Documents: Michigan student says he reported doctor’s abuse

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — A former University of Michigan student whose 2018 complaint that a late doctor at the school had molested him during medical exams for routine injuries decades ago says he complained at the time to his wrestling coach and the school’s athletic director about the sexual abuse, according to documents released Friday by the prosecutor’s office.

The student also recalled the doctor being known as “Dr. Drop your drawers Anderson” by athletes in the 1970s, according to the documents released to The Associated Press by prosecutors who reviewed a campus police investigation of the allegations against the late Dr. Robert E. Anderson.

The university’s president this week apologized to “anyone who was harmed” by Anderson. Mark Schlissel’s comment came a day after the school announced that it had launched an investigation into the doctor’s behaviour following abuse allegations from five former patients.

Documents released by the Washtenaw County prosecutor’s office show that a former Michigan wrestler wrote to Athletic Director Warde Manuel in July 2018 with details about repeated fondling during medical exams decades earlier. The name of the wrestler was redacted in records released to The Associated Press.

In a four-page letter, the former wrestler accused the doctor of touching his penis and testicles, and inserting his finger into his rectum “too many times for it to have been considered diagnostic or therapeutic for the conditions and injuries that I had.”

The first time this happened was his freshman year in 1972, when he went to the doctor for treatment for facial cold sores, according to the letter. The wrestler saw the doctor several more times for that condition and was inappropriately touched each time, he wrote.

“I didn’t like it, but I didn’t really pay much attention to it,” the letter said. “He was the doctor and it never occurred to me that he was enjoying what I was not.”

The wrestler said the doctor again touched him during his junior season after he had dislocated an elbow.

“I found it strange that I needed a penis and hernia check,” he wrote.

The wrestler told Manuel that athletes on at least two other sports teams knew about Anderson’s conduct while he was in school there.

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Foody reported from Chicago. Dunklin reported from Dallas.

Larry Lage, Rees Dunklin, Kathleen Foody And Mike Householder, The Associated Press