In a nuanced, wrenching story published over the weekend, two of my Washington Post colleagues, Sally Jenkins and David Maraniss, dedicated thousands of words to trying to understand Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) — including investigating the answer to a question that has trailed the lawmaker for years. Did Jordan know about the sexual abuse suffered by dozens of Ohio State wrestlers, at the hands of a university physician, back while he was an assistant coach there?
Eleven victims say in the story that Jordan must have known about the abuse. Eight of those said they remembered complaining about the molestation either directly to Jordan or in his range of hearing. The wrestlers described an environment in which it would have been almost impossible not to know. Richard Strauss’s assaults — which included fondling and rape, by Ohio State’s accounting — were apparently an open secret to the point that even female athletes who competed in different sports were aware of them. (Strauss died in 2005.)
Jordan, who remains a MAGA all-star, even if he failed to win the House speaker’s gavel last week, told my Post colleagues what he has told others since 2018, when his awareness of the decades-old abuse was first called into question. He said he didn’t know anything. He said if he had, he would have “done something.”
In today’s political context, this story, about a doctor who did terrible things, has become a story about whether a responsible man — the type of person who deserves credibility as a public servant and self-styled watchdog — could and should have stopped him.
But there’s another story here, too: about whether a responsible man should try to make sense of the terrible things he did not stop. It’s a story about something Jim Jordan, for all his apparent grit and determination, seems too scared to wrestle with.
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Some 30 and 40 years ago, when the molestations of the Ohio State athletes occurred, many people were naive in matters of sexual abuse — especially if the victims were strapping young men whose very strapping-ness defied expectations of victimhood. This seems to have been true on the Ohio State team at the time. In the Post story, former wrestlers describe how Strauss’s notorious groping was acknowledged jokingly as often as seriously. Teammates called him “Dr. Jelly Paws” — which, though not exactly a term of endearment, also sounds no more harmful than a character in a Yogi Bear cartoon. One former athlete describes an excruciating physical exam in which Strauss unnecessarily handled his penis for several minutes. A traumatizing ordeal, but when he finally emerged, his teammates were whistling at him and teasing, “Doc found his favorite new guy!”
Another described going in for treatment for a bloody nose, only to be instructed to first drop his pants and allow the doctor to fondle his genitals. When that athlete told his teammates about it, according to the story, “some of the wrestlers erupted in laughter, but Jordan just put his hands up and said, ‘I’ve got nothing to do with that.’”
Put aside Jordan for a moment. Were those laughing, whistling teammates callous, reprehensible individuals? Of course not. One imagines that they were coping as best they could in a bewildering situation in which they might be physically stronger, but their abuser was armed with a medical degree and a university appointment.
I am willing to be exceedingly charitable to the Jim Jordan of the 1980s and 1990s, who began his employ as a graduate student who was only a few years older than the young men in his charge. Is it possible that he, too, was deeply naive — to the point that he failed to comprehend what Dunyasha Yetts meant when, according to Yetts, he angrily told Jordan that he’d visited the doctor for a wounded thumb and was made to take off his pants?
Another former wrestler recalls Jordan reacting to news of the abuse at the time by saying, “If he’d have touched me like that, I’d have broke his neck like a piece of balsa wood.” Is it possible that Jordan was just a typical macho wrestling coach — one who erroneously but commonly assumed that sexual assault was something that strong people did to weak people? Something that should be solved with a half nelson rather than a formal complaint?
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Sure. Anything is possible. Including the possibility that Jordan didn’t understand what was happening to the men he coached, trained, supervised and cared for. For what it’s worth, many of the wrestlers don’t seem to blame Jordan for anything that happened, or anything he didn’t do. “None of the athletes interviewed,” Jenkins and Maraniss write, “suggest that Jordan had the power to intervene against Strauss.”
To me, the particulars of what Jordan might have known then are, by now, impossible to resolve. Decades have passed. He’s sticking to his word, and he has not been named in any lawsuits. The question that seems more valuable is not: What did Jordan know then? But rather: What does Jim Jordan understand now? How does he now view what happened to the athletes under his care? How does he now make sense of the culture he was immersed in — one in which students were forced to either laugh off or ignore a grievous violation of trust?
