EX-SJSU trainer Scott Shaw charged in sex abuse scandal
SAN JOSE >> The sex abuse scandal that brought down San Jose State University's president and athletic director and cost the university millions in damages has finally turned on the man who started it all: Scott Shaw, the disgraced former head athletic trainer, was charged March 10 with violating the civil rights of four female athletes by engaging in sexual misconduct under the guise of treating their injuries.
The federal criminal charges announced by the U.S. Justice Department focus on women allegedly abused between 2017 and 2020 and do not include the more than dozen female athletes who complained a decade ago that Shaw touched them under their bras and underwear during sports massages. A Justice Department spokesman could not say whether the statute of limitations played a role in that decision.
The allegations brought forward in 2009 by female swimmers were originally discounted by a university investigation, which concluded that Shaw's use of socalled “Trigger Point Therapy was a bona fide and accepted method of treatment.” Despite a decadelong campaign by swim coach Sage Hopkins to protect his swimmers and other female athletes, Shaw was allowed to continue working unfettered as a trainer for more than a decade after the first complaints.
“It's a relief to be told we were right and that this really should not be happening to anyone,” Lindsay Warkentin, 32, one of the swimmers who first complained
about Shaw, said in an interview March 10. “It's nice to finally read something that's like, `OK, you're not crazy,' when you're being told you're crazy for the past decade.”
Hopkins, who was coaching the swim team at a national invitation meet March 10, said he considers it validation for the victims.
“Shaw being held accountable for his predation is an important step for the healing of dozens of women from six separate SJSU teams that he victimized,” Hopkins said.
Shaw, 54, who was also the director of sports medicine, faces a maximum of six years in prison if convicted of all counts. It wasn't immediately clear why he was charged with civil rights violations instead of sexual assault charges, but the civil rights charges are considered criminal.
He could not be reached for comment Thursday but has previously denied the accusations. He is scheduled to appear to face the charges in U.S. District Court in San Jose on Tuesday.
Shaw resigned under a renewed cloud of suspicion in 2020 when the university reopened the investigation after Hopkins delivered a now-infamous dossier to the
NCAA that detailed San Jose State leaders' failure to take action against Shaw and accused them of retaliation against those who spoke out.
The scandal led to the resignations last year of SJSU President Mary Papazian and Athletic Director Marie Tuite, but Hopkins believes others who remain at the university should also face consequences.
“It is also important that the group of current administrators that enabled his predation for a decade are also held accountable,” he said.
A Bay Area News Group report last month revealed how Papazian had received a warning about Shaw's past conduct in a memo from her predecessor in 2016 when she arrived at San Jose State that “there was inappropriate handling, touching of female athletes by the director of sports medicine, who is still here!” But Papazian took no direct action on the allegations and instead ordered an internal review of the athletics department that led to Tuite's promotion to lead the department, despite complaints that she fostered a toxic culture of retaliation and fear.
Papazian resigned in December after the U.S. Department of Justice issued a scathing report on the scandal, and the university has agreed to nearly $5 million in settlements to more than a dozen victims.
As a state employee for the California State University system, Shaw is alleged to have acted “under color of law” when he sexually assaulted the victims, which allowed the federal civil rights charges, said Justice Department spokesman Abraham Simmons.