SAN JOSE – The first female athlete to come forward 14 years ago with accusations that San Jose State’s former head athletic trainer sexually abused her during treatment testified against him in federal court Tuesday, saying Scott Shaw “should be held to justice for the things that he did.”
She remembers “clear as day” when he “walked his fingers” across her breast and inside her underwear in 2009 to place stimulation pads for shoulder and knee injuries.
“When it went into my nipple area,” she said, “I had every alarm going off inside my body.”
A former volleyball player also testified late Tuesday, explaining how she was so upset when Shaw massaged the side of her breast for a shoulder injury, she “shot off the table,” ran out of the training room and burst into the double doors of the practice gym where her team was huddling.
“I was in shock,” she said of the incident that occurred sometime around 2008. “I said something along the lines of, ‘since when do you need to get your boob rubbed out for a shoulder injury? Scott was in there massaging my boob for the last 20 minutes.’”
Although two coaches were present, no one followed up, she said.
Shaw, 56, has pleaded not guilty to six federal civil rights charges for “willfully depriving four female student-athletes of their Constitutional fundamental right to bodily integrity when he sexually assaulted them.” The misdemeanor counts could land him in jail for six years. The charges relate only to four women whose experiences with Shaw occurred since 2017, within a 5-year statute of limitations.
Federal prosecutors were close to wrapping up their case late Tuesday. Shaw’s defense lawyers planned to present their own witnesses beginning Wednesday.
After the swimmer left the stand, she joined two other former teammates, both outspoken advocates, sitting in the gallery to support her.
The swimmer who testified Tuesday was the first of 17 swimmers from the 2009 Spartan swim team who alerted their coach that then-head trainer Shaw touched them inappropriately. She had also taken her complaints to campus police and university officials back then, but an internal investigation in 2010 cleared Shaw of wrongdoing, finding that he was using legitimate “trigger point” therapy. When the swimmer learned years later that Shaw was still working as an athletic trainer at San Jose State, she testified that she felt like “no one was taking it seriously.”
“I just felt like it needed to stop,” she said.
During cross examination, defense lawyer Dave Callaway said the details about Shaw’s hands on her breast were not in her swim coach’s initial notes, and suggested that the witness had changed her story to make the accusations more lurid.
“Did you move the placement of Mr. Shaw’s hand in subsequent telling because you were angry that nothing had happened to Mr. Shaw in 2009-2010?” Callaway asked.
“No, I did not,” she said.
The swimmer went public with her concerns in 2020, which resulted in an explosive story in USA Today that April. The resulting scandal, and questions about why the university would allow Shaw to continue working on athletes more than a decade later, ultimately led to the resignations of the university president and athletic director in 2021 and more than $5 million in settlements to victims. An investigation two years ago by the U.S. Department of Justice found the original in-house investigation that cleared Shaw was inadequate.
The former swimmer and volleyball player who testified Tuesday, along with several other athletes whose experiences occurred years ago, were allowed to appear before the 8-woman, 5-man jury to show a pattern of behavior.
Prosecutors on Tuesday also presented a string of witnesses who said that touching athlete’s private parts was not normal treatment.
Former San Jose State athletic trainer Laura Alexander, who has been promoted to senior associate athletic director, testified that she would never treat female athletes the way her then-boss, Scott Shaw, did – touching their breasts, nipples and buttocks as part of treatment.
“Did you ever reach into a bra and touch a woman’s breast to treat an injury?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Pitman asked.
“No,” testified Alexander, who has been at San Jose State since 2011.
Alexander’s testimony supported that of at least six former female athletes who testified since the start of the trial last week that no other trainer touched then that way.
Several male athletes, including one on Monday, also said that Shaw didn’t touch them in sensitive areas like he did with the female athletes, even though their injuries were in similar locations.
Former Spartan basketball player Garrett Ton testified that when Shaw treated him for a back injury and placed stimulation pads under his waistband on the top of his buttocks, Shaw explained what he was doing, touched him “quickly and briefly” and also draped a towel over the area for privacy. The women athletes who testified said Shaw never asked for consent to touch private areas or draped them with towels.
Source: www.mercurynews.com