None of us have control over the times we’re born into or the awful prevailing notions that rule the day. But from our leaders, what you hope for is a thorough reckoning over the part they played and how they’d do it differently now. If Jim Jordan truly didn’t know what was going on, does he now wonder why that might have been the case? Does he ask himself whether, perhaps, he was so uncomfortable with the idea of same-sex molestation that he put blinders on? Has he done the math on how many more men might have been victimized while he remained in protective ignorance? Does he feel conflicted now, in hindsight, about that alleged “I’d have broke his neck like a piece of balsa wood” quote and everything it implied about whether abuse victims should simply be strong enough to halt their own abuse?
Given the benefit of nearly 30 years of hindsight, I would hope he’d want to take that one back. One would hope he would say something like: “If he’d have touched me like that, I might have frozen, or tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, or — God, I don’t know what I would have done. Are you okay?”
But, at least according to the Post story, it doesn’t seem as though Jordan has grasped that better answer. He appears reflexively uninterested in grappling with his own passive role in that terrible story. Asked whether he believed anything had happened to the wrestlers under his care, he replied: “I mean, you’d have to ask them. I don’t know any of it.”
When terrible things come to light, accountability is important. But accountability doesn’t necessarily mean assigning blame to bystanders. It can also mean figuring out how to coexist with those terrible things — to figure out where we were standing in relation to them, and where we are standing now. Do we learn from them, or do we deny them? Do we examine them, or do we bury?
Do we wrestle, or do we run?
Jim Jordan has made a career of going on offense. A bulldog of a man, in sport and in politics. As I wrote this column, the strategy failed him on one front: After losing multiple floor votes, his Republican colleagues decided that he should not remain their nominee for speaker.
But as for the other area, the dark legacy of Ohio State and the more than 170 men who were abused there — it’s not too late for him to show up for his old kids. To go to the mat with their demons. Or at least yell some encouraging words from the sidelines that everyone can hear.
Eleven victims say in the story that Jordan must have known about the abuse. Eight of those said they remembered complaining about the molestation either directly to Jordan or in his range of hearing. The wrestlers described an environment in which it would have been almost impossible not to know. Richard Strauss’s assaults — which included fondling and rape, by Ohio State’s accounting — were apparently an open secret to the point that even female athletes who competed in different sports were aware of them. (Strauss died in 2005.)
Jordan, who remains a MAGA all-star, even if he failed to win the House speaker’s gavel last week, told my Post colleagues what he has told others since 2018, when his awareness of the decades-old abuse was first called into question. He said he didn’t know anything. He said if he had, he would have “done something.”
In today’s political context, this story, about a doctor who did terrible things, has become a story about whether a responsible man — the type of person who deserves credibility as a public servant and self-styled watchdog — could and should have stopped him.
But there’s another story here, too: about whether a responsible man should try to make sense of the terrible things he did not stop. It’s a story about something Jim Jordan, for all his apparent grit and determination, seems too scared to wrestle with.
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Some 30 and 40 years ago, when the molestations of the Ohio State athletes occurred, many people were naive in matters of sexual abuse — especially if the victims were strapping young men whose very strapping-ness defied expectations of victimhood. This seems to have been true on the Ohio State team at the time. In the Post story, former wrestlers describe how Strauss’s notorious groping was acknowledged jokingly as often as seriously. Teammates called him “Dr. Jelly Paws” — which, though not exactly a term of endearment, also sounds no more harmful than a character in a Yogi Bear cartoon. One former athlete describes an excruciating physical exam in which Strauss unnecessarily handled his penis for several minutes. A traumatizing ordeal, but when he finally emerged, his teammates were whistling at him and teasing, “Doc found his favorite new guy!”
