Three ex-staffers of Northwestern University’s baseball team filed a lawsuit alleging the school retaliated against them for reporting abuse by former coach Jim Foster.
The lawsuit is the latest filed against the university regarding alleged abuse and hazing in the athletic department and follows more than a dozen lawsuits filed by former student football players.
In the lawsuit, former assistant coaches Dusty Napoleon and Jon Strauss and former baseball operations director Chris Beacom say they blew the whistle on Foster’s alleged bullying in November 2022, less than a year after Foster was hired.
The university told them it investigated the allegations and proved some of the allegations, but the school did nothing to stop the abuse, according to the lawsuit filed Monday in Cook County by the law firm Esbrook P.C.
The school then allegedly demoted the three staffers and declined to renew their contracts.
“Northwestern stood by Coach Foster and got rid of the coaches that blew the whistle on him,” Beacom told reporters Monday. “And only when the media found out about Coach Foster’s abuse, did Northwestern choose to do something.”
The lawsuit alleges Foster bullied and abused staffers, asked them to violate NCAA rules and denied medical care to some players. The ex-staffers accused the school of failing to conduct a thorough background check that would have discovered Foster’s alleged previous abuse.
Northwestern’s burgeoning abuse scandal broke July 7 when the university published a summary of an internal investigation into alleged hazing on the football team. The school initially suspended football head coach Pat Fitzgerald for two weeks, then fired him on July 17 after widespread news coverage of the scandal. The school fired Foster three days later.
In a statement, Northwestern said the lawsuit is “without merit.” The school said it immediately began a human resources investigation when it learned of the complaints against Foster.
“The assistant coaches and director of operations received full support from the University, they were paid for their full contracts and, at their request, were allowed to support other areas of our athletic department as needed,” the school said in its statement. “In this instance and others, the athletic director and department acted promptly and handled the complaints in accordance with established University policy and protocols.”
The ex-staffers initially reported the abuse in a conversation with the athletic department, then wrote a formal complaint to HR on Nov. 30, 2022, the lawsuit states. The university conducted a three-month investigation into Foster that ended in February with the decision to handle the matter internally, the lawsuit states.
When the coaches did not feel safe in the work environment and did not want to travel with the head coach to away games when the 2023 season began in February, they were demoted from their positions and their contracts were not renewed, according to the suit.
