Raleight, NC – fourteen former state male athletes of North Carolina have filed a lawsuit in a state court that alleges sexual abuse under the appearance of treatment and harassment by the former director of Wolfpack Sports Medicine, expanding a case that began with a federal demand for a single athlete three years ago.
The lawsuit filed on Wednesday night in the Superior County Court of Wake Ans years of misconduct by Robert Murphy Jr., including the inappropriate contact of the genitals during massages and intrusive observation while collecting urine samples during drug tests.
Murphy, in NC State of 2012-22, is among the nine defendants appointed individually. Others are school officials accused of negligence in supervision roles.
Twelve athletes are demanding “John Doe” to protect anonymity, while two former male soccer players are named. One is Benjamin Locke, who filed the original complaint in August 2022. The other is one of the two athletes who presented their own federal demands in February and April 2023. Associated Press generally does not identify those who say they have been attacked or sexually abused unless the person has spoken publicly, what Locke has done.
The lawyer based in Durham, Kerry Sutton, who has represented the plaintiffs in the four demands, filed to dismiss those demands pending title IX before moving the case to the jurisdiction at the state level, although now with 11 additional claimants.
Wednesday's demand describes similar accusations of Murphy's behavior and school response. He alleges that the concerns about Murphy arrived at the former Atlético Debbie Yow director and other officials of senior athletics officials, but nothing substantive was done to investigate or prevent Murphy from “reins free” when working with male athletes even though they were told to stop.
The demand alleges that Murphy's behavior was known to the point that multiple team athletes joked mockingly about it, while several athletes refused to let Murphy treat them again. He also claimed that Murphy's observation methods while collecting drug testing samples were “disturbing and unworthy”, with exposed athletes of calves to chest and, sometimes, with Murphy closely stopped in the same bathroom stalls.
“These 14 athletes have appeared together in the hope of encouraging others abused by Rob Murphy to see that not only they did nothing wrong, and NCSU should have protected them,” Sutton said in a statement in the name of the co-counsels Lisa Lanier and Robert Jenkins.
“A culture of fear in the Athletics Department of the NCSU led to this tragic set of circumstances. Athletes fear losing their scholarship or place in the team, coaches fearful of informing their boss, coaches fearful of getting involved, directors fearful of damaging the reputation of NCSU. Murphy took advantage of those fears to escape with what we believe could become hundreds of Hundreds of Wolfpack Athletes.
Seth Blum, who has represented Murphy along with his fellow lawyer Jared Hammett based in Raleight, said Murphy has been falsely accused.
“In three years of representing Robert Murphy inside and outside the court, we have not yet seen a piece of credible evidence that he assaulted anyone,” Blum said in a statement on Thursday. “He is a talented professional who has been attacked as an early victim in the new border of mass grievances: to sue universities for spurious accusations of sexual assault.
“In a nutshell, Robert Murphy didn't do this.”
The defendants include Yow, who retired in 2019; former Foreign Minister Randy Woodson; and current Ad Boo correct. In an email on Thursday, spokesman Mick Kulikowski said NC State would not comment on pending litigation. Yow declined to comment, postponing to school, in a text message to the AP.
Locke's demand of 2022 declared that he learned during the investigation of Title IX that former male soccer coach Kelly Findley allegedly told a senior athletics official in February 2016 that Murphy was participating in a behavior “consisting of the behavior of 'preparation'. That was a key point when a Federal Appeals Court in January revoked the dismissal of the demand “John Doe 2”, determining that Findley's comment was “objectively” an accusation that described as notification to school officials.
Wednesday's demand alleges that Findley had raised concerns after the 2012 season to a senior athletics official and wanted Murphy to eliminate as coach of the team. The senior official reassigned Murphy to other teams in 2013, but Murphy resumed working with football the following year in what demand calls “a self -directed return.”
The official of the official later instructed Murphy several times of 2016-21 to stop treating male athletes or walking through the football team, and instead will focus on administrative tasks. However, as Murphy “did not meet”, the school did not take corrective measures and raised it to an associated advertising role in addition to its role as director of Sports Medicine in 2018, according to the demand.
Murphy made administrative license in January 2022 in the middle of the investigation of Title IX linked to Locke, whose first demand declared that he learned that Murphy no longer worked in NC State after an “involuntary separation” that summer. That investigation of the title IX finally found that “a violation would have referred through the preponderance of the standard of evidence” if Murphy remained, according to a letter to Locke from the office of the school for institutional equity and diversity.
NC State said that the Campus Police also investigated Locke's complaint, but did not file criminal charges.
