Unspeakable allegations of sex, doping and denial at Indiana college | Opinion

INDIANAPOLIS – You want the adults in the room to behave that way. It’s not much to ask. It’s the bare minimum expectation of the leaders at Huntington University, who have 1,428 students on their campus and, more specifically, a handful of runners on their women’s cross-country team. You want those leaders to care for those young athletes, our teenagers, our children, to leap at the first sign of trouble, to come rushing to their aid.

The leaders at Huntington did not leap. They did not rush.

They did not care.

What star runners say has happened within the women’s cross-country program at Huntington, what they say has been allowed to happen – what is absolutely happening right now – defies explanation. It hurts to think this story could happen at a small, private Christian college in northeast Indiana, that it happened anywhere.

But we saw what happened for years, what was allowed to happen for years, at Penn State with Jerry Sandusky. We saw what happened for decades, what was allowed to happen for decades, within USA Gymnastics. The runners' recently filed lawsuit reads like another of those stories, and while the level of devastation can vary, the core of each story is the same: A combination of power and neglect, of sexual abuse and willful denial.

Read the original investigation:Huntington University coach created a culture of doping and sex, star runners allege

What star runners say has happened at Huntington, what they say has been allowed to happen – what is happening, right now – is an ethical, moral and spiritual tragedy with very real, very young, very hurt victims. And all of those who were in charge at the school when this allegedly happened? They’re still employed at Huntington. The school president. The chief operating officer. The athletic director. The Board of Trustees.

They’re still there.

Coach goes to prison, so Huntington hired his wife

The warning signs were there months earlier, brought to Huntington University’s attention by a concerned local high school official, but the story didn’t explode until December 2020, when Huntington Hall of Famer Nick Johnson was charged with child seduction, kidnapping and identity deception.

Johnson was Huntington’s cross-country coach.

Court records show he created a fake email address claiming to be a member of the Oregon cross-country program, an actual person there, a female assistant athletic director. Under the guise of this woman, Johnson reached out to the parents of a high school runner, an underage girl, to arrange a “recruiting trip.”

Court records show Johnson and the girl did in fact go to Oregon, where they spent a weekend in August 2020 at motels in Portland and Eugene. Police say Nick Johnson showered with the girl, sexually abused her, "used or exerted his professional relationship” to engage in sexual conduct intended "to arouse or satisfy his own sexual desires or the sexual desires of Victim 1."

One month later, unaware of the bogus recruiting trip that August but uncomfortable with Johnson’s “recruiting” methods, Huntington North High School athletic director Kris Teusch met with Johnson and Huntington University chief operating officer Russ Degitz in September 2020. According to police records, Teusch told the HU coach and COO that community members “were concerned about the constant flow of students in and out of Mr. Johnson’s residence.” Teusch wanted to bring this to the university’s attention.

If anything resulted from that warning flare, HU officials aren’t saying. They’ve declined comment to IndyStar reporter David Woods. What we know is this: Three months later, Nick Johnson was arrested and accused of assuming the identity of a female administrator at Oregon to fool a family into allowing him to take their teenage daughter to motels in Oregon.

Johnson was charged with four felonies, eventually pleading guilty to identity deception in exchange for the prosecutor dropping the charges of seduction and kidnapping. His victim, the girl in high school – Johnson was 33 at the time – didn’t cooperate with prosecutors, leading to the deal that sent Johnson to jail for 30 days, followed by 150 days of electronic monitoring. The court also issued a no-contact order with the victim.

The fallout from that court case included the revelation that Johnson had engaged in sexual activity with two of his runners, including NAIA national champion Hannah Stoffel, who provided police a 40,000-word document detailing her story. The runners were both over 18 at the time.

According to police records, Johnson’s wife, Lauren Johnson, was aware of the sexual activity. Stoffel said Lauren Johnson claimed her husband had a sexual addiction.