Another described going in for treatment for a bloody nose, only to be instructed to first drop his pants and allow the doctor to fondle his genitals. When that athlete told his teammates about it, according to the story, “some of the wrestlers erupted in laughter, but Jordan just put his hands up and said, ‘I’ve got nothing to do with that.’”
Put aside Jordan for a moment. Were those laughing, whistling teammates callous, reprehensible individuals? Of course not. One imagines that they were coping as best they could in a bewildering situation in which they might be physically stronger, but their abuser was armed with a medical degree and a university appointment.
I am willing to be exceedingly charitable to the Jim Jordan of the 1980s and 1990s, who began his employ as a graduate student who was only a few years older than the young men in his charge. Is it possible that he, too, was deeply naive — to the point that he failed to comprehend what Dunyasha Yetts meant when, according to Yetts, he angrily told Jordan that he’d visited the doctor for a wounded thumb and was made to take off his pants?
Another former wrestler recalls Jordan reacting to news of the abuse at the time by saying, “If he’d have touched me like that, I’d have broke his neck like a piece of balsa wood.” Is it possible that Jordan was just a typical macho wrestling coach — one who erroneously but commonly assumed that sexual assault was something that strong people did to weak people? Something that should be solved with a half nelson rather than a formal complaint?
Sharp. Witty. Thoughtful. Sign up for the Style Memo newsletter.
Sure. Anything is possible. Including the possibility that Jordan didn’t understand what was happening to the men he coached, trained, supervised and cared for. For what it’s worth, many of the wrestlers don’t seem to blame Jordan for anything that happened, or anything he didn’t do. “None of the athletes interviewed,” Jenkins and Maraniss write, “suggest that Jordan had the power to intervene against Strauss.”
To me, the particulars of what Jordan might have known then are, by now, impossible to resolve. Decades have passed. He’s sticking to his word, and he has not been named in any lawsuits. The question that seems more valuable is not: What did Jordan know then? But rather: What does Jim Jordan understand now? How does he now view what happened to the athletes under his care? How does he now make sense of the culture he was immersed in — one in which students were forced to either laugh off or ignore a grievous violation of trust?
None of us have control over the times we’re born into or the awful prevailing notions that rule the day. But from our leaders, what you hope for is a thorough reckoning over the part they played and how they’d do it differently now. If Jim Jordan truly didn’t know what was going on, does he now wonder why that might have been the case? Does he ask himself whether, perhaps, he was so uncomfortable with the idea of same-sex molestation that he put blinders on? Has he done the math on how many more men might have been victimized while he remained in protective ignorance? Does he feel conflicted now, in hindsight, about that alleged “I’d have broke his neck like a piece of balsa wood” quote and everything it implied about whether abuse victims should simply be strong enough to halt their own abuse?
Given the benefit of nearly 30 years of hindsight, I would hope he’d want to take that one back. One would hope he would say something like: “If he’d have touched me like that, I might have frozen, or tried to pretend it hadn’t happened, or — God, I don’t know what I would have done. Are you okay?”
But, at least according to the Post story, it doesn’t seem as though Jordan has grasped that better answer. He appears reflexively uninterested in grappling with his own passive role in that terrible story. Asked whether he believed anything had happened to the wrestlers under his care, he replied: “I mean, you’d have to ask them. I don’t know any of it.”
When terrible things come to light, accountability is important. But accountability doesn’t necessarily mean assigning blame to bystanders. It can also mean figuring out how to coexist with those terrible things — to figure out where we were standing in relation to them, and where we are standing now. Do we learn from them, or do we deny them? Do we examine them, or do we bury?
Do we wrestle, or do we run?
Jim Jordan has made a career of going on offense. A bulldog of a man, in sport and in politics. As I wrote this column, the strategy failed him on one front: After losing multiple floor votes, his Republican colleagues decided that he should not remain their nominee for speaker.
But as for the other area, the dark legacy of Ohio State and the more than 170 men who were abused there — it’s not too late for him to show up for his old kids. To go to the mat with their demons. Or at least yell some encouraging words from the sidelines that everyone can hear.
