Editor’s note: This story includes descriptions of sexual assault.
An Onondaga County judge denied Syracuse University’s motions to dismiss two lawsuits involving sexual abuse allegations against former Olympic athlete and student Conrad Mainwaring.
The two lawsuits, filed separately in the Onondaga County Supreme Court in February 2020, allege that SU “knowingly and willingly failed” to conduct proper investigations into credible claims that Mainwaring was abusing young boys in his dorm, where he worked as a resident adviser.
In one case, SU tried to seek dismissal by arguing that the plaintiff, who was 17 years old when the abuse occurred in 1982, could not be protected by the Child Victim Act because he had reached the age of consent an argument the judge rejected and called “misplaced.”