Sports medicine director sexually assaulted California university athletes, feds say

The former director of sports medicine at a university in California was charged with civil rights violations after he was accused of engaging in sexual misconduct while treating female athletes, the Department of Justice said in a March 10 news release.

Scott Shaw, 54, was employed at San Jose State University from 2006 to 2020, according to court documents. He served both as the director of sports medicine and as head athletic trainer .

San Jose State University and the California State University system did not immediately respond to requests for comment from McClatchy News.

Between 2017 and 2020, Shaw is accused of inappropriately touching the bodies of four female students who were on various women’s athletic teams at the university, doing so non-consensually and “without a legitimate purpose,” according to court documents.

In doing so, Shaw violated the civil rights of the four women, federal officials said.

Under federal law, it’s a crime for anyone “acting under color of any law” to “willfully deprive a person of a right or privilege” protected by U.S. law, including the “right to bodily integrity.”

Shaw has not commented publicly on the new charges, but denied any wrongdoing through his attorney in 2020, USA Today reported.

The recent charges come following a scandal that has shaken the university for over a year, CBS San Francisco reported. The school’s athletic director was demoted before leaving the university, and the university’s president resigned last year amid accusations that Shaw assaulted 15 female student-athletes, according to the outlet.

Shaw resigned from the university on Aug. 19, 2020, several months after USA Today published a story revealing that San Jose State University had begun quietly reinvestigating claims that Shaw sexually assaulted female athletes.

Many of the allegations against Shaw being reinvestigated were from a decade before. In 2009, 17 swimmers accused Shaw of touching them inappropriately, the outlet reported.

The accusations were initially dismissed by a university investigation, which concluded that Shaw was engaging in “bona fide” medical treatment, The Mercury News reported.

Now, Shaw “faces a maximum of six years in prison if convicted of all counts,” the Department of Justice said.

“It’s a relief to be told we were right and that this really should not be happening to anyone,” Lindsay Warkentin, one of the swimmers who first complained in 2009, told The Mercury News. “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.”

This story was originally published March 10, 2022 at 7:14 PM with the headline "Sports medicine director sexually assaulted California university athletes, feds say."