Watch or Pass?

For many years, a doctor at Ohio State was involved in sexually abusing numerous student athletes. These survivors have long sought justice and accountability from the university. Surviving Ohio State, a new documentary available on HBO Max, shares the stories of these survivors and their claims that important university figures might have been aware of the misconduct yet remained silent.

The Gist: The details surrounding the Ohio State sexual abuse scandal, such as “who, what, where, and when,” are well-known. Over a span of 20 years, Richard Strauss abused many student-athletes. The central question is “how,” and that’s the focus of Surviving Ohio State. It features interviews with media figures and others connected to the university, but its heart lies in the candid interviews with Strauss’s victims, who describe their experiences and point out who they believe knew about the abuse.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Unfortunately, there are similar stories that have surfaced recently. Notable examples include Netflix’s Athlete A and HBO’s At The Heart of Gold, detailing Larry Nassar’s abuses within USA Gymnastics, and the 2014 documentary Happy Valley, which centers on former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky’s long history of child abuse.

Performance Worth Watching: It’s not worth singling out one person here; the power of Surviving Ohio State lies in the direct, candid, and unflinching accounts of Strauss’s abuses from a group of former Buckeye wrestlers. It’s clear that it’s difficult for them to discuss, even decades later, but it’s also clear that they understand the importance of speaking clearly and openly about what happened to them.

Memorable Dialogue: “The Buckeyes are a religion,” an unseen narrator intones during an opening montage portraying the cheering crowds and many successes of Ohio State athletics. “We believed in The Ohio State University. We believed in the Scarlet and Gray. Until we learned the truth.”

Sex and Skin: It should go without saying that the film contains graphic discussion of criminal sexual abuses, and should be approached with the appropriate discretion.

Our Take: It’s hard to properly convey, if you’re not from there, just how much Ohio State matters to the people of Central Ohio. I didn’t personally attend the school, but I’m from Ohio, graduated from high school in suburban Columbus, and have numerous friends and family members who’ve either attended the school, worked for it, or both. It is woven deeply into the social fabric and the psyche of the place; it borders on a religion, and it’s an institution that generations of Ohioans have placed their trust in.

“We’ve always been proudly a Buckeye family,” longtime local TV news anchor Colleen Marshall notes in an interview early in Surviving Ohio State. “When I dropped my son off at a dorm at The Ohio State University, when he was 18 years old, my first one to leave the nest, I cried after I left the dorm, but I thought ‘Well, at least he’s in good hands. He’s at The Ohio State University. All of these men,” she notes–referring to the survivors of Dr. Richard Strauss’s sexual abuse– “were dropped off at Ohio State. I want to know why this happened to them. How a sexual predator could have been allowed to be on campus for twenty years. How did it happen?”

This is the central question of Surviving Ohio State, a sober and respectful documentary investigating the abuses of Strauss, a doctor who was employed by Ohio State from 1978 to 1998 and who died of suicide in 2005. Over the course of his two decades within the Buckeye athletic department, Strauss is now known to have sexually abused numerous athletes, often during official medical examinations. This is not in debate; the university has formally acknowledged the abuses and settled with some of the survivors. That doesn’t mean that the story is over, however; there’s still a wide-open question of accountability. In the years since Strauss’s abuses have come to light, survivors had alleged that coaches, staff, and administrators within the university were aware of what was happening and either did nothing, or actively covered it up. These accusations include some prominent individuals, including former OSU assistant wrestling coach and current US Representative Jim Jordan.

“My mom said this to me one time,” one survivor recalls, “she asked me about Russ and Jim, ‘did you tell them the stuff that we’re finding out now?”, referring to Jordan and head wrestling coach Russ Hellickson. “I’m like, telling them would imply that they didn’t know.”

“Our coaches knew,” another survivor concurs. “We had guys complaining about Dr. Strauss to Jim Jordan. One of the wrestlers said, ‘Dude, why does this guy have to constantly check our nuts, check our dick?’ Jim Jordan’s response, ‘If he ever did that to me, I’d snap his neck like a stick of dry balsa wood.’ So he knew about it. And Russ knew.” This is contradicted by Hellickson, who’s shown in a previously-recorded interview claiming that he’d confronted Strauss about being too hands-on with athletes, but that he didn’t know the extent of the problem. (Jordan, for his part, has denied any knowledge of the abuses on numerous occasions.)

“Russ Hellickson is your surrogate father while you’re in Columbus, Ohio,” sports reporter Jon Wertheim notes, “if he doesn’t deem it important enough to get rid of this guy, you take your cue from that.”

The university has offered public apologies and monetary settlements to survivors of Strauss’s abuses, but it’s alleged within the documentary they’ve often been resistant and uncooperative with victims, and that the settlements have been inadequate.

Surviving Ohio State doesn’t necessarily uncover a new smoking gun, and it may not give closure to the numerous people who suffered because of Richard Strauss and his alleged enablers. What it does offer, however, is a careful, thorough, and utterly damning picture of an institution that failed people who trusted and believed in it.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Surviving Ohio State isn’t an easy film to watch, but it’s an important one, and it handles the task of investigating a difficult topic respectfully and thoroughly.

Scott Hines, publisher of the widely-beloved Action Cookbook Newsletter, is an architect, blogger and proficient internet user based in Louisville, Kentucky.