Feb. 12 (UPI) — Former Ohio State University board member Leslie Wexner must testify in federal lawsuits accusing the school of enabling sex abuse by Dr. Richard Strauss, a federal court ordered.
Wexner is neither a defendant nor a plaintiff in three lawsuits filed in the U.S. District Court of Southern Ohio, but a Jan. 13 subpoena seeks to depose him on the matter.
Wexner filed a motion to quash the deposition subpoena, which Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers and District Judge Michael Watson denied Wednesday.
They ordered Wexner to participate in a deposition within 60 days.
“Given the timing and length of Mr. Wexner’s tenure on the OSU Board of Trustees, including his time as vice chairman and chairman of the full board, as well as ranking positions on the board’s personnel committee, plaintiffs are entitled to discover what Mr. Wexner knew about Dr. Stauss and when he knew it,” Deavers and Watson said.
“Mr. Wexner’s testimony may also illuminate what the board did to monitor OSU’s sexual harassment compliance,” they wrote.
“If Mr. Wexner or the board had no knowledge about allegations surrounding Dr. Strauss, this would be evidence of OSU’s deliberate indifference,” they added.
Wexner argued he has no knowledge of the matter and never discussed allegations against Strauss while he was a board member or afterward, but the judges said that is insufficient cause for granting his motion to quash the deposition subpoena.
The three federal lawsuits filed by former students name Ohio State as the defendant and arise from the time that Strauss was the campus doctor from September 1978 to March 1998.
Strauss was accused of sexually abusing at least 177 OSU male student-athletes and chose to end his life by suicide in 2005.
His suicide prevented Strauss from being tried in court and potentially convicted of the alleged crimes.
His alleged victims last year held protests, during which they accused Wexner, his security staff and his attorney of preventing process servers from delivering the deposition subpoena to compel his testimony.
Watson issued the court deposition subpoena on Jan. 13 to negate the need for serving him with the prior subpoena, which Wexner’s legal team unsuccessfully sought to quash despite there being no accusations of wrongdoing on his part.
