An 88-year-old physician accused of sexually assaulting Indiana University basketball gamers again within the Nineteen Nineties has been ordered to look earlier than a choose Tuesday to find out whether or not he’s competent to be questioned in regards to the alleged abuse.
Dr. Bradford Bomba Sr.’s look earlier than Magistrate Judge Mario Garcia on the federal courthouse in Indianapolis will likely be to evaluate the physician’s “skill to testify at a deposition,” in line with an order issued Monday.
Garcia issued the ruling after Bomba’s guardian, Joseph Bomba, requested for the deposition to be delayed arguing that the previous IU group physician “doesn’t know the distinction between a reality and a lie, making him incompetent to testify,” in line with court docket papers dated Nov. 27.
Dr. George Parker, a psychiatrist at IU Well being, has examined Bomba, the physician’s guardian stated.
The event got here two months after Haris Mujezinovic and Charlie Miller, who performed for the Hoosiers within the Nineteen Nineties below legendary coach Bob Knight, filed a lawsuit within the U.S. District Court docket for Southern Indiana, alleging that their coaches and trainers had been conscious that Bomba was subjecting basketball gamers to pointless prostate examinations and did nothing to cease him.
Kathleen Delaney, who represents Mujezinovic and Miller, stated within the lawsuit that there could possibly be “at the very least 100” alleged victims.
Delaney named the Trustees of Indiana College as defendants within the lawsuit, alleging Title IX violations by the varsity for failing to guard the scholars. Below that federal legislation, universities that obtain federal funding are required to have security measures to guard college students from predators.
In response, Indiana College retained the Jones Day legislation agency to launch an independent investigation into the Bomba allegations.
Bomba isn’t listed as a defendant. Knight died last year at age 83.
Delaney declined to touch upon the most recent growth in a case that has put an unwelcome highlight on Bomba, who was the lads’s basketball group doctor for 20 years, and on the college’s vaunted hoops program.
William J. Beggs, the Bloomington, Indiana, lawyer who, in line with the court docket papers, has been representing Bomba, didn’t instantly reply to an NBC Information request for remark.
Indiana College employed Bomba to offer medical care to all its sports activities groups from 1962 to 1970, and from 1979 till the late Nineteen Nineties he was the basketball group’s physician, in line with the lawsuit.
Mujezinovic and Miller stated of their lawsuit that they “had been routinely and repeatedly subjected to medically pointless, invasive, and abusive digital rectal examinations” by Bomba. The physician had played football for Indiana University and was nicknamed “Frankenstein” by coaches and gamers “because of the massive measurement of his palms and fingers,” the lawsuit added.
“Dr. Bomba, Sr.’s routine sexual assaults had been overtly mentioned by the Hoosier males’s basketball gamers within the locker room within the presence of IU workers, together with assistant coaches, athletic trainers, and different Hoosier males’s basketball employees,” in line with the lawsuit.
Mujezinovic, who spent two seasons at Indiana from 1995 to 1997, and Miller, who performed for the Hoosiers from 1994 by means of 1998, are in search of unspecified damages. They’ve additionally urged their former teammates to come back ahead and be part of the lawsuit.
Prostate exams are usually carried out on males over age 40, in line with American Cancer Society guidelines.
However Bomba carried out them on the 20-something-year-old athletes who had been despatched to both him or his son, Dr. Bradford Bomba Jr., for bodily exams, the lawsuit stated.
The lawsuit doesn’t accuse Bomba’s son of any wrongdoing.
The accusations that IU turned a blind eye to allegations of a group physician sexually abusing student-athletes echo one other main scandal involving a group physician. In 2018, former Ohio State College wrestlers stated their coaches knew that Dr. Richard Strauss was preying on them but in addition did not act. Strauss died in 2005.
