The shameful, nasty legacy of former UM sports doctor Robert E. Anderson stays in the spotlight as The New York Times talks in depth with a 1981 Rose Bowl player.
Chuck Christian, Class of '81, was a UM rarirty -- a football player majoring in art. (Photo: Facebook)
Chuck Christian, a native Detroiter who's now a 60-year-old Boston artist, is among victims of "a vast sex abuse scandal," as the paper puts it in a 1,700-word article. "More than 40 years later, he sees a connection between a university doctor’s assaults and a dire prognosis," a subhead says.
"He had victimized so many of us," Christian said in a recent interview.
Since February, when the university first revealed findings of a secret, long-running investigation, hundreds of people have complained about Anderson's conduct. ...
These days, Christian grapples with questions about how long his [prostate] cancer may have grown undetected because his experience with Anderson had instilled a lasting distrust of doctors.
... "If they had dealt with Anderson back then, he never would have violated me and all of my friends and all of the players that came after," Christian said.
He often wonders whether more regular visits with doctors would have uncovered his cancer before it metastasized.
The former tight end, who graduated in 1981 with a fine arts degree, has stage four cancer that has spread to his spine, tailbone, hips, ribs and shoulders.
Anderson retired from UM in 2003 and died five years later. In The Times, college sports reporter by Alan Blinder writes:
Michael L. Wright, a lawyer for Christian, said he was working with about 140 former Michigan students who had accused Anderson of misconduct. Some former students who hired other lawyers have already pursued litigation against Michigan, which said in a court filing this month that it was "confronting through credible allegations the sad reality that some of its students suffered sexual abuse at the hands of one of its former employees." ...
Christian knows it is virtually certain that he not will see the outcome of the investigations and the lawsuits that could last for years. He elected to speak out, he said, to urge athletes who may have been abused, at Michigan or elsewhere, to report what had happened.
Earlier coverage:
