He Knew. He didn’t care
By 
Jon Wertheim has a great story talking to the student-athletes who specifically reported being sexually abused to Jim Jordan and were met with indifference:
They came from the cities and from small towns. They spanned generations and races and body types. Some looked like they could still make weight; others not so much. It was the summer of 2021, and around 30 former Ohio State wrestlers quietly converged on a high school outside Columbus for a meeting. Others joined virtually. It had the look of a team reunion, but the mood was considerably more somber. This was akin to a family intervention, a revival meeting to attempt to repair the program’s ripped fabric.
It had been three years since one of the wrestlers, Mike DiSabato, had come forward with accounts that when he wrestled for OSU in the late ’80s and ’90s, the team doctor, Richard Strauss, had sexually assaulted him. He was, effectively, the whistleblower in what would be shorthanded “The Strauss Scandal.” It would metastasize, and soon hundreds of other former OSU athletes—disproportionately wrestlers—shared their experiences of being groomed, assaulted and in some cases raped by the serial predator who was also the team doctor.
The trauma was compounded by a sense of betrayal. Wrestler after wrestler recalled complaining about Strauss to the head coach, Russ Hellickson, and to Jim Jordan, a onetime wrestling star in Wisconsin who served as OSU’s assistant coach from 1986 to ‘94.
In some cases, the wrestlers can recount specific dialogue with striking exactitude. Dunyasha Yetts, an All-American wrestler in the ’90s, recalls complaining to Jordan that he saw Strauss about a thumb injury and stormed out of the room when the doctor attempted to pull down his shorts. Yetts recalls Jordan saying that if Strauss ever approached him in a sexual manner, he’d “kill him.” Dan Ritchie, another wrestler, says he was present when Jordan was informed of abuse from Strauss. Jordan’s response: “If he did that to me, I’d snap his neck like a twig of dried balsa wood.”
In all, at least 11 former wrestlers—as well as a wrestling referee—have said the OSU coaches knew and chose to do nothing. Strauss would continue to go unchecked until the mid ’90s, assaulting athletes without consequence. Nick Nutter, an All-American OSU wrestler in the ’90s and a Strauss survivor, recounted to me in 2020, as I was reporting this story, that he and his teammates made a calculus before deciding whether to see the team doctor. “Is this injury bad enough that I’m willing to get molested for it?”
It says it all that the vast majority of the Republican conference affirmatively supported him being Speaker of the House, because he has policy views as reprehensible as his character.
In related news, I strongly endorse his ongoing ritual humiliation by that minority of Republicans that has some minimal standard of decency:
NEWS: Some of Jim Jordan's opponents tell me they've been purposely staggering their "no" votes over multiple ballots — a strategy designed to show Jordan's speakership opposition is only growing.
And that's why they tell me Jordan will bleed even more support on a third ballot— Melanie Zanona (@MZanona) October 18, 2023