(The Center Square) – Sexual abuse accusations have grown at the UNC System’s largest institution, all tied to the athletics department and former sports medicine director Robert Murphy Jr.
Plaintiffs include two by name and 29 others known as John Doe in the filing at Wake County Superior Court. Defendants for the accusations between 2010 and 2024 include Chancellor Randy Woodson, Athletics Director Boo Corrigan and former Athletics Director Debbie Yow.
Relief is sought in punitive damages to plaintiffs, and against Murphy for assault, battery, intrusion upon seclusion and constructive fraud.
“During Murphy’s decade-long tenure at NCSU, administrators and staff within the NCSU Athletics Department knew or should have known of the pervasive sexual assaults, sexual harassment, exploitation and grooming Murphy perpetrated on NCSU male student-athletes,” the complaint says. “NCSU administrators and staff turned a blind eye to the abuse suffered by plaintiffs and failed to take any reasonable steps to protect plaintiffs and other male student-athletes from Murphy.
“Instead, administrators and staff in the Athletics Department chose to protect Murphy and the reputation of the institution by minimizing, condoning, ignoring and/or covering up his sexual assaults and harassment and the abusive culture that existed.”
Murphy was with the Wolfpack from January 2012 to June 2022. Five other current or former administrators are named among the defendants in addition to Woodson, Yow and Corrigan.
Murphy was removed from association with the men’s soccer team after the 2012 season but was back with them in 2014. Lawyers said throughout the trainer’s tenure, his conduct was without review or monitoring, and he “continued free reign and unrestricted access to assault and harass male student-athletes through early 2022.”
If and when a two-year state budget that was due July 1 is passed in the General Assembly, UNC System schools are expected to get an estimated $32.6 billion in appropriation from taxpayers through lawmakers for 2025-26.
N.C. State, largest enrollment of UNC System schools at about 40,000 inclusive of graduate students, bills itself as “a land-grant institution grounded in agriculture and engineering” with public research excelling across multiple disciplines.
Previous unwanted scandal in the university’s athletics department includes basketball games point shaving in the 1959 Dixie Classic; controversial accusations, some without merit, that led to the end of the Jim Valvano basketball era in 1990; and an FBI probe tied to basketball recruiting in 2017 involving Dennis Smith Jr. of Fayetteville and his father, Adidas and former head coach Mark Gottfried.
Tenures for Woodson as chancellor and Yow as athletics director each began in 2010. Yow retired in 2019, Woodson last June. Murphy’s hiring was announced Dec. 1, 2011, by Yow.
The UNC System had another litigation just two years ago. In 2024, a $12.5 million settlement was reached with dozens of alumni from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts.
Five major sexual abuse cases in higher education have been settled since 2018. Arguably the most notable of the group was at Michigan State (2018, settlement $500 million) between more than 300 plaintiffs and former sports medicine Dr. Larry Nassar.
Others were at the University of Michigan (2022, settlement of $490 million, more than 1,000 claimants, sexual assault claims, involved athletics physician Dr. Robert Anderson); the University of California (two settlements of $374 million and $243.6 million, more than 500 women in the two litigations, former campus gynecologist Dr. James Heaps); the University of Southern California (two settlements of $852 million and $215 million, more than 16,700 women in the cases combined, former campus gynecologist Dr. George Tyndall); and Dartmouth College (settlement of $14 million, seven women, sexual harassment and assault in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences).
