SJSU report: Initial abuse review flawed
Trainer was cleared of allegations in 2010, but subordinates say their input was distorted in report
For more than a decade, San Jose State University officials allowed nowdisgraced head athletic trainer Scott Shaw to continue treating female athletes because, they said, he was cleared of sexual harassment allegations by a 2010 in-house investigation.
But a two-page summary of that investigation, released for the first time Nov. 5, shows how deeply flawed the initial review was, relying almost entirely on interviews with Shaw’s subordinates who said Nov. 8 how their input was distorted and their concerns ignored.
The two former athletic trainers were in their first year at SJSU and still on probation when they were interviewed in 2010 and didn’t know until Nov. 8 how heavily the school investigator cited their interviews to clear Shaw of abusing female athletes, nor what was left out. They learned the details only after the Bay Area News Group shared the summary, which the news organization received from the university six months after filing a Public Records Act request.
“We both thought that what he had done was wrong,” trainer Shawna Hernandez said of Shaw, but those concerns were reflected nowhere in the report. She was Shawna Bryant back then and now works in Las Vegas. “We thought for sure we were
going to have a new boss. We thought for sure he was going to be fired over this. We were confused when he wasn’t.”
Instead, the 2010 investigation, triggered by complaints from more than a dozen female swimmers, concluded that Shaw’s touching under their bras and underwear was a legitimate style of treatment known as “pressure point therapy.” That finding allowed Shaw to continue working on upward of 1,000 more female athletes for the next decade. He retired voluntarily last year only after a new victim came forward with fresh allegations.
As the scandal unraveled this year, both former athletic director Marie Tuite and university President Mary Papazian announced their resignations. Papazian will leave the school Dec. 21.
Papazian was informed about the allegations against Shaw the first week she joined the university in 2016, and eventually launched a new investigation in 2019, after swim coach Sage Hopkins took his long-standing concerns outside the university. That investigation reversed the 2010 findings — and Papazian
apologized for the university’s “breach of trust” — but the new probe was later criticized by the U.S. Justice Department as inadequate.
The details of the 2010 report were kept secret until the university released it late last week under legal pressure from this news organization. A university human resources employee who conducted the in-house investigation died several months after finishing the probe. University officials say other material that he gathered or produced was destroyed as part of a routine records purge.
“Mr. Shaw might have done a better job explaining what he was doing and provided athletes an option of not using pressure point therapy,” the 2010 report concluded. “However, his method is scientific and is an accepted method of treatment.”
Hernandez and her former colleague, Hisashi Imura, said Monday they were no experts in pressure point therapy, which is considered a branch of treatment options much like acupressure. But they said they clearly told the investigator that no physical therapist or trainer should
touch athletes with their bare hands in private areas. That’s one of the first things they learned in physical therapy coursework, they said.
“What was left out of the report is, I remember being asked specifically if there was any reason to pressurepoint a female athlete in the private or genital region or breast region and I flatly stated, ‘No,’ ” said Imura, who now works in private practice in San Jose. “I said there are other ways to do it” — including using a lacrosse ball or foam roller.
Except for an acknowledgement that the trainers had explained “other options for treating muscle injuries,” none of their skepticism made it into the final report. And it made no mention of what many of the female athletes were telling Hernandez and others at the time.
“Athletes used to joke that if I get Shawna, I get treatment,” Hernandez said Monday. “If I go to Scott, he’ll just cup my boobs.”
Hernandez had confronted Shaw about the athletes’ concerns in 2008,
and followed up with an email to him about it, which she said she also provided the university during its first investigation. But that wasn’t referenced in the report either. The email to Shaw, which Hernandez shared Monday with the Bay Area News Group, referenced their previous conversation.
“I know you understand the difficult position the athletes placed me in with their confidences,” she wrote Shaw in the Nov. 13, 2008, email. Although it didn’t specify the athletes’ complaints — Hernandez said “it was hard enough to confront him about it” — she did write that athletes “need to feel comfortable and safe with our duties, procedures and goals.”
The university has acknowledged the original investigation was flawed — and at least 23 women were abused by Shaw over the years — but the release of the 2010 report shows just how deep the flaws went.
“We were in our very first year as a full-time position. They brought us in as expert witnesses. That made zero sense,” Hernandez said. “When you get called in by HR and you’re in your probationary year, what do you do? How do you talk (expletive) about your boss in front of HR?”
The consequences of that first investigation conducted by equal opportunity manager Arthur Dunklin were vast: During the 10 years Shaw remained on the job, at least three more women came forward making similar allegations of sexual abuse and there are concerns there could be many more. The U.S. Department of Justice in a settlement agreement with the university is requiring the school to overhaul its Title IX operations and pay out a total of $1.6 million to victims, or $125,000 to each who will accept it. Many victims are in the process of suing the university.
All along, Shaw has maintained his innocence but has declined interview requests.
He has not been charged with a crime but is under investigation by the FBI. After the first investigation, Shaw was asked informally by athletic department officials to avoid treating female swimmers, but he did anyway on several occasions through the years. He also treated the women’s golf team, gymnasts and others “unfettered,” the Justice Department said.
Imura said he’s disappointed that the accusations were “swept under the rug,” but he admires the athletes for coming forward and Hopkins, the swim coach, for being their champion.
“He stuck to his morals and his beliefs,” Imura said. “Next time I see Sage, I would love to give him a big hug for that.”