Xuan Thai
Multiple Authors
Former North Carolina State male athletes alleging sexual abuse and harassment by former school trainer Robert Murphy told ESPN they suffered silently through misconduct under the guise of medical treatment.
The athletes left, yet Murphy stayed in his job — despite multiple red flags that had been raised, the men say.
Eleven men who played for various NC State teams between 2013 and 2024, including nine who are part of an ongoing civil case against the school, spoke to ESPN about their experiences — most on the condition of anonymity.
The alleged misconduct included touching their genitals inappropriately and subjecting them to non-standard drug testing procedures in which Murphy required them to be nearly nude while he observed.
One former athlete told ESPN he went to Murphy with back pain and was subjected to an unwelcome treatment that involved the trainer’s hands in his shorts, where “one is on my penis and the other is basically on my anus.”
“I kind of just froze and didn’t really know what to do,” said the man, named in the lawsuit as John Doe 1. “I don’t even know how I got out of it. I think I just kind of made a sound or something and I just grabbed my stuff.”
The man recalled going home to shower rather than showering at the training facility and asking himself: “Did this really just happen?”
The men told ESPN they avoided talking about what happened to them until former soccer player Ben Locke’s complaint to campus police led to a Title IX investigation in 2022 and a subsequent civil lawsuit that has been joined by 30 other former players.
There is also an ongoing state criminal investigation of Murphy, who left the university in 2022.
NC State responded to ESPN similarly to a statement it issued in February about the allegations against Murphy: “The health and safety of students and student-athletes is paramount to NC State Athletics and the university. Sexual misconduct of any kind is unacceptable. … As this is a pending legal matter, responses to this legal action will be made through the appropriate legal channels and the university cannot comment further at this time.”
ESPN reported April 2 that the Title IX investigation concluded Murphy had engaged in improper behavior of a sexual nature with Locke, and sources told ESPN that university officials were aware of allegations against Murphy as long ago as 2014 but failed to act decisively on concerns raised by staffers.
Locke said “layers of complexity” explain why men can be hesitant to speak out about their abuse, especially when the perpetrator is also a man. He said many people hold the view that as a man, “[I] should be able to defend myself” and that the culture does not readily accept men as victims of abuse.
The feeling, he said, is that “I should be able to punch that guy in the face and stand up for myself.”
“Then you add in, ‘You’re a Division 1 college athlete, you’re strong, you’re fit, you’re all the things,'” Locke said.
NC State did not respond to requests for comment but previously told ESPN that “the health and safety of students and student-athletes is paramount to NC State Athletics and the university.”
Murphy’s lawyer also did not respond to requests for comment but in a March 12 court filing asserted that the defendant was acting “within the scope of his profession” and that the civil claims against him are beyond the state’s statute of limitations.
When describing abuse they say happened more than a decade ago, the men interviewed by ESPN welled up with emotions and some cried when discussing it.
JOHN DOE 1, who transferred to NC State in 2013, is among Murphy’s first alleged victims, according to the lawsuit. He said that years of training as an elite athlete taught him to compartmentalize the pain and keep moving. So that’s what he did after, he alleges, Murphy began sexually abusing him during the player’s first weeks on the team.
Almost a decade later, the memories came rushing back when he heard that Locke had stepped forward with accusations that Murphy sexually abused him.
“I’m kind of sitting there in shock thinking, ‘Oh, my God, pretty much everything that I thought happened did happen,'” he said. “I’m a victim of this.”
According to redacted documents obtained by ESPN, a 2022 Title IX investigation that focused solely on Locke’s accusations determined that Murphy made unwanted contact with the former soccer player that was “sexual in nature.” Additionally, officials determined that Murphy’s conduct was “sufficiently severe” and “pervasive” to violate school policy.
John Doe 1 said he had an awareness of standard athletic training room protocols from his previous school. At his first university, trainers regularly wrapped him with soft bandages — known as hip spica wraps — around his hip and upper thigh in a figure eight formation while wearing compression shorts underneath.
But at NC State, John Doe 1 said, Murphy told him he needed to be “completely bare” for the wrap. He said Murphy would move the player’s penis “from side to side” while applying the wrap. On one occasion, he said Murphy commented on the size of John Doe 1’s genitalia.
