Doctor accused of abusing Indiana University athletes didn’t act in ‘bad faith,’ law firm says
But the independent investigators also concluded that the rectal exams Dr. Bradford Bomba Sr. performed on young male athletes were “uncommon.”
A law firm hired by Indiana University has concluded that former basketball team doctor Bradford Bomba Sr. did not act “in bad faith or with an improper purpose” when he performed rectal exams on hundreds of young players during routine physicals.
But the medical experts brought on by the Jones Day law firm to help conduct an independent investigation into the allegations against Bomba wrote that “it was uncommon” for physicians to perform invasive exams like this on “college-age student athletes without pertinent history of complaints.”
Still, the experts wrote in the 874-page report, Bomba’s method of doing these exams was “professional and clinical.”
“We uncovered no evidence — no witness interview, player account, documentation, or evidence regarding any general predilection of Dr. Bomba — that indicated Dr. Bomba had any sexual purpose or derived any sexual gratification from administering the DREs,” the report states, using the acronym for digital rectal exams.
IU hired Jones Day in September to look into the allegations against the now 88-year-old retired doctor after a former player named Haris Mujezinovic sent the school a letter accusing Bomba of performing unnecessary rectal exams on heathy young athletes and saying school officials did nothing to stop him.
“The report did not help me understand the rationale for Dr. Bomba Sr.’s actions or for IU’s failure to act,” Mujezinovic said in a statement released by his lawyers Kathleen DeLaney, Matthew Gutwein and Alexander Pantos after the Jones Day report was released Thursday. “It seems to me that IU stayed quiet at the expense of me and the other players.”
Mujezinovic is one five former Indiana players, including one-time NBA player and former Toronto Raptors coach Butch Carter, who are suing the university trustees and former athletic trainer Tim Garl for allegedly ignoring warnings about Bomba, who they allege performed medically unnecessarily rectal exams on the young men.
Delaney, in an email Friday to NBC News, said “this report helps our litigation case and we are continuing to pursue the case with vigor.”
“The Jones Day report is flawed in many respects, but it unequivocally confirms that Dr. Bomba, Sr. routinely abused IU student athletes for decades and that the university’s Head Athletic Trainer knew about it at the time and did nothing to stop it,” Delany wrote. “Even the hired experts Jones Day engaged — two out of three of them — stopped short of endorsing Dr. Bomba, Sr.’s digital rectal examinations as ‘medically appropriate.’”
Delaney said the Jones Day investigators did not interview Bomba and noted that in December the retired doctor invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination dozens of times during a deposition for the lawsuit.
The Jones Day report, Delaney added, also called Garl’s behavior “unprofessional” for “razzing” players about the rectal exams at the hands of Bomba.