Rally, North Carolina (WNCNNew lawsuits appeared after more than ten former students at North Carolina State University submitted the demands of sexual assault against a former sports coach.
Lawyer Kirsten Walker Soton told Nextar’s WNCN that 14 athletes have reached charges against Robert Murphy, former director of sports medicine at the university. The lawsuit claims years of misconduct by Murphy, including the improper touch of the genitals during the massage and intrusive monitoring while collecting urine samples during the drug test.
In a statement, Soton said that former athletes “hope to encourage other men who are subject to ill -treatment by Rob Murphy in the state to do the same, knowing that he was not only they, they did nothing wrong, and NCSU should have protected them.”
The federal lawsuit was initially filed by Benjamin Locke, a former football player in North Carolina, in August 2022. He claimed that Murphy was not inappropriately touched his genitals within nearly 75 to 100 massages – the massage that he later said was unnecessary – between August 2015 and May 2017, According to a report issued by the Associated Press.
Besides Murphy, Locke also claims that the NC State Athletic staff is aware of the abuse and did not do anything about it, including former football coach Kelly Vendley and retired athletics manager Deby Yu. The investigation was launched in the ninth title as a result of the lawsuit.
After months of filing the lawsuit, Two athletes came forward Murphy was accused of sexual assault. One of the athletes told the students, according to the complaint, a friend that he was uncomfortable with Murphy from the skin to the skin with his genitals during the first massage, and he returned when the pain remained, but it was not allowed to treat it more.
The additional court documents that appeared on Wednesday claim that Murphy’s behavior was so known that athletes in multiple teams were jokingly sarcastically on this topic, while many athletes refused to allow Murphy to deal with them again. The lawsuit claims that Murphy monitoring methods during the collection of drug test samples were “worrying and insulting”, as athletes from calves to the chest and sometimes with Murphy stood closely in the same bathroom booth.
In the documents of the court submitted in August, the defense team submitted to Murphy to request the dismissal of the lawsuit “due to the lack of jurisdiction due to sovereign immunity, in the event of claims that were submitted in an official capacity, and the failure to file a claim that can be granted relief.”
The documents also claim that Locke failed to put claims under the ninth section and that his allegations were in time.
North Carolina said in a statement to Associated Press in 2023 that it had been reviewing the lawsuit but would not comment more on the outstanding legal issue.
Murphy was placed on an administrative vacation in January 2022 during an investigation into the ninth address linked to Locke’s initial allegations.
WNCN has arrived at NC State and Murphy’s lawyer to comment on the ongoing lawsuit on Thursday. Murphy lawyer did not respond immediately, and a spokesman for North Carolina said that the university was not commenting on the suspended litigation.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.