Former AD lands new job in wake of scandal

Less than two years after resigning in the wake of an explosive sexual abuse and retaliation scandal, former San Jose State athletic director Marie Tuite has landed a new leadership role at another university.

Tuite on Monday was named deputy athletic director at Southern Utah University, a public school with about 14,000 students in Cedar City, Utah, that has played San Jose State in football and basketball in recent years. While some San Jose State former athletes and coaches were stunned by the hiring, Southern Utah's top athletic official said the school fully vetted Tuite's tenure in San Jose, where she served as one of only 12 women athletic directors in college sports.

“SUU Athletics is excited to hire Marie Tuite … and bring her decades of experience to serve and support our students, coaches, university, and community,” Doug Knuth, the director of Southern Utah University's athletics department, said in an email Monday morning. “SUU is aware of the situation at San Jose State and based on a thorough review, reference checks and standard hiring protocols, the university is confident in welcoming Marie to Thunderbird Athletics.”

Before she left San Jose State, Tuite was named in three wrongful termination or retaliation lawsuits that the university ultimately settled for hundreds of thousands of dollars. In one of those cases, Tuite was accused of bullying Sage Hopkins, a swim coach who — for nearly a decade — continued to push forward accusations from more than a dozen female athletes that they had been inappropriately touched by the university's head trainer, Scott Shaw, during sports massages. The university spent nearly $5 million to settle those claims after lawsuits and an investigation by the U.S Department of Justice.

Tuite (pronounced TOOit) also presided over the athletics department when head gymnastics coach Wayne Wright was forced to retire in 2018 after two dozen athletes accused him of bullying. In a surprising twist, the investigation of Wright was launched after a gymnast who had transferred from San Jose State — to Southern Utah — first publicly complained about Wright's treatment.

Amy LeClair, a gymnast who won a settlement over Shaw's sexual abuse and also said she was a victim of Wright's intimidation, expressed outrage that Tuite was hired by Southern Utah and incredulity that the NCAA would allow it.

“It feels insulting to know that everything that courageous people, such as Sage Hopkins have done to bring her gross negligence and intentional risking of athletes' safety to light is being thrown back under the rug again,” LeClair said in a text message Monday.

Tuite arrived at San Jose State in 2010 shortly after an initial investigation cleared Shaw and for the next 10 years rebuffed Hopkins' repeated attempts to keep Shaw away from his team, Hopkins said. An informal, verbal agreement that Shaw not treat female athletes was ignored, which the U.S. Department of Justice would say in a 2021 investigation allowed Shaw “unfettered access” to abuse more athletes.

In 2019, Hopkins took his concerns — along with a 300-page dossier of emails from Tuite and others — to the National Collegiate Athletic Association, which then triggered University President Mary Papazian to open a new investigation into Shaw. That investigation found that Shaw had abused the athletes. In the aftermath, more female athletes came forward, saying that in the interim decade they, too, became victims of Shaw. Both Tuite and Papazian resigned from San Jose State in the wake of the scandal.

On Monday, Hopkins said the news of Tuite's new job left him grateful for the current leadership at San Jose State and that he and others at SJSU would be “conveying our concerns to university leadership at her new institution.”

San Jose State settled the retaliation lawsuit with Hopkins for $225,000. It also settled a wrongful termination lawsuit for $560,000 filed by former deputy athletic director Steve O'Brien, who claimed that Tuite fired him for standing up for the whistleblowing swim coach.

Reached Monday by text message, Tuite told the Bay Area News Group that she wasn't ready to publicly comment.