“I just remember feeling uncomfortable, I felt like it wasn’t right,” John Doe 1 said.
Multiple John Does who spoke with ESPN confirmed that Murphy wrapped them in the same manner.
Murphy told Title IX investigators in 2022 that the wrap “‘doesn’t work as well in underwear’ and his ‘preference’ is to wrap on bare skin,” according to documents obtained by ESPN. John Doe 1 said he refused to let Murphy wrap him after the first visit and avoided going to the athletic trainers for several weeks following that incident. But after one of the coaches chastised the team for not seeing the trainers, John Doe 1 said he felt the pressure to go back.
Another former athlete, identified in the civil complaint as John Doe 29 and who played for NC State from 2017 to 2018, alleged that Murphy began abusing him shortly after the player started at the school.
Doctors diagnosed John Doe 29 with a sports hernia his freshman year. At first, he said, Murphy treated the injury with massages, during which the sports medicine director would repeatedly touch the athlete’s genitals. After Murphy performed an estimated 40 therapeutic massages, the man underwent surgery. During his recovery period, the man said Murphy performed so-called ultrasound treatments on his scrotum.
The man said Murphy explained that “an ultrasound would help move blood out of my scrotum” and recalled receiving as many as 10 of the so-called ultrasound treatments.
John Doe 29 said he knew ultrasounds were mainly used as imaging tools but thought to himself, “What do I know?” when presented with the ultrasound wand. He said he doesn’t recall any further explanation from Murphy.
The man said he would have to pull his pants down to his ankles while Murphy had “one hand holding my penis, and [the other] was ultrasounding my scrotum.”
Medical experts told ESPN that ultrasounds are primarily used as imaging and diagnostic tools or for assistance in specific procedures such as guiding needles. One expert said any reported therapeutic benefits are not “evidence-based.”
John Doe 29 later transferred to another Division 1 school. After receiving treatments from the new school’s training staff, he said he realized the treatment he received from Murphy was inappropriate.
Another accuser of Murphy, Keiran Shanahan, was on NC State’s wrestling team from 2019 to 2020 and said he immediately sought assistance from the sports medicine staff, including Murphy, because of a high school ACL injury.
Shanahan, who plans to join the lawsuit as a third named plaintiff, described using a leg press machine under Murphy’s supervision. He recalls Murphy repeatedly telling him to activate the gluteal and quadriceps muscles while using the weight machine.
“I’m in a birthing position [on the machine] at this point, so I’m pretty exposed,” said Shanahan, who added he was wearing loose fitting shorts at the time. “He reaches his hand underneath [me] and with like one finger he goes and he flicks my anus and I immediately I’m like: What the heck just happened?”
Shanahan said Murphy did this twice and remembers feeling “shocked” and “100% violated.”
Parker Cross, another named plaintiff, told ESPN he transferred to NC State and played for the men’s soccer team in the 2020 and 2021 seasons. He is among some of Murphy’s most recent alleged victims. Cross recalled Murphy touching his genitals during his first therapeutic massage treatment. After the second time it happened, Cross said, he avoided going back to Murphy.
“I’m a Christian, I saved myself for marriage. So Rob is the only person outside of my wife who has touched me,” said Cross. “I gotta feel that for the rest of my life, that this [expletive] has touched me.”
THE FORMER ATHLETES who spoke to ESPN expressed particular anger about what they say was NC State’s failure — despite repeated warnings — to stop a decade of abuse by the former sports medicine director.
“They knew. They knew everything,” said John Doe 1 of officials in the athletic department. He compared the situation to what happened to Ohio State wrestlers and other athletes with school physician Richard Strauss and at Michigan State with former school doctor Larry Nassar.
Shanahan said a former teammate sent him a screen shot of the 2020 annual student athlete survey, with a circle drawn around the answer ‘yes’ to this question: “Has a medical professional (athletic trainer or team doctor) inappropriately touched one of your teammates?”
The image, shared with ESPN, shows the words “Silly Rob,” an apparent reference to Murphy, written over the response. It is unknown if the teammate marked “yes” when he submitted the survey.
In addition to the alleged sexual abuse, the men said, Murphy repeatedly blurred professional lines by remarking about their sex lives or commenting on the size of their genitals.
