Wrestler adds to abuse allegations against UM doctor
Ann Arbor — An Olympic wrestler on Thursday accused a University of Michigan doctor of touching him inappropriately during medical exams at the school and said the physician’s reputation for such conduct was well known among his teammates.
Andy Hrovat, who competed for the U.S. in the 2008 Summer Olympics, told the Associated Press that the encounters with the late Dr. Robert E. Anderson happened during his freshman year in 1998.
“I would like to let people know that it’s OK to come out,” Hrovat said in an interview from his attorney’s office in Denver. “It’s OK to let your voice be heard.”
Hrovat is the first athlete to make public accusations against Anderson following complaints this week from at least six other people that the doctor sexually abused them decades ago.
The Detroit News first reported Wednesday that UM was investigating claims of sexual abuse by Anderson, a former director of the University Health Service who also spent years as a top physician for football teams by former coaches Bo Schembechler and Lloyd Carr. The university, The News reported, was alerted to the allegations against Anderson in July 2018.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:41 AM ^
Just shoot this guy and make the world a better place.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:44 AM ^
Let me build a time machine and get right on that. He has been dead over a decade.
February 21st, 2020 at 9:09 AM ^
Set the time machine back a few extra years and take care of him before he had a chance to hurt people.
February 21st, 2020 at 11:03 AM ^
Or just piss on the bastard's grave.
February 21st, 2020 at 11:09 AM ^
Kill Hitler first, please.
6.7.0February 21st, 2020 at 3:47 PM ^
What about Stalin?
February 21st, 2020 at 8:45 AM ^
Seems like overkill, quite literally.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:45 AM ^
The doctor died a while ago. Bigger question is if anyone in the university knew and buried this information. Also if anyone in the current administration knew and buried it.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:47 AM ^
They've already said they knew 19 months ago. Only reason the public knows right now is a victim went to the Detroit News.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:50 AM ^
That part is definitely bad, but even worse is if people hid it while the Doctor was still employed which obviously would put people in danger. Seems like that's where this is headed.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:55 AM ^
I freaking hate where this is headed! Guy had accusations 30 years before he retired. He worked for 30 years and had accusations from the start, to very late in his career.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:59 AM ^
And who knows what else was covered up during that time period. This hits home because it's when I attended school.
February 21st, 2020 at 12:11 PM ^
JIMMYISGOD how you doing little bro ?
February 21st, 2020 at 1:07 PM ^
If the U knew about this 18 months ago, there are two things to consider:
1. Why are they compelled to make it public? The doctor is dead and can no longer be a threat to anyone else.
2. Because there may be people out there who were abused but were afraid to come forward/thought they were alone.
This is probably going to snowball.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:44 AM ^
If they're able to find out Bo knew, I hope UM does the right thing and disassociates with him and his legacy. Statue, "The Team, The Team, The Team", all of it gone. We need to set an example that enabling something like this will not be allowed, unlike PSU and MSU have done. Same goes for Lloyd if he knew.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:46 AM ^
Sounds good to me.
February 21st, 2020 at 9:11 AM ^
We'd all be hypocrites if this didn't happen.
February 21st, 2020 at 9:13 AM ^
Not all of us.
I should clarify.
Not all of us said fans should stop rooting for MSU or PSU.
It is probably true a vast majority criticized the continued adoration of the iconic coach at PSU. I believe they did remove his statue and mural though, didn't they?
February 21st, 2020 at 9:45 AM ^
The put Joe's statue back up.
February 21st, 2020 at 10:46 AM ^
No, they haven’t. It’s still in storage in an undisclosed location.
February 21st, 2020 at 10:09 AM ^
They took the statue down more because they were worried about it becoming a source of protest and vandalism, not so much because they wanted to disassociate themselves from him.
They’ve still found ways over the last decade to honor him and let the rest of the world know that the fact he won a lot of football games triumphs over the fact he let Jerry Sandusky molest children unimpeded for for decades.
