14 former NC State athletes have filed a lawsuit alleging abuse by ex-head trainer
Sep 18, 2025, 8:07 AM | Updated: 9:46 am
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Fourteen former N.C. State male athletes have filed a civil lawsuit in state court alleging sexual abuse under the guise of treatment and harassment by the Wolfpack’s former director of sports medicine, expanding a case that began with a federal lawsuit from a single athlete three years ago.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday evening in Wake County Superior Court alleges years of misconduct by Robert Murphy Jr., including improper touching of the genitals during massages and intrusive observation while collecting urine samples during drug testing.
Murphy, who was at N.C. State from 2012-22, is among the nine defendants named individually. The others are school officials accused of negligence in their oversight roles in preventing it or adequately responding to concerns raised to them about Murphy’s conduct.
Twelve athletes are “John Doe” plaintiffs to protect anonymity, while two former men’s soccer players are named. One is Benjamin Locke, who filed the original complaint in August 2022. Two other athletes had followed with their own federal lawsuits in February and April 2023. The Associated Press typically doesn’t identify those who say they have been sexually assaulted or abused unless the person has spoken publicly, which Locke has done.
Durham-based attorney Kerry Sutton, who has represented plaintiffs in the previous and new lawsuits, filed to dismiss those pending Title IX lawsuits before moving the case to state-level jurisdiction — though now with 11 additional plaintiffs.
The new lawsuit outlines similar allegations in terms of Murphy’s conduct and the school’s response, including that concerns about Murphy’s conduct reached former athletic director Debbie Yow and other senior athletics officials but nothing substantive was done to prevent misconduct or Murphy continuing to work with athletes.
“These 14 athletes have come forward together hoping to encourage others abused by Rob Murphy to see it wasn’t just them, they did nothing wrong, and NCSU should have protected them,” Sutton said in a statement.
“A culture of fear in the NCSU athletics department led to this tragic set of circumstances. Athletes afraid of losing their scholarship or their spot on the team, trainers afraid of reporting their boss, coaches afraid of getting involved, directors afraid of harming NCSU’s reputation. Murphy took advantage of those fears to get away with abusing what we believe may turn out to be hundreds of former Wolfpack athletes.”
Jared Hammett, a Raleigh-based attorney working with Murphy in the earlier cases, didn’t immediately return messages from the AP requesting comment Thursday. An attorney who previously worked with Murphy said in 2022 that Murphy offered “appropriate” medical procedures but “nothing that was ever of a sexual nature.”
N.C. State didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Yow declined to comment, deferring to N.C. State, in a text message to the AP on Thursday morning.
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