RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — Fourteen former N.C. State male athletes have filed a lawsuit in state court alleging sexual abuse under the guise of treatment and harassment by the Wolfpack’s former director of sports medicine, expanding a case that began with a federal lawsuit from a single athlete three years ago.
The lawsuit filed Wednesday evening in Wake County Superior Court alleges years of misconduct by Robert Murphy Jr., including improper touching of the genitals during massages and intrusive observation while collecting urine samples during drug testing.
Murphy, at N.C. State from 2012-22, is among nine defendants named individually. Others are school officials accused of negligence in oversight roles.
Twelve 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 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, which Locke has done.
Durham-based attorney Kerry Sutton, who has represented plaintiffs in all four lawsuits, filed to dismiss those pending Title IX lawsuits before moving the case to state-level jurisdiction — though now with 11 additional plaintiffs.
Wednesday's lawsuit outlines similar allegations of Murphy’s conduct and the school’s response. It alleges concerns about Murphy reached former athletic director Debbie Yow and other senior athletics officials, but nothing substantive was done to investigate nor prevent Murphy from “free reign” in working with male athletes despite being told to stop.
The lawsuit alleges Murphy's conduct was known to the point that athletes on multiple teams joked derisively about it, while multiple athletes refused to let Murphy treat them again. It also alleged Murphy's observation methods while collecting drug-testing samples were “unsettling and undignified," with athletes exposed from calves to chest and sometimes with Murphy standing closely in the same bathroom stall.
“These 14 athletes have come forward together hoping to encourage others abused by Rob Murphy to see it wasn’t just them, they did nothing wrong, and NCSU should have protected them,” Sutton said in a statement on behalf of co-counsels Lisa Lanier and Robert Jenkins.
“A culture of fear in the NCSU athletics department led to this tragic set of circumstances. Athletes afraid of losing their scholarship or their spot on the team, trainers afraid of reporting their boss, coaches afraid of getting involved, directors afraid of harming NCSU’s reputation. Murphy took advantage of those fears to get away with abusing what we believe may turn out to be hundreds of former Wolfpack athletes.”
Jared Hammett, a Raleigh-based attorney working with Murphy in the earlier cases, didn’t immediately return messages from the AP requesting comment Thursday. An attorney who previously worked with Murphy said in 2022 that Murphy offered “appropriate” medical procedures but “nothing that was ever of a sexual nature.”
Defendants include Yow, who retired in 2019; former chancellor Randy Woodson; and current AD Boo Corrigan. In an email Thursday, spokesman Mick Kulikowski said N.C. State wouldn't comment on pending litigation. Yow declined to comment, deferring to the school, in a text message to the AP.
Locke’s 2022 lawsuit stated he learned during the Title IX investigation that former men’s soccer head coach Kelly Findley allegedly told a senior athletics official in February 2016 that Murphy was engaging in conduct “consistent with ‘grooming’ behavior." That was a key point when a federal appeals court in January reversed the dismissal of the “John Doe 2” lawsuit, determining that Findley’s comment was “objectively” an allegation qualifying as notification to school officials.
Wednesday's lawsuit alleges Findley had raised concerns after the 2012 season to a senior athletics official and wanted Murphy removed as the team's trainer. The senior official reassigned Murphy to other teams in 2013, but Murphy resumed working with soccer the next year in what the lawsuit calls “a self-directed return.”
That official's successor later instructed Murphy multiple times from 2016-21 to stop treating male athletes or hanging around the soccer team, and instead focus on administrative duties. Yet as Murphy “failed to comply,” the school took no corrective action and elevated him to director of sports medicine in 2018, the lawsuit states.
Murphy went on administrative leave in January 2022 amid the Title IX investigation tied to Locke, whose first lawsuit stated he learned that Murphy no longer worked at N.C. State after an “involuntary separation” that summer. That Title IX investigation ultimately found “a violation would have been substantiated via the preponderance of the evidence standard” if Murphy remained, according to a letter to Locke from the school’s Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity.
N.C. State has previously said campus police also investigated Locke's complaint but filed no criminal charges.
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