Brett McMurphy Goes After Shelley Meyer
His latest post is below:
Less than two months before Ohio State WR coach Zach Smith was investigated in 2015 for domestic violence and felonious assault against Courtney Smith, Shelley Meyer was a featured speaker at a Birmingham, Ala., conference to draw awareness to the ongoing fight to eradicate domestic violence.
The conference – “College Football Wives 2015” – was in August 2015 and featured eight wives of prominent coaches speaking against domestic violence. The event was part of a public awareness campaign called “Refuse The Abuse” – and came less than two months before Zach Smith’s alleged domestic violence on Courtney Smith on Oct. 25, 2015.
Shelley has been an employee of Ohio State since 2012, working in the College of Nursing.
“With our coaching staff and Urban, disrespecting women or any violence toward women is one of the rules of the team that is not acceptable," Shelley Meyer told AL.com on Aug. 8, 2015.
Despite multiple domestic violence allegations against Zach Smith, he remained with the program until he was fired July 23, 2018.
Urban Meyer said last month during Big Media Days that he and his wife, Shelley, “counseled” Zach and Courtney Smith in 2009 after Zach Smith was arrested on domestic violence charges – aggravated assault against a pregnant victim. Courtney was 10 weeks pregnant at the time.
“She’s (Shelley) always weighed in as my best friend and soul mate,” Urban said at Big Ten Media Days on July 24. “She’s been right there with everything. Especially when you’re dealing with – not who’s going to carry the ball on third down, she has an opinion on that too – we chat about people. She has a great spirit. A great love of people. Her heart is always in the right place. She’s phenomenal. Absolutely I rely on her.”
Courtney told me she refused to press charges in 2009 after Meyer’s longtime “life coach” Hiram de Fries convinced her to drop the charges.
Courtney said last month she had multiple conversations and text message exchanges with Shelley about Zach’s domestic violence in 2015. Courtney also shared pictures of her abuse with Shelley.
In a 2015 text message to Courtney, Shelley said she was concerned for Courtney’s safety: ““I am with you! A lot of women stay hoping it will get better. I don’t blame you! But just want u to be safe. Do you have a restraining order? He scares me.”
On Aug. 1, Ohio State announced it was investigating Urban Meyer and the investigation was expected to be completed within 14 days.
In an interview with (614) magazine, published Jan. 5, 2015, Shelley proudly discussed her ability to help people with their “tragic situations.”
“I’m a psychiatric nurse, for God’s sake,” Shelley told the magazine. “All I do is help people problem-solve, help them with their social issues, their personal tragic situations, real life stuff.”
Meanwhile, Ohio State University, since last Friday, refused to respond to multiple public record requests inquiring about the employment status of Shelley Meyer, who is a part-time instructor of clinical practice at the university’s College of Nursing.
At 12:58 p.m. Monday, Benjamin Johnson and Christopher Davey, of Ohio State’s university communications office, assured the information would be provided “very soon.”
UPDATE: About an hour after I published this story Tuesday afternoon, Ohio State finally responded to my four-day old public information request.
Johnson did not say if Shelley Meyer had been disciplined - her husband Urban was placed on paid administrative leave on Aug. 1 - only that Shelley's next teaching assignment at Ohio State starts Sept. 1. She annual receives $13,392 in compensation.
Johnson added Shelley Meyer teaches one class each year during the fall semester and is currently not teaching this term. She began at Ohio State in 2012, the first season Urban was hired as head coach.
Shelley Meyer, as an OSU employee, could have violated the school’s Sexual Misconduct Policy and potentially Title IX, if she did not notify her supervisor of Courtney Smith’s repeated abuse.
Do we still play Notre Dame on 9/1? I truly can't wait for some real football...
I bet Harbaugh is pleased with the OSU situation. Less pressure on him to open communication with the sub when Mich fans are distracted. Typically the board would be filled with posts analyzing every shred of information about whether Shea has the position locked down, etc.
If we take Jim at his word, with what he's said about abuse during and after the visit by Brenda Tracy, I don't think he's taking pleasure in this affair, even if it distracts the media away from his team.
