July 7, 2025
by Carla Hay

Directed by Eva Orner
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Surviving Ohio State” features a predominantly white group of people (with one African American) who are connected in some way to the accusations and lawsuits against Ohio University that allege that the university covered up decades of student sexual abuse by a doctor employed by the university.
Culture Clash: Some of the estimated thousands of survivors of Dr. Richard Strauss (who committed suicide in 2005) have come forward with harrowing stories of university officials not doing anything when they heard complaints that Strauss was a sexual predator who targeted male students for sexual assaults.
Culture Audience: “Surviving Ohio State” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in documentaries about getting justice for sex crimes that were enabled and covered by well-known institutions.

“Surviving Ohio State” (about Ohio State University’s responsibilities in an employee’s longtime sexual abuse of students) makes a clear and convincing case that enabling and covering up crimes are just as heinous as the crimes themselves. This powerful documentary doesn’t uncover a lot of new information but it has interviews with the people who matter the most: the survivors. Because there was ongoing litigation against Ohio State University (which is based in the city of Columbus) at the time this documentary was released, officials who have been named as enablers declined to comment for the documentary. But even if there hadn’t been litigation, it’s easy to see why these accused enablers won’t publicly comment for a documentary because of all the damning evidence that has already been presented.
Directed by Eva Orner, “Surviving Ohio State” had its world premiere at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. The movie chronicles the sexual abuse accusations about Dr. Richard Strauss, who was employed by Ohio State University (OSU) from 1978 to 1998, the year that he retired from OSU. Strauss was a medical doctor at OSU’s Athletic Department and at the Student Health Center for most of his tenure at OSU, but he was also a professor at the university. It is believed that he sexually abused thousands of male students from the 1970s to the 1990s. An independent investigation commissioned by OSU revealed in 2018 that the first known reported abuse happened in 1979.
Strauss was never arrested or sued for any of these accusations against him. He committed suicide by hanging himself in 2005, at the age of 67. The abuse survivors interviewed in the documentary say that Strauss abused them when they were OSU students from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Most of the documentary’s interviewees used to be on OSU’s wrestling team. Many of those interviewed are plaintiffs in an ongoing lawsuit against OSU.
The survivors interviewed are:
- Dan Ritchie, who was an OSU wrestler from 1988 to 1992
- Mike Schyck, who was an OSU wrestler from 1988 to 1993
- Mark Coleman, who was an OSU wrestler from 1987 to 1988
- Rocky Ratliff, who was an OSU wrestler from 1995 to 1997
- Will Knight, who was an OSU wrestler from 1991 to 1996
- Mike DiSabato, who was an OSU wrestler from 1986 to 1991
- Adam DiSabato (Mike DiSabato’s younger brother), who was an OSU wrestler from 1988 to 1993
- Al Novakowski, who was an OSU hockey player from 1987 to 1988
- Stephen Snyder-Hill, who was an OSU non-athlete student from 1991 to 2000
All share similar stories about how they were proud to be students at OSU (whose team name is the Buckeyes) because of OSU’s reputation of being a school what regularly won national championships. But their pride also came with the shame of knowing that Strauss (who was a trusted doctor because of his “nice guy” image, his work experience and his credentials) sexually abused them during medical examinations, which they all say was an “open secret” at OSU. Because the abuse was so accepted by the university, many students did not come forward to report the abuse at the time it was happening.
Another reason why many of Strauss’ victims didn’t come forward at the time the abuse was happening because Strauss had the power to decide if they were “fit” to participate in OSU athletics. It’s mentioned in the documentary that Strauss seemed to particularly target students who had athletic scholarships that the students needed to attend the university. Strauss also usually targeted students who were sexually inexperienced and naïve. These students often came from small towns and had sheltered upbringings.
Most of the survivors describe Strauss’ sexual abuse as unwanted fondling of their genitals, which he would lie to them about by saying the fondling was necessary to check if they had hernias. He would do this fondling even if the student was there for a reason that had nothing to do with genitals. Whenever Strauss was questioned about this inappropriate touching, his standard response was he was just being “thorough” in his examinations.
His accusers say that Strauss often asked them inappropriate and illegal questions about their sex lives. He also never used gloves and always made sure that he did the sexual abuse in the dark with no one else in the room. Some of his victims (such as Novakowski) say that Strauss’ abuse went beyond fondling and turned into rape.
And because it was Strauss’ word against any the word of victim who reported the abuse, Strauss was more likely to get away with it when there was no evidence. Knight comments in the documentary about Strauss’ abuse: “It was a dirty little secret that we just tiptoed around, and we just dealt with it because we were Buckeyes.”
Strauss was also allowed to regularly take locker room showers with OSU’s male athletes from several sports departments, and he would openly masturbate in front of the athletes during these showers. And not all of the accusers were students. Frederick Feeney, who was a wrestling referee from 1988 to 2024, breaks down in tears when he describes having one of these shower sexual abuse incidents perpetrated by Strauss, who Feeney says fondled Feeney on the rear end during this abuse.
