Content warning: This story addresses allegations of sexual abuse and may be difficult to read and emotionally upsetting.

Three women’s soccer players are suing Butler University for sexual assault they say they experienced at the hands of an athletic trainer employed by the university. All three soccer players are suing for negligence, battery, assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Two of the players suing Butler remain student-athletes at the university.

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All three lawsuits were filed in U.S. District Court in Indianapolis on Wednesday on behalf of the individual players, identified in their respective complaints as “Jane Doe 1-3.” The suits allege similar complaints against the trainer, Michael Howell, who is a co-defendant in the lawsuit. All three women say Howell sexually assaulted them during treatment sessions; Jane Does 1 and 2 also say in their complaints that he began grooming them during their freshman year. Jane Doe 2 said the sexual assaults she experienced began during her freshman season in 2019 and lasted into her junior year, in 2021, when he allegedly began to assault Jane Doe 1.

The lawsuits detail a culture in which Howell enjoyed a close relationship with one of the team’s coaches, wielded power over athletes’ treatment and playing time, and so routinely exposed players’ intimate body parts during massages that they coined a term for it, calling it “the breeze.” One player said that he threatened her by claiming he “knew everything about her” including her social security number, and said he had files of photos with players engaging in underage drinking. Another player said that Howell told her he knew where she lived and referenced the pillow he had seen through her dorm window, prompting her to feel “frightened and powerless against him.” A third player said he created “special” additional workouts for a select few players and instructed them not to tell their coaches about this group activity.

In a statement, Butler said it “promptly notified law enforcement, removed Howell from campus and suspended him from his job duties, pending further investigation” after it learned of Howell’s alleged misconduct in late September 2021.

“After a thorough investigation and hearing, the trainer was found responsible for violating university policies, and he was then terminated in summer 2022,” the university said. “Butler looks forward to the opportunity to show the high integrity and responsiveness of the coaches and senior personnel. Because the complaints do not name the plaintiffs and they have not waived federal student privacy protections, Butler is limited from further comment outside of the legal process.”

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Howell, who worked at Butler from 2012 until he was put on leave in October 2021 (the school said he was subsequently terminated in summer 2022), also did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

According to all three complaints, Howell assaulted numerous women on the soccer team and engaged in sexual misconduct including “rubbing his erect penis against female athletes” and groping “their outer vaginal areas, breasts and nipples.” This alleged conduct took place over the span of years in Butler’s “training room, offices, buses and in Howell’s private hotel rooms” while the team was on the road. Howell was under supervision by Butler’s senior associate athletic director, Ralph Reiff, as well as women’s soccer coaches Tari St. John and Robert Alman, according to the complaints.

Reiff, who the lawsuit names as Howell’s direct supervisor, is also named as a co-defendant. Reiff did not immediately return messages seeking comment. St. John and Alman are not co-defendants in any of the three lawsuits and both remain on Butler’s coaching staff.

Jane Doe 1, who is still a member of the women’s soccer team at Butler, said that Howell first targeted her as a freshman in September 2021, when he subjected her to a three-hour massage in which he rubbed her inner groin and touched the outer labia of her vagina “multiple times.” According to the complaint, Howell also massaged her breasts, “twisted her neck so hard it made it difficult for (her) to swallow” and “rubbed his erect penis against her hand.” Jane Doe 1 said Howell rubbed her groin and outer vaginal area so forcefully “that she had pain urinating and thought Howell caused her to have a urinary tract infection.”

Jane Doe 1’s complaint also states that five other women reported Howell for misconduct, “including the fact that he was surreptitiously photographing and videotaping athletes.” Jane Doe 1’s complaint claims that another athlete “noticed Howell’s actions and video recorded the treatment” and that “another video of Howell inappropriately treating an athlete was circulated amongst the athletes … and was eventually seen by Butler’s athletic staff.” In August 2021, the complaint says, a teammate of Jane Doe 1’s “caught Howell taking pictures of (her) from behind while she was lifting weights.” A week later, Howell showed Jane Doe 1 a video of a drill on his phone, at which point Jane Doe 1 noticed “that his photo gallery screen was filled with pictures with her.”