I think he's more of the viewpoint that this damages the image of college athletics in general.
I wouldn't say he's taking pleasure in the situation, but he can still be pleased that there is less attention/questions focused on him as he prepares the team for the season.
Of course he's disappointed in the source of the scandal and wouldn't wish personal damage on anyone for the sake of a media reprieve. I think that goes without saying. I simply was saying he probably doesn't mind having less pressure on him at the moment seeing as he absolutely hates talking to the media.
Totally agree with this. I get the OP sentiment, i.e. that there may perhaps be a tiny and insignificant silver lining for JH, but I don't think ANYONE should be pleased with this situation. Lest he or she have her head checked and priorities straightened out.
Like most, I get no pleasure out of this situation. Despite it tainting the reputation of a rival, it is bad for college sports, bad for college football, and wow- can the B1G look any worse? (PSU, MSU, OSU)
There is a sense of vindication, however, in that the Meyer's and all their bs and the fraud that is their moral sanctimonious morality crap has been exposed once again. Get the guy out of college football...he's another Pitino sleazeball win at all cost type that, while successful in wins and losses, should not be leading and building the character of young men.
Ha, appreciate the laugh
This Meyer family seems to speak a lot of bullshit.
What's the saying, "walk fast, talk a lot of shit?"
No no no. The saying is "If it tastes like chocolate, then it's really good."
I just don’t understand how Shelley Meyer can say that Zach scares her yet never suggest firing Zach to her husband or like press him to take more control over the situation. Like how can you say you’re helping Courtney out of one side of your mouth and do absolutely nothing at the same time?
Looks to me like she's got 40million reasons to keep her mouth shut.
Maybe she has a ridiculous double standard.
Or maybe, as someone who says she works with domestic violence victims, she has seen a lot of different situations and it's a tough call. There are, without question, situations where DV victims are battered yet still genuinely worry for the well-being of their families if their husbands lose jobs, or worry for their own well-being if the husband is abruptly fired. Perhaps she has actually seen situations where bad things happened as a result of intervention.
I don't know. It seems that she majorly messed up. But I do suspect that a lot of people with the hottest opinions about what Shelley should have done seem to be people who have never actually been involved in really hard situations like this.
To me, the argument against intervention because it could cause a worse outcome is extremely dangerous. If someone is worried enough about the possibility that a situation would become violent in the event of intervention, they are more generally saying that the situation is dangerous for basically anything that is not in direct service of placating the abuser. Anything that changes the status quo will likely set off the abuser again, and I don't think there's a strong enough argument for "we can minimize one potential source of stress" by not reporting it to justify it. That's why we have mandatory reporting on abuse; it's to mitigate the rationalizations that human beings try to employ because we don't want conflict.
I think people are giving Shelley Meyer way too much credit. Either she told people and they didn't care or she didn't tell people because she knew it was going to hurt OSU/Urban. There might be permutations at the edges, but those are the two core outcomes she could have traversed, and both suck. Honestly, I don't care that this happened at OSU; I was just as pissed off with Baylor and all of their coverup. The problem is that most of Michigan's conference schedule is full of schools that, at best, made excuses for child sexual predators, sexual assaulters, and domestic violence perpetrators. Maybe it's something in the water.
The argument isn't "there shouldn't be an intervention because it could make things worse." It's "there shouldn't be an intervention right now because it could make things worse."
A survivor and those helping her might - in extreme situations - need to take a couple of important steps before it's worth tipping the abuser in the direction of being homicidal. The requirement of having to report DV to the Title IX office worries me. I may not appreciate all that Title IX offices do, but I am concerned that they poke around after learning of DV without first making sure the survivor is going to be safe when they do that. Again, though, I may not have a full appreciation for the work of Title IX offices.
August 7th, 2018 at 10:46 PM ^
To me, the argument about timeliness is the wrong one to make. The abuser has already abused the survivor at least once; in most cases, it's a series of escalations. The time to intervene is now, and that includes getting the abused out of the environment. It's already pretty bad if someone is choking you while your kid is hanging onto your foot; "worse" is relative at that point.
