Wake County judge dismisses NC State athletes’ abuse lawsuit

A Wake County judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by 31 former N.C. State male athletes, but the ruling did not answer the bigger question hanging over the Raleigh campus: what happened inside the athletic training program, and who knew about it. Wake County Superior Court Judge Bryan Collins dismissed the case on procedural grounds, including that some claims dating back as early as 2013 were filed too late and that allegations against several athletics officials belonged in the North Carolina Industrial Commission, not civil court.

The lawsuit centers on Robert M. Murphy Jr., the former head trainer and director of sports medicine at North Carolina State University from January 2012 through June 2022. The former athletes have accused Murphy of sexual abuse, harassment and misconduct carried out under the guise of treatment, including improper touching of genitals during massages and intrusive observation while athletes provided urine samples for drug testing. In an earlier filing, former NC State soccer player Benjamin Locke said the conduct occurred during roughly 75 to 100 massages between August 2015 and May 2017.

The plaintiffs’ legal team said the dismissal does not resolve the underlying accusations. Kerry Sutton said the ruling had “nothing at all” to do with whether Murphy abused the athletes and said the plaintiffs planned to appeal. That means the civil case may not be finished, even though Collins ruled against the athletes this week.

The case began in August 2022 with Locke’s first complaint and expanded in February 2026 to include 31 plaintiffs. WRAL reported that Locke and another former men’s soccer player are publicly named, while the rest are identified as John Does. The athletes came from at least eight men’s sports, and the suit also named former athletic director Debbie Yow, current athletic director Boo Corrigan, former chancellor Randy Woodson, and other administrators on negligence and oversight claims. Woodson was voluntarily dismissed from the case in late April 2026.

The dismissal leaves unresolved whether NC State had reporting systems strong enough to catch or stop abuse inside one of the university’s highest-profile programs. Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman has said her office is investigating the allegations criminally, adding a separate legal track that could still shape the public record around the case. For Wake County, the ruling ends one chapter in court, but not the broader reckoning over athlete safety, institutional oversight and whether a major university protected the students who trusted it most.