Sixteen former University of Michigan hockey players filed a federal lawsuit this week alleging they were subjected to ritualized sexual abuse by teammates for nearly two decades, including forced genital shaving and being taunted with a blowtorch. Their coach, according to the lawsuit, knew. His response, when one player begged out of participating, was to tell him to be a 'Michigan man.' The University of Michigan, meanwhile, would like you to know it has had an anti-hazing policy since 1982.
What the Lawsuit Actually Says
The 72-page complaint, filed Wednesday in federal court in Detroit, covers players who suited up for Michigan between 1984 and 2001. Attorney Michael Pitt described the conduct in terms that should make anyone's stomach drop: 'The abuse was ritualized, meticulously planned, and sadistic. Enduring sexual abuse was required to be a member of the Michigan Men's Ice Hockey team.'
The specific allegations are worth sitting with. Players were forced to consume excessive amounts of alcohol and eat live fish. The most common allegation involves teammates forcibly shaving hair around the genitals of other players. One plaintiff, identified as John Doe 7, says he was held down on a table while someone waved a blowtorch at him. This is not a fraternity prank that got a little out of hand. This is organized, repeated abuse against young men who just wanted to play college hockey.
The lawsuit grew, according to the Guardian, out of conversations among former teammates that started in 2024. It took thirty-plus years and a group chat for any of this to make it into a courtroom. That tells you something about how thoroughly this kind of culture silences people.
The Coach Who Saw Nothing, Heard Nothing, Coached Through All of It
Red Berenson ran the Michigan hockey program from 1984 to 2017. Thirty-three years. The man coached through the entire alleged abuse window and then some. The lawsuit says he was aware of the hazing and did not intervene.
John Doe 3 says he went directly to Berenson and told him he did not want to participate in the hazing. According to the lawsuit, Berenson's response was to pressure him into compliance by invoking the phrase 'Michigan man' and telling him to be a 'good teammate.' That is not a coaching staff that didn't know. That is a coaching staff that was actively managing the situation to keep it going.
Berenson, now 86, declined to comment when reached by the Associated Press. He did speak to MLive.com, and his response there is extraordinary. He acknowledged 'a certain element of initiation' from the seniors, denied anyone complained to him, and then said this: 'When they say sexual, I'm guessing they're stretching this.' Sixteen men filed a 72-page federal lawsuit and the former coach's reaction is that they might be exaggerating. The blowtorch guy would probably disagree.
Berenson did announce the end of 'freshman hazing' in 2012, but that announcement was about things like carrying equipment and eating last at team meals. He acknowledged at the time that some captains 'got too carried away.' Got too carried away. With a blowtorch.
The University's Defense Is a Special Kind of Audacity
The University of Michigan's official response, delivered through spokesperson Paul Corliss, manages to be both technically accurate and utterly shameless. 'To the extent any former student athlete engaged in hazing or other misconduct, they were violating university policy,' Corliss said. Corliss also made a point of highlighting that Michigan adopted an official anti-hazing policy in 1982 and was 'one of the first universities in the country to do so.'
So to recap: the university had a written anti-hazing policy. The abuse started two years later and continued for roughly seventeen years. The university would like credit for the policy. The plaintiffs would like the university to explain what exactly that policy was doing during those seventeen years.
The university is also expected to argue that the players waited too long to file. Michigan made the exact same argument in 2020 when former athletes sued over sexual abuse committed by campus sports doctor Robert Anderson. That case ended with the university agreeing to pay $490 million to settle claims from more than 1,000 victims. The 'you waited too long' defense did not work especially well that time.
Michigan's Very Expensive Pattern
The Anderson case is not ancient history. That $490 million settlement, covering abuse that stretched across decades by a university-employed doctor, was finalized just a few years ago. Michigan had to look more than a thousand people in the eye and write checks because its systems failed, repeatedly, to stop a predator everyone in the building knew about.
Now a different set of plaintiffs is alleging a different set of university employees looked the other way while a different kind of abuse happened inside a different athletic program. The common thread is not bad luck. It is institutional indifference to what happened to young people in its care, followed by institutional lawyering when those people finally come forward.
The New York Post and the Guardian both report that the university is likely to raise the statute of limitations as a defense. Watch for it. It is the legal equivalent of telling abuse survivors they took too long to be believed, and Michigan has already tried it once at enormous cost.
The Dingo Take
A 72-page federal lawsuit. Sixteen plaintiffs. Seventeen years of alleged abuse. And the guy who coached through all of it wants to know if maybe 'sexual' is too strong a word. Red Berenson built one of the most decorated programs in college hockey history. He is in the United States Hockey Hall of Fame. His response to this lawsuit is to suggest the men describing what happened to them might be stretching it. That is the response of someone who has spent a very long time telling himself a story about what kind of program he ran.
The University of Michigan keeps ending up in the same place. Decades of abuse. Survivors who stayed quiet because the institution made silence feel mandatory. A legal strategy that treats the statute of limitations like a moral argument rather than a procedural technicality. The Anderson settlement cost $490 million and did not appear to prompt any serious institutional reckoning, because here we are again. Same university. Same playbook. Different sport.
Sixteen men are in federal court alleging they were sexually abused as college athletes and that their coach, when directly asked to help, told one of them to man up and be a good teammate. Whatever happens in that courtroom, that detail is not going anywhere. That is the whole story in one sentence.
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