Also, we've had a long history of people trying not to report DV for any number of good-intentioned and bullshit reasons; Urban commented in his presser that he though the Smiths were a young couple and they were fighting, as if hitting each other is an acceptable part of any relationship, even a nascent one. That's why I don't mind Title IX forcing people to report DV; I'd rather we wrong about violence than be right when they're rolling someone out on a stretcher.
Maybe there is some very particular set of circumstances where reporting DV today isn't best but tomorrow would be better. But that's not what happened here; they've known about this for years, apparently, and didn't do a damn thing to stop it. If Title IX formalizes that disclosure, then it's doing it's job.
I think it's less a double standard and more that it's a lot easier to tell everyone what to do as a speaker but a lot harder to take the proper action when you're involved with them. Common issue with politicians and lots of other public figures. Talk is cheap.
Intervention is never bad when abuse is involved, especially when the person has reached out for help. Let’s not rationalize that abuse victims are okay with abuse for the sake of a good salary/the benefits of not getting g help. Even is the abused is okay being strangled, her kids are not okay, and it is not okay to remain silent with knowledge provided directly to her by the victim.
Meyer has a legal and moral obligation, not just to the abused but to any future person conceivably harmed by someone else under a future similar scenario. It is not her job to judge the outcome; her job is to protect the person from further abuse—or to start the legal process that is to protect her. Smith was a repeat offender by 2015, so she knew damn well the statistics of repeat offenders.
Nowhere in college do they teach young psychologists and psych clinic nurses that they should weigh whether the abuse upon the victim will harm his or her future finances or reported. Nowhere do they teach them that abuse has times they shouldn’t report it. Students are taught that the ethical thing to do on the job is to report and let the legal system do its job. Tough? Yes, but necessary so that we can reduce abuse and let society know that it is not okay.
It really doesn't matter what her rationale was though, right? The question for her as an OSU employee is whether she reported it through the proper channels as required by Title IX, right? She is required and mandated to do that. There is no grey area in that regard.
If she did report it properly, I think she's fine. She couldn't fire Smith herself. There's not much else she could do unless we want to blame her for not convincing Urban to fire him and I think that's a little too far outside of her control.
If she didn't report it as she's required, that's a big problem because it would clearly have been to protect her husband and the football program. To keep it within the AD.
She has as many questions to answer as Urban. Maybe even more considering what she purported to prioritize and evangelize.
How is this a “really hard situation”? Shelley was in a position of great power over Zach, great power to protect his victim. She and Urban should have both told him in 2009 that if he ever touched her again he’d be immediately fired and never coach again. Isn’t that what you would have done—if not firing him the first time because he was clearly a bad influence on the players?
If the wife sends those picture to her husband’s boss’s wife, she’s asking for help. If she doesn’t want him fired because she wants the money, she at least wants the head coach to threaten her husband, right?
Do we know what she did/didn't do? It was ultimately her husband's decision to keep him on, in any event.
The fact that Shelley is employed by the university and didn't (allegedly) tell any of her superiors could do damage to the university independently of what Urban didn't report. Double the trouble of both are found in the wrong.
August 7th, 2018 at 11:51 PM ^
Well we do know she pushed the narrative that urban has a zero tolerance policy about violence against woman. All the while, the new full well he was allowing a coach keep his job after multiple incidents.
August 7th, 2018 at 11:56 PM ^
Well we do know she pushed the narrative that urban has a zero tolerance policy about violence against woman. All the while, the new full well he was allowing a coach keep his job after multiple incidents.
Probably a better idea to provide a link to McMurphy with a brief summary, as opposed to his entire post/article.
It's Facebook. He literally gets nothing from links.
No, I'm sure he wants to drive clicks to his page. More engagements, people following his page, etc. can only help. Even if it's not directly monetized right now
Forgot he was Mr Facebook. Verrry 2010 of him.
Other than a personal blog or something, that was the only platform for him to post his story due to his non-compete clause with ESPN barring him from working for another publication.
