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“Jim Jordan definitely knew that these things were happening — yes, most definitely.”
A seventh former college wrestler at Ohio State, who attended the school while GOP Rep Jim Jordan was assistant wrestling coach from 1986-1994, says Jordan “definitely knew” that the boys were being sexually abused by the team doctor, according to the Washington Post.
The former wrestler, David Range, says Jordan was present during group discussions in the locker room about the doctor’s behavior. Other former team members say they told Jordan about the doctor’s abuse, and Jordan did nothing to remedy it.
Jordan, a darling of the family-values right, who had hopes of becoming the next House Speaker in January, has called the men liars, and even went so far as to claim that the accusations are part of a deep state conspiracy tied to Robert Mueller and Rod Rosenstein.
Now that seven former wrestlers have come forward to say that Jordan knew, and several of them are longtime friends of Jordan who even donated to his campaign, Jordan claims are becoming more and more difficult to believe.
Jordan didn’t help matters any by changing his story Friday night in a botched interview with Fox News. Jordan seemed to back off of his previous claims that the boys were lying, only to now suggest that maybe they did tell him about the abuse, but since they told him while in their locker room it didn’t count:
“Conversations in a locker room are a lot different than people coming up and talking about abuse. No one ever reported any abuse to me. If they had, I would have dealt with it.”
Yes, Jordan is resurrecting Donald Trump’s “locker-room talk” defense. Which has a few holes.
First, claims of sexual abuse are not less serious simply because they’re conveyed in a locker room. These were college wrestlers talking to their coach. Their workplace is the locker room. And their coach is arguably their in loco parentis, acting as their parent or guardian.
Second, Jordan seems to be suggesting that since the conversations took place in a locker room, they were per se either braggadocio or jokes. Really? How many teenage boys brag and/or joke with their adult superiors about grown men fondling their genitals? I’d posit zero.
This story isn’t going away. Jim Jordan’s run at the speakership is likely now dead in the water, and the only remaining question is whether his political career can survive at all as the drip drip drip of accusers continues to step forward.
The post 7th college wrestler: Jim Jordan knew of sexual abuse appeared first on AMERICAblog News.
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