed its complicity, including by not reporting allegations to authorities and by hiding the findings of disciplinary proceedings against Strauss, attorney Ilann Maazel told the judges.
Exactly what school leaders knew while Strauss was working there was a question the university said it was trying to answer when it announced its investigation in 2018, Maazel noted.
“And if they didn’t know in 2018, how on earth did students and teenagers know that in the 1980s and 1990s?” Maazel said.
The lawyer representing the university, Michael Carpenter, said Ohio State sought to dismiss the claims not out of disrespect toward the alumni or their allegations, but because the window for the men to file such Title IX claims was decades ago, when the abuse was occurring.
“They knew they were telling folks about it, and it was still continuing on,” Carpenter told the judges. “They knew it was pervasive. And they knew it was affecting them.”
The men have alleged that Strauss abused them during required physicals and other medical exams at campus athletic facilities, a student health center, his home and an off-campus clinic, and that complaints were raised as early as the late 1970s.
Strauss died in 2005. No one has publicly defended him.
California
Porn site operator pleads guilty to sex-trafficking charge
SAN DIEGO (AP) — An operator of a San Diego-based porn empire that coerced young women into filming adult videos has pleaded guilty in federal court to a single count of conspiracy to commit sex trafficking.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Tuesday that Matthew Isaac Wolfe, 40, admitted his role in the broad scheme that recruited numerous women under false pretenses to film videos for GirlsDoPorn.
Wolfe, 40, ran the day-to-day operations of GirlsDoPorn websites, managed finances, marketed the content and served as cameraman for about 100 videos, the newspaper said.
The conspiracy count to which Wolfe pleaded guilty involves 15 victims, all adults.
Three other co-defendants have pleaded guilty in the case, while GirlsDoPorn owner Michael James Pratt, 39, remains a fugitive.
Victims said they were plied with alcohol and marijuana before being rushed through signing a contract, which they were not allowed to read. Some said they were sexually assaulted and held in the hotel rooms unwillingly until filming had ended. Wolfe admitted in the plea agreement that some of the women were threatened if they asked to stop.
The criminal indictments came in 2019, as the defendants were targeted in a civil lawsuit by 22 women who claimed they victimized as part of the conspiracy. The judge found in favor of the women and handed down a $12.7 million judgment against Pratt, Wolfe and adult performer Ruben Andre Garcia.
Wolfe faces a sentence of up to life in prison. However, as part of the plea agreement, prosecutors said they would recommend a term in the mid-range of the sentencing guidelines, not above 12 years and six months, the Union-Tribune reported.
Tennessee
Republican AGs sue U.S. agency over LGBTQ school guidance
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — More than 20 Republican attorneys general filed a lawsuit Tuesday against President Joe Biden’s administration over a Department of Agriculture school meal program that prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
The challenge, led by Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery, claims that the federal government is attempting to force states and schools to follow antidiscrimination requirements that “misconstrue the law.”
The coalition of attorneys general are hoping for a similar result to a separate challenge from earlier this month when a Tennessee judge temporarily barred two federal agencies from enforcing directives issued by Biden’s administration that extended protections for LGBTQ people in schools and workplaces.
The judge sided with the attorneys general, ruling that the directives infringed on states’ right to enact laws, such as banning students from participating in sports based on their gender identity or requiring schools and businesses to provide bathrooms and showers to accommodate transgender people.
“This case is, yet again, about a federal agency trying to change law, which is Congress’ exclusive prerogative,” Slatery said in a statement. “The USDA simply does not have that authority. We have successfully challenged the Biden Administration’s other attempts to rewrite law and we will challenge this as well.”
In May, the USDA announced that it would include discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity as a violation of Title IX, the sweeping 1972 law that guarantees equity between the sexes in “any education program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” The directive requires states to review allegations of discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation, as well as update their policies and signage.
The agency warned that states and schools that receive federal funds, which include the national school lunch program overseen by the USDA, have agreed to follow civil rights laws. Although the agency says it wants voluntary compliance, it also has promised to refer violations to the Department of Justice. It is not clear whether the federal government would hold back funding for school meal programs as part of its enforcement.
The directive followed a landmark civil rights decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020 that, under a provision called Title VII, protects gay, lesbian and transgender people from discrimination in the workplace.
According to the lawsuit, the attorneys general allege that the USDA’s new directive is based on a “misreading” of the Supreme Court’s ruling and did not provide states and other groups the opportunity to provide public comment.
The attorneys general involved in the lawsuit filed Tuesday are from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.
A spokesperson for the USDA did not immediately return a request for comment.
New York
NYC jury hears closings at neurologist’s sex crimes trial
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City jury was asked Tuesday to consider whether a neurologist used his thriving pain-management practice to sexually prey on six patients or if he is a victim of accusers with false stories.
The case against Dr. Ricardo Cruciani relied on “survivor stories of six very different women,” assistant District Attorney Shannon Lucey said in closing arguments at Cruciani’s trial.
“This is a trial about a doctor who raped, sodomized, hugged and manipulated his patients,” Lucey said.
The prosecutor argued the evidence showed that Cruciani groomed patients by overprescribing pain killers, sometimes to treat serious injuries from car wrecks and other accidents.
The accusers testified that the sexual abuse often occurred behind closed doors during appointments in 2013 at a Manhattan medical center, where the doctor would expose himself and demand sex.
“He didn’t finish writing my prescriptions until I did something for him,” one said.
The behavior was “just pure evil,” she said, adding, “This defendant is nothing but a drug dealer who used his prescription pad as a weapon.”
Defense attorney Fred Sosinsky countered by arguing the witnesses were unreliable, telling jurors, “You should have every reason to doubt these accusations.”
He added that the witnesses “were willing to lie” and “dispute the indisputable.”
Hospital records undercut the witness timelines for the assaults and supported defense claims that they were getting proper care, Sosinsky said. The lawyer also cited loving notes some witnesses had written to their alleged assailant, including one that read in part: “I hope you have a nice holiday. … You’ve truly been the best doctor I’ve ever had.”
Cruciani, 68, has pleaded not guilty to multiple charges, including rape, sexual abuse and predatory sexual assault.
The jury worked for about an hour late Tuesday without reaching a verdict. It was to resume deliberations on Wednesday morning.
Among the witnesses at a trial that began seven weeks ago was Hillary Tullin, who helped fuel the case by calling a sexual abuse hotline in 2017 and reporting that Cruciani had abused her between 2005 and 2013. Tullin told The Associated Press in 2018 after the doctor’s arrest that he “needs to be locked up.”
The AP does not typically identify people who say they are survivors of sexual assault unless they grant permission, which Tullin has done.
Cruciani is also facing federal charges in an indictment accusing him of abusing multiple patients over 15 years at his offices in New York City, Philadelphia and Hopewell, New Jersey.
The federal charges and state trial follow years of public complaints by Cruciani’s accusers that authorities in some places weren’t taking his crimes seriously, particularly in Philadelphia, where he pleaded guilty to relatively minor misdemeanor groping counts involving seven patients.
Lucey, the prosecutor in the New York case, said Tuesday that Cruciani’s accusers should be credited for having the courage to come forward.
“They get to take back some of the power and control that he took from them,” she said. “Each were broken. Each are rebuilding.”
