New lawsuit hits San Jose State athletics amid allegations of cover-up, retaliation

SAN JOSE — A former deputy athletics director filed a wrongful termination and retaliation lawsuit Tuesday against San Jose State University alleging school officials engaged in a pattern of covering up misconduct by staff and students and retaliating against those who reported it.

The suit brought by Steve O’Brien was filed one year after his firing for refusing to discipline swim coach Sage Hopkins, who became a whistleblower in a sexual abuse case from a decade earlier.

O’Brien seeks damages in excess of $25,000 in the civil suit filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court. The suit, first reported by USA Today, named the California State University board of trustees and athletic director Marie Tuite as the main defendants.

O’Brien, who started working at San Jose State in 2017, now is the Senior Assistant Dean for External Relations at the Santa Clara University School of Law.

O’Brien alleges in the 30-page complaint obtained by the Bay Area News Group that Tuite instructed him to reprimand Hopkins, who had brought to light sexual abuse allegations by 17 female swimmers against Scott Shaw, the school’s director of sports medicine.

An initial investigation in 2009 cleared Shaw of wrongdoing but the women who first brought the allegations, and others, told Hopkins about eight years later that the abuse was ongoing, the suit said. School officials launched a new Title IX investigation last year after Hopkins made it an issue. Shaw resigned from his position in August.

A San Jose State spokesman said in a statement Tuesday night that neither the California State University headquarters nor school had “received any filings relating to a lawsuit by former deputy director of athletics Steve O’Brien.”

The lawsuit also said Tuite ordered O’Brien to discipline then-compliance director David Rasmussen, who had investigated two prominent athletes for violating NCAA rules on gambling and drug use.

In one case, an SJSU athlete was declared ineligible for making 170 bets on college and professional games in violation of NCAA rules, the lawsuit said.

In the other instance, according to the suit, Hopkins received a complaint in January 2020 from one of his swimmers that “an SJSU star football player’s home, shared with swimmers, smelled like marijuana and contained drug paraphernalia.”

“O’Brien was punished for doing the right thing,” Tamarah Prevost, an attorney for O’Brien, said in a statement to the Bay Area News Group. “He stood up for those trying to protect mistreated female student-athletes and it cost him his job. The days of covering up misconduct by universities should be a relic of the past, not the current standard.”

O’Brien’s lawsuit comes four days after a series of Title IX investigations found Shaw responsible for at least five claims that he sexually abused female athletes, according to an attorney involved in the probes. The investigation found that Shaw inappropriately touched at least a half dozen swimmers.

The athletes received letters last Friday acknowledging the findings by private lawyers supervised by the California State University system. At least five other investigations also were underway.

USA Today reported last spring that the 2009 claims alleged Shaw touched athletes “beneath their undergarments, massaging their breasts and pelvic areas when they sought treatment for other parts of their bodies.”

The legal action Tuesday is the latest directed at Tuite and the San Jose State athletic department.

In October, former softball coach Peter Turner filed a notice with the CSU system alleging he had been fired for retaliatory reasons. The action is the first step to file a lawsuit against a California government agency.

According to the online news outlet Sportico, Rasmussen submitted an internal complaint with San Jose State a month later, alleging acts of retaliation he experienced for doing his job.

Rasmussen resigned in December and now is the director of track and field at Brigham Young University.

The U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division also is investigating San Jose State’s handling of the sexual abuse allegations, four people who have spoken with the investigators told USA Today.

The FBI also launched a criminal inquiry into Shaw’s conduct, two people who have spoken with investigators confirmed to USA Today.

O’Brien’s suit said Tuite and the athletic department have been “widely criticized” for either failing to address serious student complaints or preventing students from making them. “For example, on May 21, 2019, over 35 of SJSU’s Division I student-athletes delivered a signed letter to its President, detailing their experiences of injustice, unfair treatment, alleged abuse, and mishandled Title IX complaints, improper treatment by team doctors, and ‘threats’ from Tuite,” the suit said.

San Jose State reopened its investigation into Shaw in December 2019, after Hopkins circulated a nearly 300-page document among university, Mountain West and NCAA officials that detailed the allegations, the suit said.

On Feb. 2, 2020, Hopkins emailed up to 10 individuals, including Mountain West Conference staff, Rasmussen and NCAA officials, expressing concerns about the handling of the new Title IX investigation, according to the suit.

Hopkins’ email criticized Tuite and associate athletic director Eileen Daley for being complicit in covering up Shaw’s abuse, the complaint said.

“Upon learning of the email, Tuite summoned O’Brien into her office to cross-examine him about why he failed to immediately ‘report’ Hopkins’ opposition to her,” the suit said.

Four days after Hopkins had written the email expressing concerns Tuite directed O’Brien to discipline the swim coach for purported “aggression” against Daley, the suit said.

The complaint said Tuite did not want to discipline Hopkins herself because of the active Title IX investigation.

“Rather than risk being identified as actively interfering with the investigation against her, she ordered O’Brien to retaliate against Hopkins on her behalf,” the suit alleged.

O’Brien took his concerns to the California State University general counsel’s office but did not receive a “substantive” response to his letter, the suit said.

“The reality is that O’Brien would not participate in Tuite’s cover-ups, and she fired him as a result,” the lawsuit says.

In a separate investigation concluded last month, USA Today reported, the CSU system found Tuite responsible for retaliation in that instance, though Tuite can appeal that ruling.