Along the way, Nick Johnson’s name was added to the list of banned coaches by the U.S. Center for SafeSport, a nonprofit organization created in 2017 by Congress under the auspices of the Protecting Young Victims from Sexual Abuse and Safe Sport Authorization Act.

Huntington fired Nick Johnson in December 2020.

And replaced him two months later with his wife, Lauren Johnson.

This really happened. It happened at Huntington University.

What you need to know:Huntington University Indiana track program is under scrutiny.

It is happening, even now. Lauren Johnson is still the coach. Degitz is still the COO. Dr. Sherilyn Emberton is still the president, and Lori Culler is still the athletic director. As for the 33-person Board of Trustees, well, you won’t believe what one of them did next.

Huntington officials brush off athletes, parents

Less than two years after being fired by Huntington University, with court and police records alleging sexual contact with a high school recruit and an admission of sex with two of his college runners, Nick Johnson is employed at Clounie Landscaping, located 8 miles from Huntington’s campus. The business is owned by Thomas Clounie, a ranking member of HU’s Board of Trustees.

Nick Johnson also remains close to the HU women’s cross-country team. His wife is the coach, remember.

It was inside their house where Johnson and his wife, Lauren, put up Stoffel in a guest bedroom, where the runner says the sexual contact occurred. It was inside the garage where Nick Johnson set up snacks and massage tables and is accused of giving sexual massages to an athlete identified as Victim 1 in a probable cause affidavit in the 2020 criminal case.

It was inside that house where Nick Johnson is accused of injecting unidentified substances into his runners, substances his best two runners, Stoffel and Emma Wilson, suspect were illegal performance-enhancing drugs. Stoffel and Wilson told our David Woods they want their records, results, even the Foresters’ 2020 national championship, invalidated. The women are the plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed Friday.

Wilson, who won five NAIA titles in the 2021 calendar year, said in the suit Lauren Johnson was aware of her husband’s alleged doping scheme. Remember, police records say Lauren Johnson also was aware of his sexual activity with runners. She remains the cross-country coach at a school whose leaders brushed off complaints of runners and their parents.

Stoffel says she told school officials about the mysterious shots administered at the Johnson household, to no effect. She decided to transfer to IU in January 2021, one month after Johnson’s arrest, and says she received an exit survey from Isaac Barber, HU’s director of student success, at Emberton’s request. Stoffel says she returned it within days, and under "recommendations" suggested HU better regulate its coaches. She indicated she was unwilling to disclose any more in the survey, leaving the door open to an in-person conversation.

“I left it up to them to decide if they wanted to know,” she told our David Woods in an email, “and it felt like they didn't.”

Emma Wilson, a national-caliber runner from Greencastle, has quit the sport from disillusionment at age 21. Her dad, Chad Wilson, told Woods he repeatedly emailed HU leaders about problems within the track program – until school officials asked him to stop. They declined to meet with him, Chad Wilson says, though the COO, Degitz, assured him the situation “is in the proper hands for review and handling.”

Not sure about that. Not if the situation is in the hands of the same athletic director, president and Board of Trustees that allowed this story to unfold. Those people ignored the warning signs about Nick Johnson, fired him only after he was charged with four felonies, then replaced him with someone allegedly aware of the sexual and drug-administering accusations – his wife. One university trustee then hired Nick Johnson for his landscaping company.

Lauren Johnson remains the coach at Huntington University, whose official website notes that things are different at Huntington. Better, the school seems to be implying in words it put in bold, for emphasis.

"It is recognized that Huntington University expectations of behavior, based on Biblical teaching and community standards, may be different from behavioral expectations of societal laws and norms," the website notes.

That's a school in need of a new mission statement. Might as well get a new coach, AD, president and Board of Trustees while they’re at it.

Find IndyStar columnist Gregg Doyel on Twitter at @GreggDoyelStar or at  www.facebook.com/greggdoyelstar.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Sex, doping allegations at Huntington, college in Indiana, unspeakable