Reckoning at San Jose State: Claims of coverup, retaliation in sex abuse scandal grow

Swim coach Sage Hopkins finally let it all spill out.

After 12 years of meticulously documented, relentless attempts to shake the hierarchy of San Jose State University into protecting female athletes from an athletic trainer accused of sexual abuse, the two-time conference coach of the year wrote an explosive letter almost two months ago to the school’s top official, Mary Papazian, declaring “the buck stops with you, the President.”

In it, Hopkins castigated university leaders, especially Athletic Director Marie Tuite, for ignoring his efforts – year after year after year – to keep trainer Scott Shaw away from female athletes and accused them of retaliating against him for not giving up.

“Your administration attempted to bully and silence me in a revolting and abusive attempt to silence the victims of Scott Shaw and protect those administrators’ roles in the coverup and enabling of this abuse,” the swim coach wrote in the letter obtained by the Bay Area News Group.

Sage Hopkins, San Jose State University women’s swimming and diving coach. (Courtesy of Sage Hopkins) 

Nearly seven weeks later, in an extraordinary admission, Papazian was apologizing to the student-athletes for a “breach of trust.” On April 15, she announced that a renewed investigation – 11 years after an initial probe quietly cleared Shaw – had substantiated sexual misconduct claims from at least 10 female athletes who said he had inappropriately touched them beneath their sports bras and underwear while treating injuries to their backs and hips.

Not only was abuse from 2009 confirmed, but so were new allegations from two female athletes who said Shaw – who was never arrested or charged with a crime over the incidents – had violated them in recent years. 

Now, the university is facing a reckoning of historic proportions, with calls for the athletic director’s dismissal just months after one of the school’s best football seasons in history, questions about why Papazian didn’t move much more quickly, and the launch of yet another university investigation, this one to determine how so many mistakes were made along the way.

How could an athletic trainer accused in 2009 of sexual abuse by more than a dozen women be allowed to continue treating female athletes – for another 10 years? The question is even more perplexing at San Jose State, where women hold top leadership roles in the president’s office and throughout both the athletic department and the Title IX office, which investigates reports of abuse. 

Some current and former school employees suggest that university leaders may have been more interested in protecting the university and their own reputations than in protecting the athletes.

“It broke my faith in a lot of things – that people are going to do the right thing at the end of the day,” said Ryan Merz, a former athletic department compliance officer who considered Tuite “impossible to work with” and moved to Santa Clara University. “You don’t mess around with student-athletes. You don’t mess around with sexual assault – that affects people for the rest of their lives.”

The growing scandal – first revealed in an expose by USA Today – has attracted the attention of the FBI and attorneys from the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, and spurred notice of legal action from 10 women athletes and lawsuits from former employees caught up in the case, including Hopkins, who filed a whistleblower retaliation suit in Santa Clara County this past week. 

It has also highlighted a troubling culture in the athletic department that employees in interviews and court filings say demanded fealty to Tuite (pronounced TWO-it), a former collegiate field hockey and basketball star who is now one of only 12 women to head a top-tier college athletics program.

Tuite was hired as the athletic department’s chief operations officer in 2010, after the first investigation was completed. Documents show officials briefed her on the case shortly after she arrived. Papazian, hired as president in 2016, gave Tuite the director’s job the next year, and she roiled many in the department.

As former associate athletic director Steve O’Brien wrote in a lawsuit filed in March, claiming Tuite wrongfully fired him for standing up for the swim coach, she regularly threatened employees, often saying, “those who make attempts on the life of the king aren’t kept in the kingdom very long.”

In a statement Friday, Tuite declined to address the allegations against her, citing respect for the ongoing investigation, pending lawsuits and privacy issues.

However, her statement said, “it is critically important for me to express to our former and current student-athletes that I am fully committed to their health and welfare, leading our department with integrity and transparency, and building a culture of trust for all.”

Hopkins also declined an interview, saying during a brief meeting at the doorstep of his San Jose duplex this past week that his contract prevents him from speaking ill of the university.

But his emotional voice is clear in documents obtained by the Bay Area News Group, including a series of letters he wrote to Papazian over the past year as well as a 291-page dossier of email exchanges and handwritten notes that chronicle his efforts to stop Shaw from working on his athletes over the last decade.

Larry Nassar, 54, appears in court for a plea hearing in Lansing, Mich.  (AP Photo/Paul Sancya, File) Paul Sancya/Associated Press

Hopkins was motivated in part by the sensational case against Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State physician and USA Gymnastics national team doctor who tried to justify his sexual abuse of athletes as proper medical treatment, Hopkins’ former union representative, Christian Jochim, said. After more than 100 gymnasts came forward – some of them famous Olympic champions – Nassar ultimately pleaded guilty in 2017 to 10 counts of sexual assault.

To Hopkins, the excuses sounded all too familiar.

“He said, ‘You know what? I’ve heard this before. This is what my swimmers were told as a result of the first investigation – why there really wasn’t anything going on, they just didn’t understand the therapy,’”  Jochim said. “He kept notes. He thought he could ultimately get the ear of somebody that might do something. It took 10 years.”

