17 former NC State athletes join lawsuit alleging abuse by ex-head trainer, bringing total to 31
RALEIGH, North Carolina — Seventeen more former North Carolina 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, bringing the total number to 31 in a case that began as a federal lawsuit of 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 inappropriate touching of genitals during massages and intrusive observation while collecting urine samples during drug tests.
All but two of the 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 generally does not identify those who say they were sexually assaulted or abused unless the person has spoken publicly about it, which Locke has done.
Durham-based attorney Kerry Sutton, who represented the plaintiffs in each lawsuit, moved to dismiss the pending Title IX lawsuits before moving the case to state jurisdiction in September. This 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 that other men are suffering in silence because of what they experienced, I am encouraged by the courage, vulnerability and willingness of these men to speak out 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 the coming days who were sexually harassed or assaulted by Mr. Murphy. »
Seth Blum, a Raleigh-based attorney who represented Murphy, did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press on Monday. He forcefully defended Murphy in previous comments, saying he had been falsely accused and that there was not yet “a single credible evidence that he assaulted anyone.”
“Simply put, Robert Murphy did not do this,” Blum said in a statement after the September trial.
Murphy, at NC State from 2012 to 2022, is one of nine individually named defendants. Others are school officials accused of negligence in their supervisory duties.
The lawsuits make similar allegations about Murphy’s conduct and the school’s response that failed to stop him, even when concerns reached higher levels of the athletic department. The latest filing describes the 31 former athletes as “victims of sexual assault, sexual exploitation and sexual harassment,” while claiming that Murphy “violated his position of trust by abusing rather than treating.”
The allegations from 17 new plaintiffs focused largely on how Murphy manipulated and observed drug tests. These allegations focused on athletes being told to lift their shirts above their chests and pull their shorts or pants down to their ankles while Murphy stared at their genitals from a few feet away and sometimes from the same bathroom.
One athlete described feeling “uncomfortable and vulnerable,” while another felt “humiliated,” according to the lawsuit. In another case, an athlete was so uncomfortable he couldn’t urinate “even after consuming three Diet Cokes” and returned a day later “to repeat the same invasive process,” according to the lawsuit.
About half a dozen of the 17 also alleged that Murphy touched their genitals inappropriately during massage or other rehabilitation treatments amid injuries. An athlete suffering from an Achilles tendon injury in his lower leg claimed that Murphy began massage treatments, but gradually worked his way up until he reached 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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