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On Sept. 28, 2021, 10 days after the three-hour massage from Howell in which Jane Doe 1 said she was sexually assaulted, four women soccer players “facing the prospect of private ‘treatment’ in Howell’s hotel room during an upcoming away game, and out of concern for themselves and younger teammates, particularly Jane Doe 1, reported Howell’s sexual misconduct to Coach St. John.” Howell was alerted to a “concern” by Reiff the following day, according to the complaint, and was instructed he would not be traveling to the team’s upcoming road game. However, Howell returned to work on Oct. 1, where, according to the complaint, he waited for Jane Doe 1 outside the training room and “confronted her.” On Oct. 2, 2021, Jane Doe 1 also reported Howell’s misconduct to St. John, prompting St. John to share that information with the school’s Title IX coordinator, the complaint said.

The complaint stated that Howell was alerted to the Title IX investigation prior to the school contacting law enforcement or seizing his work-issued phone, “allowing Howell to destroy and/or transfer likely lurid photographs and videos taken of the athletes.”

Between the period in which Howell was first reported (Sept. 28, 2021) and when he was ultimately placed on leave by the university (Oct. 6, 2021), he “made multiple attempts to interact with players in a manner that frightened them,” according to the complaint.

According to Jane Doe 1’s lawsuit, a five-month-long Title IX investigation was performed into the allegations. A panel of outside attorneys tasked with presiding over a five-day hearing on the allegations against Howell determined that Jane Doe 1 “was slowly and steadily isolated, stalked and manipulated” in an “unconscionably abusive environment,” and that Howell “sexually assaulted, sexually harassed and stalked Ms. Doe,” and had “sexually assaulted and harassed other young women on the soccer team,” citing a “widespread pattern of inappropriate conduct.”

According to the complaint, Butler and Reiff “ignored” NCAA warnings about potential staff-on-student-athlete abuse and the need for policies and training to prevent any such abuse from happening. Additionally, the complaint claims that the university and Reiff breached their duties by “permitting Howell to provide treatment to female athletes … in his private hotel room without staff or a third person present,” failing to protect student-athletes with appropriate protocols and policies, failing to prevent him from approaching female student-athletes after his alleged misconduct was reported and failing to prevent him from “destroying and deleting photographs, videos and others evidence from his university-issued cell phone.”

Howell, who is no longer a Butler University employee, also worked with the men’s baseball, men’s and women’s golf, men’s tennis and cheerleading teams while with Butler from 2012-2021.

Monica Beck, managing legal counsel with The Fierberg National Law Group, said the firm’s clients and other student-athletes on Butler’s women’s soccer team reported their abuse claims and “subsequently proved their allegations in an extensive investigation and Title IX hearings.”

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Beck said the athletes tried “for months to obtain justice from Butler without being forced to file suit, but Butler’s responses, such as they were, were inadequate and compelled them to file lawsuits.”

“By these lawsuits, these brave athletes seek to obtain full justice for the harms they suffered, notify other athletes who may have been sexually assaulted while playing varsity sports for the University that they are not alone and ensure that the predator once employed by Butler — who assaulted vulnerable female student-athletes multiple times, in multiple locations on and off campus — cannot hurt another athlete,” Beck told The Athletic via an emailed statement.

Joining Beck and Doug Fierberg as counsel on the lawsuits is Rachael Denhollander, who was the first woman to publicly come forward against disgraced former USA Gymnastics and MSU physician Larry Nassar, who sexually abused hundreds of young women and athletes under the guise of legitimate medical treatment. Nassar is currently serving a 40 to 175-year sentence in federal prison.

In joining Fierberg’s legal firm, Denhollander hopes to bring her advocacy and legal experience, “coupled with a very personal knowledge of the impact on survivors and the steps needed for reform.”

“I think it is important to be able to take a very multi-faceted approach to societal and cultural reform and, where institutions are resisting that reform, the only avenue left is to pursue justice and reform through the civil process,” Denhollander told The Athletic when reached by phone. “And it is my privilege to be able to stand with these women as I have with others in engaging with that reform.”

(Photo: Education Images / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)