17 former NC State athletes join lawsuit alleging abuse by ex-head trainer, bringing total to 31

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Seventeen additional former N.C. State male athletes have joined a state lawsuit alleging sexual abuse under the guise of treatment and harassment by the Wolfpack’s former director of sports medicine, pushing the total number to 31 in a case that began with a federal lawsuit from a single athlete more than three years ago.

The complaint filed in Wake County Superior Court late last week expands a case alleging years of misconduct by Robert L. Murphy Jr., including improper touching of the genitals during massages and intrusive observation while collecting urine samples during drug testing.

All but two of the 31 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. The other is one of two athletes who filed their own federal lawsuits in February 2023 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 about it, which Locke has done.

Durham-based attorney Kerry Sutton, who has represented plaintiffs in each lawsuit, filed to dismiss those pending Title IX lawsuits before moving the case to state-level jurisdiction in September. That complaint added 11 new athletes to bring the total to 14 — and now the case has more than doubled with the latest filing.

“While it is never good news to hear there are other men that have been suffering in silence due to what they experienced, I am encouraged by the bravery, vulnerability, and willingness of these men to come forward against injustice,” Locke said Monday in a statement released by Sutton.

In a separate statement, Sutton said: “I hate to say it, but I expect to hear from more men in coming days who were sexually harassed or assaulted by Mr. Murphy.”

Seth Blum, a Raleigh-based attorney who has represented Murphy, didn’t immediately return an email from The Associated Press on Monday. He has forcefully defended Murphy in past comments, saying he has been falsely accused and there has yet to be “one scrap of credible evidence he assaulted anyone.”

“Put simply, Robert Murphy did not do this,” Blum said in a statement after the September lawsuit.

Murphy, at N.C. State from 2012-22, is among nine defendants named individually. Others are school officials accused of negligence in oversight roles.

The lawsuits outline similar allegations of Murphy’s conduct and the school’s response in failing to stop it, even when concerns reached senior levels of the athletic department. The latest filing describes the 31 former athletes as “victims of sexual assaults, sexual exploitation and sexual harassment” while saying Murphy “violated his position of trust to abuse rather than treat.”

The allegations from 17 new plaintiffs largely centered on Murphy’s handling and observation of drug testing. Those allegations centered on athletes being instructed to raise their shirt above their chest and lower their shorts or pants to their ankles while Murphy stared at their genitals from a few feet away and sometimes from within the same bathroom stall.

One athlete described feeling “uncomfortable and vulnerable,” while another was left “feeling humiliated,” according to the lawsuit. In another case, an athlete was so uncomfortable that he couldn’t urinate “even after consuming three Diet Cokes” and had return a day later “to repeat the same invasive process,” the lawsuit said.

Roughly a half-dozen of the 17 also alleged Murphy improperly touched their genitals during massage or other rehabilitation treatments amid injuries. One athlete dealing with an Achilles tendon injury to his lower leg alleged Murphy began massage treatments but gradually moved higher until reaching the athlete’s groin; that athlete asked Murphy to stop and refused to let Murphy treat him again, according to the complaint.

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