DETROIT — More than a dozen former hockey players have sued the University of Michigan, alleging their coach and other employees knew about sexual hazing that included forced genital shaving and other abuse by teammates decades ago.
“The abuse was ritualistic, carefully planned and sadistic. … To survive the sexual assault, one had to be a member of the Michigan men’s hockey team,” attorney Michael Pitt said in a sex discrimination lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Detroit.
The plaintiffs are 16 people who played for Michigan between 1984 and 2001. The lawsuit appears to have stemmed from conversations between several former 2024 teammates.
The university said the allegations were “disturbing” but denied responsibility.
“To the extent that any former student-athlete engaged in hazing or other misconduct, he violated university policy,” spokesman Paul Corliss said in a written statement.
“The university first adopted an official anti-hazing policy in 1982. It was one of the first universities in the country to adopt this and has earned a reputation as a leader in this field,” he said.
The lawsuit says Red Berenson, who was coach from 1984 to 2017, knew about the abuse and did not intervene.
Berenson announced an end to “freshman hazing” in 2012, meaning freshmen were forced to carry equipment and eat team food. He made no mention of physical abuse but acknowledged that “the captains got too carried away,” according to reports at the time.
Berenson, 86, declined to comment on the lawsuit Thursday.
“Give me a chance to realize what’s going on,” the former NHL player said.
The university has faced other allegations of sexual misconduct in recent years. The company agreed in 2022 to pay $490 million to settle claims by more than 1,000 people who said the sports doctor sexually abused them during his nearly 40-year career at the school.