Incoming U Michigan President Dr. Cybele Raver Responds to Cassandra Fameux Query !
While Grasso And Michigan Remain Silent On Cassandra Fameux Case, Incoming President Cybele Raver Shows Quality Leadership
Even before she has assumed the presidency of the University of Michigan, president-designate Dr. Cybele Raver has demonstrated something that current President Domenico Grasso and the university’s Board of Regents have conspicuously failed to demonstrate: responsiveness.
Since Black Star News began asking questions in November 2023 about allegations of medical abuse involving Haitian immigrant Cassandra Fameux, her former husband, Dr. Paul Gregory St. Claire, a former University of Michigan Health Sparrow anesthesiologist, and psychiatrist Dr. Dominic Barberio, the university has largely remained silent.
Dr. Raver did not.
Within three days of receiving questions from Black Star News, Raver’s office acknowledged the inquiry and forwarded it to the appropriate officials at Michigan Medicine “for their consideration.”
That simple act has now put the ball squarely in the court of Grasso and the Board of Regents.
Will they finally answer the questions Black Star News has been asking for nearly three years? Or will they continue to bury their heads in the sand and hope the issue can be kicked down the road until Raver takes office?
Black Star News contacted Raver, currently provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs at Vanderbilt University, in a letter dated August 21, 2026, and sent by email the following day.
We told her that we hoped her administration would, once she assumed office, “bring greater transparency to a matter involving allegations of serious medical abuse, possible alteration of medical records and sexual harassment involving a former University of Michigan Health Sparrow physician.”
The allegations are extraordinarily serious.
Fameux has alleged that St. Claire and Barberio illegally medicated her with powerful antipsychotic drugs at the university hospital from 2014 through 2023. She alleged that Barberio misdiagnosed her with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, paving the way for the medication.
Several psychiatrists who subsequently evaluated Fameux concluded that she was neither schizophrenic nor bipolar. Dr. Rita Aouad, her psychiatrist at Lansing-based Community Mental Health (CMH), testified during the couple’s divorce proceedings that Fameux instead suffered from severe PTSD stemming from years of an abusive marriage.
According to testimony in the divorce proceedings, Fameux was given Risperdal from 2014 to 2017, Invega Sustenna injections from 2017 to 2021, and Abilify from 2021 to 2023.
The allegations became even more troubling when Meridian Township Police investigated.
Fameux also handed police audio of a secretly recorded September 2023 conversation in which Barberio acknowledged that she was not schizophrenic.
On April 10, 2025, after a six-month investigation, police recommended that St. Claire be criminally charged with domestic assault. Prosecutor John Dewane declined to authorize his arrest.
There is another extraordinary discrepancy.
Fameux’s University of Michigan Health Sparrow medical records list Barberio as the physician responsible for administering the monthly Invega Sustenna injections over a period of several years. Yet Dr. Barberio testified in the divorce proceedings that it was Dr. St. Claire himself who personally administered approximately 90 percent of those injections to his wife in Barberio’s office. The remaining injections, Barberio said, were administered by his nurses.
St. Claire’s name, however, does not appear on the medical records as having administered a single injection. Fameux alleged the only time Barberio himself ever injected her was when Dr. St. Claire was angry at her and phoned Barberio who went and injected her in the marital residence as “punishment.” Barberio claims he only injected Fameux once at home due to the pandemic and denies it was “punishment.”
Fameux also alleged that the two doctors never wrote prescriptions for the Invega injections and that the drugs were obtained from a storage cabinet in Barberio’s office. According to the police investigation, Barberio was able to produce documentation for only one prescription, dated November 6, 2020, despite the alleged monthly injections from 2017 through 2021.
Then there are Fameux’s allegations about the consequences of the medication.
She has attributed a brain tumor, a heart condition requiring an implanted loop monitor, diabetes and infertility to the Invega injections.
In a criminal complaint recorded on September 10, 2024, Officer Nathan Wicks wrote: “Cassandra advised that the continuous Invega injections is the reason the tumor and diabetes developed. Cassandra had medical paperwork proving her claims.”
