The longtime Indiana University doctor accused of sexually abusing basketball players has died, but the lawsuit accusing the school’s trustees and a former athletic trainer of turning a blind eye to the alleged abuse lives on.
Dr. Bradford Bomba Sr., who has been accused of performing unnecessary rectal examinations on several generations of Hoosiers players, died on May 8 while receiving hospice care in his hometown of Bloomington, Indiana, according to his obituary. He was 89.
His death comes a week after a law firm hired by the university concluded that the doctor did not act “in bad faith or with an improper purpose” when he performed the exams on hundreds of young players during routine physicals.
But in the same report, medical experts brought on by the Jones Day law firm to help conduct the independent investigation wrote that “it was uncommon” for physicians to perform invasive exams like this on “college-age student athletes without pertinent history of complaints.”
Kathleen DeLaney, who represents five former Indiana players in the federal lawsuit, said Bomba’s death does not derail their case. Bomba is not named as a defendant.
In December Bomba testified via video in a deposition ordered by the federal judge presiding over the lawsuit. During the deposition, Bomba invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination dozens of times, according to a transcript of his testimony.
“We will be able to use that testimony, so we do not believe that Dr. Bomba’s death will impact our case,” Delaney wrote in an emailed response Tuesday to NBC News. “IU does not challenge that Dr. Bomba systematically and over decades penetrated the rectums of young, healthy male elite athletes.”
IU did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the death of Bomba, who provided medical care to all of its sports teams from 1962 to 1970 and was the men’s basketball team physician from 1979 until the late 1990s.
Born in Chicago, Bomba played football for Indiana University and was drafted by the Washington Redskins in 1957 but left the team after four preseason games to attend IU’s school of medicine, his obituary states.
Bomba was long retired when Haris Mujezinovic and Charlie Miller, who played for the Hoosiers in the 1990s under legendary coach Bob Knight, said in a lawsuit filed in October in U.S. District Court for Southern Indiana that the coaches and trainers were aware that Bomba was subjecting basketball players to unnecessary prostate examinations and did nothing to stop him.
Knight, who was described as a “close friend” in Bomba’s obituary, died two years ago at age 83.
The former Hoosiers players sued under Title IX, a federal law that requires all colleges and universities that receive federal funds to put safeguards in place to protect students from discrimination based on sex, including sexual harassment and sexual violence.
Since October, three other former players joined the class action lawsuit against the IU trustees and former athletic trainer Tim Garl.
Both the IU trustees and Garl have filed motions seeking to dismiss the lawsuit against them, court records show. Garl, who had been the head men’s basketball trainer at the school since 1981, was informed in April that IU would not be renewing his contract.
The Jones Day report called Garl’s behavior “unprofessional” for “razzing” players about the rectal exams at the hands of Bomba.