He's on FB because he forgot his password for MySpace
here's the link btw, for those so inclined: https://www.facebook.com/TheBrettMcMurphy/posts/2052330788124308
I certainly applaud McMurphy for trying to keep the pressure on. Unfortunately at this point Meyer will keep his job. If anyone gets fired it will be his wife or Gene Smith.
If OSU believes the solution is to "fire" Mrs. Meyer but keep Urban as HC and Gene Smith as AD, they really deserve the worst.
Why should Meyer get fired? Because his assistant coach was accused of DV?
Yes, multiple times over the past 9 years yet he kept getting contract extensions until the info went public.
And it was when the info on public that the assistant was fired. What are the Optics on that?
So if you're the boss and one of your employees is accused of, but never arrested or charged with domestic violence, you should lose your job? Interesting take
If you have strong reason to believe the employee was beating his wife via repeated incidents and photographic evidence over a number of years, and you're in a highly-public position (especially within a public university or publicly-elected office) with influence over the development of young people, then yes, you should lose your job. I would insist upon the same standard for e.g. a principal of a school. Again, I struggle to see what is so difficult to understand.
Anyone who knows anything about domestic violence knows that even if an assault occurred, it's a high bar to clear to press charges and ultimately secure a conviction if the assaulted is unwilling to cooperate in an investigation. If that's your ultimate bar for judgment, that is far too high. Preponderance of the evidence received over a number of years should be plenty to pull the trigger, especially when the employee's contract came up for renewal multiple times and finding cause would not have been necessary to terminate employment.
And this doesn't apply to all professions. Note the higher standard Meyer is held to is due to his influence over young people and his public standing. If you manage a small private business and think one of your employees is a wife-beater, and continue to employ him, it may not be a fire-able offense (you may still be a bad person at the end of the day, but that's another discussion altogether). If you think this stuff doesn't matter just take a look at the arrest records of Meyer's former players and the publicity he has brought to his employer. The fact that we're even having this conversation may be evidence that he has ultimately failed at his job.
Your insistence that you don't understand the above distinctions either indicates disingenuousness at best or outright stupidity at worst. Given your obvious Ohio State leanings I'm inclined to believe the latter.
I had to login just to +1 you. This entire post is awesome.
So if you are the boss and you have an employee who WAS arrested for domestic violence (in 2009), and you and your friends successfully pressured the victim to drop charges, and then there were multiple times since then that he was accused of the same behavior, and you still did nothing for nine more years because he was never technically arrested after that, even though your wife had photos of the victim’s injuries, then yeah you sorta do need to lose your job.
There. Fixed it for you.
If I knew a subordinate beat his pregnant wife in 2009, I would have fired him then and certainly never rehired him. If I failed to do that, then I shouldn’t be anyone’s boss.
August 8th, 2018 at 12:34 AM ^
If you are a state of federal employee that is supposed to mold young men, then yes.
Another OSU troll.
August 7th, 2018 at 10:07 PM ^
Probably is this guy.
He should be fired because the most public face of your institution should not be a man who enabled an abusive person for a decade. That's a really bad look.
And who also explicitly lied at a press conference (and therefore essentially lied to the public) about an extremely serious issue. He did so in order to conceal something. In so doing, for good measure, he tried to blame the media for reporting facts. In this era, that's a god-awful look for a highly paid representative of a public university.
And, oh, by the way, he retained a coach he knew to be a serial abuser.
Yes, that's exactly why. What is so hard about this for you to understand? I suppose the Introduction to Crayons and History of Sesame Street survey courses you took as part of your general studies major at Ohio State didn't provide you with the requisite tools to analyze the situation, so we can go slower if you need.
It's not hard to understand. He just asks the same question over again in every OSU-related post.
Arguing with a Buckeye is like trying to swordfight a fart.
We have seen PSU, MSU and now OSU fans get sucked into this blame-the-victim-and-everyone-else-but-our-coach mentality. We need to learn from this and not let ourselves get into this kind of hero worship. No matter how many games Harbaugh/Beilein win, they're still human beings capable of screwing up like anyone else.