The survivors all say that many officials knew about the abuse but did nothing when complaints about Strauss were reported. Russ Hellickson (OSU’s wrestling head coach from 1986 to 2006), Jim Jordan (OSU’s wrestling assistant coach from 1986 to 1994) ,Dr. John Lombardo (OSU director of sports medicine from 1990 to 2004), and Dr. Ted Grace (OSU head of student health from 1992 to 2007) are all mentioned as enablers who were responsible for helping keep Strauss employed by OSU, despite the now-uncovered hundreds of complaints against Strauss when Strauss was employed by OSU.
Hellickson, Jordan (who is now a U.S. Representative) and OSU declined to comment for this documentary. However, “Surviving Ohio State” has archival news footage of Jordan repeatedly denying that he knew about these complaints when Jordan worked for OSU. The documentary has some footage of Lombardo, Hellickson and Grace in videotaped depositions from 2019 regarding the lawsuit where Mike DiSabato is the lead plaintiff for a group of former OSU athletes. Grace is the only OSU official who gets some credit in the documentary for eventually being the first OSU official to take disciplinary action against Strauss, but whatever Grace did to hold Strauss accountable wasn’t enough to completely terminate OSU’s employment of Strauss.
Several of the survivors say that their shame and reluctance to come forward had a lot to do with the macho culture of being a male Buckeye athlete who was expected to be tough. Many of the survivors say when they went public about the abuse, many people did not believe that the abuse happened because they think the athletes would have and should have punched and or physically defended themselves against Strauss, who was not tall or muscular. However, what these critics often forget is that Strauss had power and influence over his victims’ enrollment at OSU. Anyone who physically attacked him could be expelled and/or arrested. Many of his abuse survivors didn’t want to take the risk of getting in that type of trouble.
“Surviving Ohio State” also addresses the issues of adult male sexual abuse victims usually getting less sympathy and less support from society than sexual abuse victims who are children (of any gender) or women. As an example, the documentary compares and contrasts the settlement offers in similar sexual abuse lawsuits against universities. Ritchie says in the documentary that he believes he and other plaintiffs got lower settlement offers because they were adults when Strauss was said to have abused them.
Pennsylvania State University offered $1.5 million to each of the plaintiff victims who were children when the unversity’s former football coach Jerry Sandusky (who is prison for various sex crimes) used the university campus to sexually abuse children who were part of the Second Mile, which was Sandusky’s non-profit athletics group for children. Michigan State University offered $1.2 million to each of the women and girls who were victims of the university’s former athletic department doctor Larry Nassar, who is a convicted sex offender serving the rest of his life in prison. By contrast, OSU offered $250,000 to each victim of Strauss. This offer was rejected by the plaintiffs, who also rejected a settlement clause where OSU would not admit to any wrongdoing in how it handled the accusations against Strauss.
The documentary also has accusations and suggestions that Strauss illegally gave steroids to OSU athletes. Several of the interviewees say that Strauss gave them what Straus said were vitamin B-12 injections, but what these former OSU athletes how believe were steroid injections. Ironically, Strauss was a nationally recognized steroid expert who wrote medical reports and was interviewed on TV about the dangers of steroid use. Strauss was never arrested or sued for these steroid accusations.
Some of the interviewees, such as Ritchie and Novakowski, say that Strauss’ sexual abuse of them were the reasons why they left OSU before they could graduate, but they were afraid to tell their families the real reasons at the time. The emotional and psychological damage for survivors has gone far past any college careers. Coleman says that many of the survivors have had divorces, mental health issues (including suicide attempts) and addiction issues that they all attribute to being directly or indirectly caused by the trauma of Strauss’ sexual abuse.
In this documentary that has very bleak and harrowing information, perhaps one of the most encouraging and positive outcomes is that several of the survivors formed informal support groups for each other. Novakowski says that many of the survivors no longer trust medical doctors, which means that many survivors might not be getting the medical treatment that they might need. “Surviving Ohio State” could have included information about any professional therapy that the survivor interviewees might or might not be receiving to deal with their trauma.
Also interviewed in the documentary are NBC4 Columbus TV anchor Colleen Marshall, civil rights attorney Ilann Maazel, journalist Jon Wertheim, and Csilla Remenyik-Smith, who was an OSU fencer athlete from 1981 to 1984. Remenyik-Smith’s mother Charlotte Remenyik was an OSU fencing coach (for male and female students) from 1978 to 1999 and was the first faculty member to make formal complaints about Strauss to OSU, which did not action against Strauss until 10 years after Remenyik made her first annual complaint against him.
In 1996, OSU terminated Strauss from his positions with OSU’s Athletics Department and OSU’s Student Health Department. However, OSU allowed him to keep his job as a tenured faculty member in OSU’s School of Public Health until Strauss voluntarily retired in 1998. OSU’s excuse for stalling in investigating the complaints was that Remenyik was reporting hearsay and gossip with no evidence. Maazel comments, “If there’s one thing OSU is good at—other than football—it’s deceit.”
Although “Surviving Ohio State” is very thorough in how it presents these survivor stories, the movie doesn’t delve far enough into the backgrounds of Strauss and the enablers to give more context for their horrific actions and cover-ups. The documentary does not answer many unanswered questions about who Strauss was outside of his job. Still, there’s enough information in the documentary to show that full justice has yet to be served to the survivors, many of whom might never find peace.
HBO premiered “Surviving Ohio State” on June 17, 2025.