Ex-UM football, hockey players add sex abuse claims against doctor

A member of the Michigan’s 1997 national championship team is the first football player to come forward in a building University of Michigan sexual abuse case.

Parker Stinar, a lawyer whose Denver-based firm is representing more than 40 clients, told the Associated Press on Tuesday that two former football players and a Michigan hockey player who played in the NHL, are the latest former student-athletes to come forward with allegations of abuse against Dr. Robert E. Anderson. Anderson was the Michigan athletic department team physician from 1967 to 2003.

Anderson was 80 when he died in 2008.

The Detroit News first reported Feb. 19 that UM was investigating claims of sexual abuse by Anderson, a former director of the University Health Service before becoming the lead doctor for Michigan athletics. The allegations emerged when Michigan alum Robert Julian Stone shared his account of alleged abuse during a medical exam in 1971 by Anderson.

Stone spoke with The Detroit News after learning from a UM detective that other claims against the doctor had spawned a UM police investigation in 2018. Stone was concerned that the investigation would never become public if someone didn’t speak publicly.

More: Everything we know about the sexual abuse investigations at University of Michigan

Stinar was joined by victims Tad DeLuca and Thomas Evashevski last week during a news conference. They have accused Anderson of abusing them.

Mark Schlissel, the University of Michigan president, has apologized to “anyone who was harmed” by Dr. Robert E. Anderson, and set up a hotline for others who have information to come forward and offered counseling services to those affected. The hotline has received more than 100 “unique complaints” about Anderson, UM said late last week.

“It is truly important for the investigators to hear the voices of survivors for the investigators to understand the full scope of harm and its root causes,” UM spokesman Rick Fitzgerald said.

Men who have since spoken publicly about Anderson include former athletes who encountered him as a physician for the school’s athletic teams and former students who said the doctor molested them during medical exams at the university’s health service.