SAN JOSE – A mistrial was declared Thursday in the trial of San Jose State’s former head athletic trainer accused of sexually assaulting female athletes during treatment sessions.
The jury deadlocked after four days of deliberations.
Scott Shaw, who resigned in 2020 a decade after complaints against him first emerged, hugged his mother when the jury left and the two broke into tears.
The decision came hours after U.S. District Judge Beth Labson Freeman told jurors to not to “bully or antagonize each other.”
“I hope whatever discomfort you felt, that you leave with goodwill toward each other,” she told the jury, “and none of it was personal.”
It wasn’t clear Thursday whether prosecutors would continue to pursue the case.
The abrupt ending to the proceedings capped two weeks of testimony where former female athletes broke into tears as they testified how they were “internally freaking out,” “frozen” or had “every alarm” going off when Shaw touched them under their bras and underwear to treat shoulder, back or knee injuries. Athletic trainers testified they never touched female athletes the way Shaw did and former male athletes testified that Shaw didn’t come close to their nipples or groins to treat similar injuries.
Three former San Jose State swimmers, Kirsten Trammell, Caitlin Macky and Lindsay Warkentin, attended the federal trial Tuesday, July 25, 2023, of their former head athletic trainer Scott Shaw whom they have accused of sexually assaulting them under the guise of treatment. Macky testified Tuesday. (Photo by Julia Prodis Sulek/ Bay Area News Group)
Three former San Jose State swimmers, Kirsten Trammell, Caitlin Macky and Lindsay Warkentin, attended the federal trial Tuesday, July 25, 2023, of their former head athletic trainer Scott Shaw whom they have accused of sexually assaulting them under the guise of treatment. Macky testified Tuesday. (Photo by Julia Prodis Sulek/ Bay Area News Group)
The trial also pitted the testimony of two sports medicine doctors against each other. Dr. Cindy Chang, the prosecution expert with an illustrious resume and career as the chief medical officer for the U.S. Women’s Soccer League and more than a decade working with athletic trainers and athletes at UC Berkeley, testified that Shaw’s actions were “completely inappropriate.” Dr. Brett DeGooyer, the defense expert from a small town in Washington who worked once or twice a month in a community college athletic training room, testified just the opposite, that touching the breast or groin could help injuries in other places and, in fact, he had just recently touched a female athlete’s breast tissue to treat a shoulder injury.
Defense lawyers had suggested that jurors might believe that Shaw should have been fired from his job for failing to properly explain his methods or seek their permission to touch the athletes’ private areas, but while that might amount to bad practice, they said, it’s not a crime.
Lawyers for the U.S. Attorney’s office said that Shaw had known for more than a decade that his behavior was upsetting female athletes but continued to do it, which ultimately led to the federal charges.
The verdict ends a 14-year saga that began in 2009 when a member of the Spartan swim team told her coach she didn’t want to go back to Shaw for a shoulder injury: “I don’t feel like getting felt up.”
A total of 17 swimmers from that team came forward accusing Shaw of touching them inappropriately on their breasts and pubic areas. An internal investigation in 2010 cleared Shaw, finding that his “trigger point therapy” of touching one area of the body to treat another was legitimate treatment. Shaw kept his job until he voluntarily resigned in 2020. By that time, swim coach Sage Hopkins’s decade-long crusade to protect his athletes burst into public view, leading to several more investigations into San Jose State’s handling of the case, including a U.S. Department of Justice probe. The fallout led to the university paying out more than $5 million in legal settlements and federal fines to victims and the resignations last year of former university President Mary Papazian and Athletic Director Marie Tuite.
Although more than two dozen former athletes lodged complaints about Shaw since 2009, the federal charges involved just four former athletes whose experiences occurred only as far back as 2017, within the statute of limitations.