The entire police report is available on www.DrStClaireEvidence.com
Fameux has also alleged that St. Claire’s motive was to induce her, while she was allegedly under the influence of these medications, to sign a Judgment of Separate Maintenance (JOSM) transferring all of the marital assets—including millions of dollars and two homes—to him. She signed that judgment on February 20, 2018. Black Star News has reported that the agreement is apparently void even though it’s being enforced. (Fameux’s attorney Timothy A. Diemer has filed an appeal).
The JOSM was drafted by St. Claire’s divorce lawyer Jessica Larson of the Mallory Lapka Scott Selin firm.
And then there is the question of her medical records.
St. Claire testified during the divorce proceedings that he was forced to resign from the university after officials confronted him with Fameux’s allegation that he had accessed and altered her medical records.
In July 2024, the Michigan Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) reportedly confirmed to Fameux’s social worker at Community Mental Health that St. Claire had altered Fameux’s medical records and that doing so constituted a crime, according to notes made by the social worker, Linda Wenzel, and reviewed by Black Star News.
If that account is accurate, a critical question follows: How did LARA obtain that information? Presumably, it would have come from the University of Michigan Health Sparrow.
So what did the university know about the alleged alteration of Fameux’s medical records? When did it know it? And what did it do about it?
Those are among the questions Black Star News has repeatedly asked Grasso and the Board of Regents.
Instead of answering, the university has hidden behind a nondisclosure agreement.
When the university terminated St. Claire on February 28, 2024, it entered into an NDA with him as part of a severance agreement.
That is particularly troubling if university officials knew that medical records had been altered.
Black Star News posed the question to Raver: if university officials knew about such alterations and nevertheless used an NDA to suppress or prevent disclosure of that information, couldn’t questions arise as to whether the agreement or its enforcement impeded a potential criminal investigation? That concern is heightened because the alleged alteration of the medical records was itself among the matters investigated by Meridian Township Police.
More questions about the NDA arise, considering reports that the university had disciplined St. Claire on numerous occasions after it substantiated sexual harassment allegations against him by co-workers and a patient, but never fired him.
There is another troubling contrast.
When football coach Sherrone Moore was dismissed following allegations of an affair with a subordinate, the university devoted substantial resources and attention to the resulting controversy and Grasso issued two statements.
But more than two years after St. Claire’s termination, the university has not publicly disclosed whether it conducted any comparable investigation into allegations involving a physician, his former wife and the alleged manipulation of medical records.
The contrast is difficult to overlook.
Why does one form of alleged misconduct demand institutional transparency while another appears to receive institutional silence?
And why has the university repeatedly failed to answer basic questions about what it knew and when it knew it?
Black Star News also filed a Freedom of Information Act request on October 14, 2025. The university acknowledged receipt the following day, and Black Star News paid the requested fee.
Nearly a year later, the requested information still has not been provided.
Instead, after deadlines established by the university expired, a different FOIA officer would send another letter announcing a new deadline—often approximately three months into the future.
This has happened repeatedly.
One would almost think the university considers the Fameux allegations a bureaucratic joke.
It is not a joke to Fameux, who continues to live with a brain tumor, heart problems and other serious ailments while the institution that employed the doctor at the center of these allegations refuses to provide basic answers. Dr. St. Claire also continues to financially starve her since the JOSM is being enforced.
Black Star News previously raised some of these questions with Dr. Kent Syverud when he was president-designate. Unfortunately, his serious health problems prevented him from assuming the position.
We therefore asked Raver whether her incoming administration would review the university’s handling of Fameux’s allegations and, at minimum, commit to approaching the matter with transparency rather than simply relying on the NDA as a blanket justification for refusing legitimate questions.
We also raised a question that should trouble anyone concerned about equal treatment and institutional accountability:
Would this case have received greater institutional attention if Cassandra Fameux had not been a Haitian immigrant?
To her credit, Raver did not ignore the inquiry.
"As Provost Raver’s Chief of Staff, I write to confirm receipt of your August 22nd email to our office. Thank you for sharing your thoughts regarding the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the University of Michigan," Megan E. Sargent wrote, on August 24, 2026. "Because Provost Raver has not yet started her role at the University of Michigan, I have forwarded your message to the appropriate party at Michigan Medicine for their consideration."
And after nearly three years of silence from Grasso and the Board of Regents, even that basic act of acknowledging the questions is significant.
Black Star News subsequently contacted Patricia M. Petrowski, associate vice president and deputy general counsel at the University of Michigan, seeking comment.
Once again, silence.