John Doe 31 said Murphy sent him a text that read, “Miss You,” as the former student athlete returned from Covid-19 isolation protocols. The two did not have that kind of familiarity to warrant such a text, the former player said.
John Doe 29 said Murphy “had a way of making you feel like you were his best friend.”
“I got the sense that he wanted to feel like he was a part of the team. And I thought that was inappropriate and kind of odd because none of the other trainers were doing that,” said another man, John Doe 14.
Locke, the first student athlete to step forward, described the training room as a social outlet for Murphy.
“There were times where you would walk into the training room and there would be seven or eight soccer players and Rob. And nobody was really getting treatment,” said Locke.
“There was never an urgency to leave. There was never. ‘Okay, guys, you get to be here for 30 minutes, and then I’m going home.’ It was, ‘I’ll put on the TV. I’ll put on the music. I’ll get the hot tub going, and I’ll put on a soccer game. We’ll get snacks and we’ll eat and we’ll hang out.'”
Multiple athletes also described Murphy regularly entering spaces normally reserved for athletes. John Doe 27 said Murphy would often come into the locker rooms and showers where players would be in various states of undress.
Murphy told Title IX investigators that, due to his role, he would often go into the locker room and showers to tell the athletes to come see him for treatment, according to documents ESPN obtained. But the former athletes who spoke to ESPN said other trainers and coaches rarely, if ever, entered the locker room or showers.
“Rob would maybe strike up conversations or would do a little more lingering than anyone else really would while people were showering,” said John Doe 27. “[It] was definitely known across teams and stuff” that Murphy would hang out in the showers.
REGARDING THEIR RELUCTANCE to speak out, several men said they were so focused on excelling as athletes that they tried to ignore Murphy’s behavior. John Doe 27 said he was in a “performance-over-everything mindset” and was willing to do whatever it took to get healthy again to compete.
John Doe 1 joined others in blaming their silence on youthful inexperience, saying he was just a “naive 19-year-old.”
A.J. Duffy, president of the National Athletic Trainers Association, says it’s up to the institution to establish clear boundaries and empower student athletes to speak up without fear.
“If a person feels violated, they need to know who to contact. It could be the supervisor, it could be the director of athletics, it could be the Title IX person on campus,” Duffy said.
Locke said it was difficult to accept that he was abused, “because it felt wrong.”
Shanahan added that “being a young guy like that on a team and being thrust into a situation like that, where you’re going from being at the top of your game in high school to being at the bottom of the pole, it’s not a space that you feel comfortable to speak out.”
Laura McGuire, who has worked on Title IX issues in higher education and is the author of “The Sexual Misconduct Prevention Guidebook,” said those thoughts are typical among male abuse victims.
“[There is] this mythology that, because you are physically strong, you can stop someone from abusing you, and that is simply not the way that our neurology works,” McGuire said. “What our brain does, no matter how big our muscles, no matter how strong our bravado, is it recognizes threat, and it’s going to try to first self-preserve. And one of the last things it’s going to do is physically get aggressive in any way.”
She said that many men will doubt the abuse happened or try to explain it away.
Several former student athletes said when they finally came forward with their stories, they received mixed reactions from their family, friends and former teammates. Locke said some former teammates were supportive when he first came forward. Others called him a liar.
“I got kind of chewed out by some of my old teammates and friends,” Locke said. “I was told that I was lying and that Rob had protected me and taken care of me, and he’s the only reason I had a career afterwards, after I left NC State.”
Shanahan said after he described the leg press incident to a former teammate, the teammate called Murphy a “good guy.”
“This is the mindset that we’re dealing with right now,” Shanahan said. “And this is partly why I want to speak up, because it’s absurd … this whole idea that we have is: ‘It’s OK. He’s just joshing around. [Sweep] it under the rug.'”
He added, “How can we as a society be so outraged by what’s going on with the whole Epstein Files thing …, and then you come and turn around and say, ‘Oh well, we’re not so outraged about this.'”
Today, the 11 men who spoke to ESPN say they are in different stages of processing what they say happened. A few of the men have seen therapists. Others, like John Doe 29, say they “don’t talk about it out loud” enough. And some say they simply want to be believed.
“My desire is for men to be healed, for people to be healed,” Locke said. “For them to know they’re not alone, for them to know that isolation is the worst thing possible and that there are other men that will stand with them.”
Leave a Reply