February 21st, 2020 at 10:13 AM ^
I don't think anyone ever said they should stop rooting for their school. I'll continue to support our current teams, none of them had anything to do with this.
Nobody blames MSU for having Nassar work there. It sounded like he was one of the best doctors in the industry when he was hired. It's that he continued to be able to do so after people found out about it, and that administration covered it up. Shitty people can end up working anywhere. If it's determined that Warde or Schlissel knew about this a while back, I want them both fired. But it still won't be as bad as the Nassar incident because at least they were just trying to protect the image of the university, and not continuing to enable a predator and allow him to keep doing what he was doing. Especially after the Nassar incident, everyone should know they need to be transparent and forthright about anything like this.
February 22nd, 2020 at 8:57 AM ^
You do know he worked for the university for 30 years--25 years after he had been fired for sexual abuse against male students. After he was fired, he was moved over to the football team where he had access to some of the best, young male bodies on the planet. He was in a position where if the student athlete complained, he could put their scholarship in peril.
Let's not get too sanctimonious about how the U did the right thing.
February 21st, 2020 at 9:24 AM ^
Buckle up folks this is likely to get a whole lot worse before it gets any better. The facts we do know, as we speak, are ugly and if history is any presidence, there will be a lot more revealed in the days and weeks to come.
February 21st, 2020 at 7:05 PM ^
“Buckle up” is a lot more fun when it means a highly rated recruit is about to commit.
February 21st, 2020 at 9:38 AM ^
Somehow I have a feeling that many of the UM faithful who gleefully condemned Joe Paterno will somehow find a way to either excuse or forgive Bo Schembechler if it turns out there is ample evidence to indicate he was guilty of essentially the same thing. Hypocrisy isn’t a quality that people are lacking when it comes to their school/teams.
I’m betting that “It’s not fair because Bo isn’t here to defend himself from these accusations.” Is going to be the favored justification for why this isn’t subject to their same moral outrage that Paterno was.
February 21st, 2020 at 11:19 AM ^
I hope not. If it turns out Bo or anyone else looked the other way on this shit, it's time to move on from the past, period. Set a goddamn standard that if you don't want your legacy ruined and everything you worked your whole life for to be forgotten, then don't let this shit go on and put a stop to it.
February 21st, 2020 at 10:10 PM ^
This would make for a horrible parody of those commercials from the 80's
"Bo Knows"
Hoping none of the higher ups were involved in a coverup.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:46 AM ^
Up to at least 20 calls to the hotline so far.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:49 AM ^
The hotline is a terrible idea, these victims should not be being handled by the University!
February 21st, 2020 at 12:09 PM ^
Agreed that a 'hotline' is not the best approach for multiple reasons. The above is only one of them...
You have victims calling into a machine? Crisis councilors should be handling it, with an option for legal representation.
February 21st, 2020 at 8:46 AM ^
If our President is smart, he'll immediately call for an outside agency to do a complete investigation, not just a criminal one.
The fact we sat on this information for 19 months and the only reason we know now is because a victim went to the media is proof that we should not try to handle anything in regards to this internally right now. There is no containing this, doing the things now you should have done 19 months ago is the best path forward.
And the hotline is a terrible idea and look. These hotlines are thought to just be ways for the University to contain liability.
The fact the lawyer involved in the Nassar scandal has fielded dozens of calls from victims should send shivers down your spine, that guy is trouble. And speaking of Nassar, if you know that Nassar did in fact study under Anderson at Michigan, get in front of it right now!
February 21st, 2020 at 8:48 AM ^
Could you explain to the uneducated how the hotline is a way to contain liability?
February 21st, 2020 at 8:53 AM ^
Read the Freep article, the victims should not be going to the U at this point then the University is who they are going to be suing. Imagine you and your peers all get fired from the division of your company and you think you were wrong, would you call a "hotline" set up by corporate to tell them your story, or would you want someone representing your interests?
