Before his explosive political career and unsuccessful nomination to speaker of the House, Ohio Representative Jim Jordan worked as an assistant coach to Ohio State University’s wrestling team from 1986 to 1994. His tenure overlapped with that of Richard Strauss, a team doctor accused of abusing at least 177 male student-patients. Former athletes, as well as multiple investigations that don’t directly name Jordan, argue that the congressman knew of the rampant abuse but failed to do anything about it. In fact, his former athletes have testified that Jordan worked overtime to cover the whole scandal up.
Three of those former athletes, Rocky Ratliff, Matt Reed, and Will Knight, appeared at the Democratic National Convention this week in a show of force behind Jordan’s liberal challenger for Ohio District 4, Tamie Wilson.
Waving placards that spelled out “FIRE JIM JORDAN,” the trio were joined in solidarity by former University of Michigan student wrestler Tad Deluca, who blew the whistle on similar abuse at the hands of his athletic department doctor, Robert Anderson. Anderson’s rampant abuse was the subject of a $490 million settlement by the school to 1,050 victims in 2022, one of the largest such settlements over campus sexual misconduct in U.S. history.
Together with Wilson, the sexual abuse victims have become advocates, fighting for stronger national protections for youth athletes around the country. They have spoken and gained the support of members in Congress, including Representative Jamie Raskin, and have plans to meet with more Democrats in the Senate in an effort to advance a bill that they believe would prevent future instances of child sexual assault.
“We’re all people with lives, and we’re just ordinary people trying to make a difference,” Ratliff told The New Republic Tuesday evening. “And [Wilson’]s the only one that’s basically taking the bull by the horns and getting us those meetings and not letting them forget what happened at Ohio State, because everybody wants to forget it, including Ohio State.”
Some studies suggest that student athletes may be at even greater risk of sexual abuse than nonathletes their age. More than one in four college-aged athletes reported being sexually assaulted or harassed by someone in a position of power over them on campus, according to a 2021 survey by educational nonprofit Lauren’s Kids. A 2023 report by the sexual assault prevention group It’s On Us found that out of 710 male college athletes, 41 percent reported hearing about instances of sexual or domestic abuse, but were not aware of the school’s procedures, policies, or even their Title IX officer.
And student athletes below college age appear to be similarly at risk. A Canadian study published in Frontiers in Psychology in 2022 found that 42 percent of surveyed varsity athletes had been victims of sexual violence, compared to 26 percent of the general population.
Wilson’s Comprehensive Sexual Abuse Prevention and Accountability Act aims to prevent instances of sexual abuse and harrassment by nationalizing protections, which currently vary from state to state. This would include removing the statute of limitations to prosecute sexual abuse cases, implementing mandatory safety measures such as annual student safety classes focused on reinforcing reporting protocols, and expanding background checks on medical staff employed by educational institutions, which could include psychological exams with yearly requalification requirements based on student approval ratings.
The bill also threatens to rescind federal funding from any school caught covering up sexual abuse or harassment scandals.
Knight, now a high school wrestling coach himself, related that he couldn’t imagine how anyone could believe that the House Judiciary Committee chairman would defend and represent the interests of everyday Ohioans when he failed to protect the safety of his own athletes.
“All I do is try to tell the truth about Jim,” Knight said. “He could have been a hero.”
Jordan was once someone he could debate healthily with, even if their politics differed, said Knight, “but something happened to him after 2008,” one year after Jordan assumed office.
Once he obtained power in Washington, the Ohio Republican turned his influence on the wrestling victims, working to flip everyone from former school officials to the family members of victims in an effort to discredit their stories and brush the ordeal under the rug, according to several of the former athletes.
“Being a coach, I couldn’t imagine letting my high school wrestlers down,” Knight continued. “It doesn’t even compute in my brain.”
Jordan has repeatedly denied knowing about the decades-long abuse scandal, and has accused the victims’ accounts of being “sequenced and choreographed,” going so far as to suggest that the misconduct was a left-wing conspiracy.
“I knew of no abuse. Never heard of it. Never had any reported to me. If I had, I’d have dealt with it. Every single coach has said the same thing I have,” Jordan told Fox News in 2018. (The head coach Jordan worked for, Russ Hellickson, has admitted to knowing of the abuse, but claimed he never discussed the issue with Jordan. In a 2018 interview with CNN, Hellickson lamented the fact that Jordan was being torn apart by “semantics.”)
Wilson’s odds of winning the historically Republican district are slim to none, according to polling data aggregated by The Hill, but Wilson believes that Jordan has simply been “elected by default” and sees a definite path forward for her campaign, which has raised more than $1 million to date.
“If every parent knew what was going on, the alarm bells would be sounding. There would be such a huge movement,” Wilson, a self-advertised “boy mom,” told TNR. “It is so important that we protect our children, and parents need to know that they need to get more involved, and that is why I’m running for office.”
There are plentiful reasons why Ohioans might be upset with the job Jordan has done in the House, regardless of his spotted personal history. In 16 years in Congress, the Republican firebrand has failed to pass a single bill, with former Speaker John Boehner labeling him as a “legislative terrorist.” He has consistently ranked near the bottom of the House in terms of effectiveness, according to the Center for Effective Lawmaking, a joint project of Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.
Jordan was accused in an Ohio Capital Journal opinion piece of “betraying America” for his actions surrounding the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and was reportedly heavily involved in former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, even going on to insist this year that the election was “stolen.”
“Jim Jordan knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for January 6th than any other member of the House of Representatives,” former Representative Liz Cheney said in October, when Jordan threw in his hat for the chaotically overturned speakership.
Apart from that, Jordan spent the better part of the last year forcing a baseless impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, ignoring warnings that the story sold by the probe’s primary witness, Alexander Smirnov, was full of holes, earning him the ire of members in his own party. Smirnov reportedly admitted to law enforcement that top Russian intelligence officials were involved in the smear campaign against the sitting president. Jordan later conceded that “maybe the guy did lie.”