For Hopkins and others, the story of those 10 years was one of repeated frustration.

Fueled by complaints from 17 athletes, the 2010 investigation – which was conducted by a school Human Resources administrator – had concluded the uncomfortable touching was a result of Shaw’s use of “pressure point therapy,” which, it said, was a “bona fide means of treating muscle injury.” 

The conclusions, however, were not publicized. Shawna Bryant, 38, a former Spartan trainer who worked alongside Shaw for a number of years before and after the 2009 investigation, said that although she was interviewed by investigators at the time, she never learned the outcome.

All she knew was that Shaw was back in the training room, massaging male and female athletes.

“We didn’t hear there was anything wrong, that he was being held accountable, so we assumed it was acceptable,” Bryant said. “I feel like the athletic department let everyone down.”

In fact, the university apparently put a number of restrictions on Shaw’s interactions with female athletes at the time. In particular, according to emails and notations in Hopkins’ dossier, he was not to treat female swimmers.

But at least three times in 2012 and 2013, Hopkins wrote in an email to his supervisor, Shaw ignored the agreement.

Hopkins’ warnings continued as the years went on, but they seemingly were not heeded. In 2018, school officials promoted Shaw to head of sports medicine, praising him for his work that “significantly upgraded the care of our student-athletes.”

Hopkins doubled down, taking his complaints to the University’s Title IX office. Then, in 2019, fed up with inaction by school leaders and suspicious that they were covering up his complaints, he sent a copy of the dossier to officials at the NCAA and the Mountain West athletic conference.

Finally, Papazian took action, calling for a new investigation. But in his lawsuit and letters to Papazian, Hopkins claims that retaliation against him heated up around the same time.

He accuses Tuite and other administrators of issuing a “No Contact Order” that forbid him from setting foot inside the athletic department building. Hopkins claims they urged campus police to investigate whether he followed the university’s mandatory reporting protocol when he learned that one of his swimmers had been abused years ago by a youth swim coach. He also says Tuite tried to pressure him to drop a retaliation grievance against her in exchange for a pay raise and renewing his contract. He refused, he said, and they ultimately gave him a raise anyway.

Shaw’s attorney Lori Costanzo said last week he was not giving interviews and she was no longer representing him. Shaw resigned in the summer of 2020 before a legal firm overseen by the California State University central office completed the second investigation.

That investigation reached a far different conclusion than 10 years earlier. It found “there is no explanation or … therapeutic justification” for Shaw’s touching athletes’ breasts close to their nipples, and their groin areas near their genitals. Papazian’s public apology came the day she released the report.

Still, a number of current and former athletic department employees who spoke with this news organization are outraged over the university’s handling of the case. They point the finger largely at Tuite, who is now named in three wrongful termination or retaliation lawsuits.

As one employee of the athletic department who asked not to be named put it, “everyone else gets fired for nothing and Scott doesn’t get fired for something.”

In a list of questions submitted to the university by the Bay Area News Group, from whether restrictions were placed on Shaw after the 2010 investigation to how it handled any subsequent claims of sexual abuse to how the president is handling calls for Tuite’s ouster, the school responded that it hopes an ongoing review of the ordeal will clarify what happened.

“The university, President Papazian, and our community need answers to questions about the original 2009 investigation and how the university responded to the findings,” the school wrote. “Appropriate action will be taken once we have the answers to these questions.”

In the meantime, the university is finalizing a new sports medicine chaperone policy, adding resources and restructuring the Title IX Office, and adding a full-time survivor advocate — all by the start of the fall 2021 semester, the school said.

When asked whether the president failed in her duty to foster a safe environment and protect students from predatory behavior, the school defended her commitments to the university and the SJSU community “to support students and ensure they thrive and reach their goals.”

The university will learn from the past, the school said, “so we never repeat it.”

It’s a goal Hopkins isn’t certain San Jose State is capable of achieving. In his last February letter to Papazian — a letter filled with bitterness after years of obstacles — he said he was sad to say that the university has “lost all moral authority and can no longer be trusted to operate in an ethical manner without being pressured to do so.”

Amid the tumult, Hopkins is being praised by colleagues and his former swimmers for his tenacity and courage.

“He has just never stopped,” said Caitlin Macky, an all-conference swimmer who graduated in 2011 and was among the original group to report allegations against Shaw. “I don’t think any of this would be at the level it is at if it weren’t for Sage. I have no idea how he had the inner strength to handle being accused of lying and accused of making things up and taking the brunt of everything.”

Nancy Hogshead-Makar, a civil rights lawyer who runs a nonprofit providing legal advocacy for girls and women in sports, is shocked the case has come to this.

“You can dismiss the word and the testimony and the experience of 17 women?” asked Hoghead-Marker, a three-time Olympic swim champion. “It takes somebody with real guts and commitment like this coach. It takes the one really strong person who won’t give up.”