February 21st, 2020 at 1:54 PM ^
Got it.
February 21st, 2020 at 10:15 AM ^
Yeah, so much for all those comments a few days ago that Schlissel and Manuel were handling it the “right way”
They sat on this shit for 19 months and only came clean after the Detroit News broke the story. I don’t care what they do from here on out to make it look like they “care” about the victims and about finding out the truth, because it’s all just going to be motivated by self serving PR purposes. They had a chance to come clean and get ahead of this on their own accord, and they failed miserably.
As far as I’m concerned, fuck em. They’re every bit as terrible as the scumbags at MSU who tried to cover up the Nassar scandal and minimize the victims.
February 21st, 2020 at 11:09 AM ^
Corprorate culture is always to protect the institution, that is who they are, it shouldn't be surprising and it happens everywhere. We live in a fucked up society, which is depressing as hell because despite how fucked up it is its better than it has ever been which is why these things are at least starting to come out.
February 21st, 2020 at 11:55 AM ^
Which is why I blame the NCAA for enabling these kinds of episodes to continue when they didn’t drop the fucking hammer on PSU in the wake of the Sandusky scandal.
They had a chance to say “This kind of reprehensible criminal behavior, and the people who cover it up to protect the school, will not be tolerated. If you’ve got some skeletons in the closet, you’d better come clean and address them now, or else you’re in trouble.” And show they were serious by hitting PSU with a multi year death penalty.
Instead, they took some half hearted measures, which themselves were later watered down, and told all the schools that covering up sexual assault isn’t anything that’s really going to hurt you in the long run.
February 21st, 2020 at 12:52 PM ^
The NCAA couldn't have done anything to fix this. This would have happened even if it wasn't connected to sports because protecting the university as an academic institution matters more too.
February 21st, 2020 at 6:27 PM ^
I guess we’ll never know since they didn’t even try.
February 21st, 2020 at 1:11 PM ^
But the NCAA cannot give any sort of pardon as regards other jurisdictions. They literally have zero power in that regard.
If the NCAA had made a statement as you proposed, there's still a 0% chance Mary Lou Simon, for instance, admits to her skeletons in the closet. The second she does, she's in trouble with Ingham County, the State of Michigan, etc ....
February 21st, 2020 at 3:52 PM ^
Who is this Mary Lou Simon? Do you mean Lou Anna Simon from MSU? Or are you talking about our past President, Mary Sue Coleman. My head is spinning.
February 21st, 2020 at 5:58 PM ^
Oops - yeah, the MSU President. I'm sleepwalking on this Friday.
February 21st, 2020 at 1:30 PM ^
"Our" president? That's cute.
I guess our president is pretty smart then, because that is exactly what he did months ago.
February 21st, 2020 at 1:35 PM ^
The hotline is run by a 3rd party collecting info for all interested parties including law enforcement. Callers can elect for the info to NOT be shared with the university if they so desire.
February 21st, 2020 at 9:00 AM ^
Dang, I almost joined the wrestling team in 1998. Hrovat and I were the same grade. And with how good Hrovat was, I likely would have spent a lot of time with this doctor.
February 21st, 2020 at 9:30 AM ^
The most damning part of that is the idea that everyone on the team knew. That's a guy who people ignored and enabled. People fucking suck (to be clear talking about administrators, none of this should be on the students whose job it is for these administrators to protect)
February 21st, 2020 at 9:40 AM ^
They called him Dr. Handerson.
This Dr. was using the threat of them losing their athletic scholarships to abuse them. It's just disgusting.
February 21st, 2020 at 10:14 AM ^
Very well. But this wrestler says that everyone knew.
February 21st, 2020 at 12:14 PM ^
Jimmyisgod is a MSU fan. It’s very disgusting but he is rooting for it to turn out that Michigan didn’t take action when they should have. It his inferiority complex acting up again unfortunately. You see he sees himself as less than since he’s a fan of MSU.