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Several former men’s basketball players for Indiana University have found that a former team doctor said school officials, including late head coach Bobby Knight, were aware of the situation.
Last fall, former Hoosier players Haris Mujezinovic and Charlie Miller filed a lawsuit against Bradford Bomba Sr., who died last month. In the case, the two were sexually abused by Bomba in their time playing for Indiana.
This trial, which was filed in October, now has five ex-athletes named in it, while 10 additional men are planning to pursue litigation against Indiana, per. Espn.
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A general overview of the Indiana Hoosiers shorts logo under the Empire Classic College Basketball Game against Connecticut Huskies on November 19, 2023 in Madison Square Garden in New York, Ny. (Rich Graessle/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“I have two sons who are the same age as I was when it happened to me,” said Mujezinovic, who played for Hoosiers in the late 1990s, in an E email to ESPN. “At the time I saw myself as an adult, but now I realize to look at my own children, how young and powerless me and my teammates actually were.
“The adults in the basketball program who were handed over our care knew what happened to us. They joked with it and let it continue.”
Bomba routinely gave male athletes rectal exams during their physicals despite no medical recommendations to do so, according to the trial. Bomba worked as a men’s basketball doctor for almost 30 years.
Former Indiana -Basketball players say that team doctor sexually abused them with unnecessary prostate samples
LongTime coach Tim Garl was listed as a defendant in January, after another former player, John Flowers, joined the trial. Flowers said Garl was aware of the bomb’s “invasive, harassing and condescending digital rectal studies.”
“After his first physical, Flowers’s teammates told him he had” passed “Dr. Bomba, Sr.” Test “and that he should not undergo a digital rectal investigation again,” the trial states. “Garl laughed at flowers and his beginner teammates and made jokes at their expense of the digital rectal studies they endured.”
Bobby Knight was one of the biggest college basketball trainer of all time. (AP)
Players allegedly complained about the exams, some of whom said they wanted to have another doctor look at them in the future. However, Knight and Garl continued to make players watch the bomba.
Another player, Butch Carter, who played for Indiana in the late 1970s, wrote in a letter that he told Knight he would never see Bomba again. The letter is in the trial, although Carter is not part of the trial.
An external examination was conducted to take a closer look at the allegations and it found that rectal exams are a normal part of a physical. Indiana also released a statement in September 2024 and said they would conduct an independent review.
Indiana hired the law firm Jones Day to conduct the investigation involving talking to “100 individuals”, reviewed “10,000 E emails” and review “More than 100,000 pages of physical documents spanning six decades,” according to the report published on April 25.
With Bomba’s death last month, and the exterior investigation that clears him for sexual mismatch, the legal path for these players will be difficult.
A general overview of the IU logo on the official adidas basketballs, as seen when Indiana Hoosiers played against Michigan State Spartans on January 22, 2023 in Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Indiana. (Brian Spurlock/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
But Michelle Simpson Tuegel, who represents the 10 men who are prepared to file their trial, says two of her clients have stories that contradict these findings and say that Bomba’s actions were not sexual, per. Espn. One of the men who played in the late 1990s for Hoosiers claimed that Bomba “knew his genitals” under a physical.
Indiana University told Pakinomist Digital that it does not comment on litigation. In addition, the university pointed to the Jones Day investigation results as a reference.
