Growing up in Ohio, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know there are many beloved behemoths in my state: the Campbell’s soup plant, the Catholic Church, craft beer, etc., etc. Then, there’s The Ohio State University. From the moment you’re able to recognize them, reminders of the school’s hulking horseshoe-shaped shadow loom over all your daily interactions: from every stranger’s optimistic offering of “O-H” to every jersey worn at weekend mass to every Block O calf tattoo. For many—my family included—it’s not just The Ohio State University. It’s the only university.
So in 2018, when Sports Illustrated published a staggering cover story about the systemic sex abuse perpetrated by a university physician from 1978 to 1998 entitled “Why Aren’t More People Talking About the Ohio State University Sex Abuse Scandal?” too many Ohioans either took issue with the survivors’ claims, or ignored them altogether. That was, until they couldn’t. In the story, journalist Jon Wertheim referred to Dr. Richard Strauss’s reign of terror as “the most sweeping sex abuse scandal in the history of American higher education.” Now, even as many of his survivors are currently suing the university, SI‘s question sadly still stands. But a new documentary from HBO—with an outsider at the helm—attempts to answer it.
Australian expat and Emmy- and Academy Award-winning filmmaker Eva Orner grew up with zero concept of the institution’s importance. So much so that when she was approached to direct Surviving Ohio State, she needed some serious convincing that she was the right person for the job.
“I’m sort of half proud, half mortified to say I really don’t know about college life or college sports,” Orner said on a recent Zoom with Jezebel. “I certainly might have known what Ohio State was, but I didn’t know what it meant.”
Produced by Ohio-native George Clooney’s Smokehouse Pictures, the harrowing film, which premiered at Tribeca earlier this month and made its debut on HBO on June 17, further examines how Strauss, a physician who treated both students and student-athletes, sexually assaulted scores of male athletes under the guise of routine medical visits for two decades without culpability. It wasn’t until twenty years after he voluntarily resigned from the university that a former student-athlete sparked a shocking investigation after publicly alleging that he and several others were sexually abused by Strauss.
According to a report commissioned by Ohio State and made public in 2019, Strauss—who died by suicide in 2005—committed at least 1,429 instances of fondling and 47 instances of rape during his tenure. But even more survivors have since come forward. According to the documentary, 2,800 instances of sexual misconduct allegedly occurred—170 of those instances were rape.
In the 2020 SI story, Wertheim further exposed the fact that scores of high-ranking and well-known university officials were aware of the abuse and had ultimately failed to report it. One of those officials is now the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). From 1986 to 1994, Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at OSU. In the documentary, more than one survivor directly recalls Jordan’s awareness of Strauss’ predatory behavior.
“I told John Wertheim, whom I spoke to early on, ‘I don’t think I should do this film,” Orner said. “‘I think you need an American, and honestly, I’m a woman. It’s a very bloke-y story.'”
It may be “bloke-y,” but Orner approaches it with a distinctly feminine care. Bolstered by commentary from journalists who’ve covered the story from the start, the film maintains focus not just on Strauss’ immeasurable abuse, but on how the survivors have—and haven’t—healed. It also shines an especially unforgiving spotlight on the university’s continued callousness and scant compassion: from repeated attempts to dismiss their case in court to cruel denials of settlements.
Orner’s approach is similar to filmmaking duo Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering’s in that not only do the survivors drive the narrative, but the takeaway is that the perpetrator is almost never just one person. Instead, it’s entire systems that rely on shame to keep survivors silent. For male survivors, as Orner spends particular time on in the film, that shame shows up differently. Many of the men in the film, for instance, recall fielding questions about why they didn’t just fight back, given their status as athletes at peak strength. These men were wrestlers, hockey players, gymnasts, and the like. Weren’t they man enough to fend off a doctor?
Orner, whose filmography is proof she can paint a compelling portrait of a predator (see Netflix’s Bikram: Yogi, Guru, Predator), likened the OSU case to any other corrupt institution, like the Catholic Church or the Boy Scouts of America. That said, the survivors most likely to reach global recognition have historically been women. Take the case of Larry Nassar, for instance. The former doctor to elite athletes and Olympians dominated headlines beginning before his 2016 arrest and well after his 2018 sentencing. But where some of Strauss’ survivors were offered less than half a million each, the settlements to Nassar’s survivors are over 1,500 times that amount. In the film, Orner makes the disparity as obvious as possible.
“It’s an average of $250,000, which really implies the notion that men are less important in cases of sexual abuse,” Orner said. “The other thing I think is really interesting is OSU refused to admit liability in the settlements that the survivors would have to sign. Then, some of the settlements were demanding the survivors could never criticize OSU publicly—and I think that was a big reason a lot of them haven’t signed.”
Neither the university nor any of the culpable former staffers, like Jordan, participated in the film. While OSU has issued the same stale statement insisting that it conducted its own investigation and has given survivors the “opportunity to settle” since at least 2022, a representative for Jordan continues to claim that “Chairman Jordan never saw or heard of any abuse, and if he had, he would have dealt with it.” When contacted by Jezebel via email, Jordan’s spokesperson, Russell Dye, simply repeated that statement.
For Orner, the story isn’t about any one individual, but rather how institutions break trust, and bonds are formed despite it. She emphasized the relationships the men have established since 2018. Before the film’s premiere, Orner showed the film to the survivors and their families privately, though she admittedly didn’t pay much mind to the final cut. As they watched the film for the first time, she was only watching them.
“It’s weird because it’s such a somber story, but there’s been a banding together of the men and, even more, a brotherhood,” she told Jezebel. “When I come back to this story, there are a few really important things, and one is the absolute courage and bravery of these men to speak out publicly and to stick with this for seven years despite how difficult it’s been.”
The other?
“It’s about what Strauss did,” Orner said. “But in a lot of ways, this story is about what happened later and the way that the university responded.”
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