Authorities confirmed the arrest of former NC State sports medicine director Robert Michael Murphy on Wednesday evening after a grand jury indicted him last week on multiple felony and misdemeanor counts involving the sexual abuse of male student-athletes he had treated.
Murphy's attorney did not immediately respond to an ESPN request for comment. Jared Hammett, a Raleigh-based attorney representing Murphy, issued a statement to The Associated Press in June following the dismissal of a civil suit describing his client as "someone who dedicated his life to working with athletes" while referring to a "rush to judgment" that can impact "real people's lives."
"The truth is nothing happened but a man's career being ruined for money," Hammett said.
The grand jury handed down sealed indictments Sept. 14, but the charges remained secret until Murphy could be located. Courts often seal indictments to give authorities time to arrest suspects or prevent suspects from fleeing the jurisdiction.
However, portions of the still-sealed file were inadvertently posted to the Wake County, North Carolina, court website last week, then quickly removed before being reposted and again removed. At that point, ESPN was able to confirm that Murphy faced at least two felony indictments for sexual penetration or contact under the guise of medical treatment and four other indictments for sexual battery.
Murphy is charged under a 2019 North Carolina law that made abuse under the guise of medical treatment a felony. He was taken into custody Wednesday in Ocala, Florida, where he currently resides.
The Marion County, Florida, sheriff's office listed Murphy as having been booked shortly after 9 p.m. ET.
Allegations of abuse by Murphy first came to light in 2022 after former men's soccer player Ben Locke filed a criminal complaint with campus police, according to a police report obtained by ESPN.
Kerry Sutton, a lawyer for former NC State athletes who have filed a civil lawsuit, said the criminal charges "validate Ben Locke and 33 other former Wolfpack athletes and bolster their claims of being sexually abused at NCSU."
Locke, who has spoken out publicly, said the abuse started in 2015, after he was injured as a 17-year-old freshman. Thirty-one other men have joined the civil lawsuit against Murphy and eight university officials claiming the athletes were abused under the guise of medical treatment or subjected to overly intrusive drug tests. Two more former athletes say they plan to join the lawsuit.
The suit contends that administrators failed to stop the abuse despite being warned about Murphy's behavior as early as 2012, the year the former athletic trainer started at the school.
A Wake County judge dismissed the lawsuit in June for procedural reasons, ruling that North Carolina law requires civil claims against state institutions to be filed with the state's Industrial Commission. The judge also dismissed the claims against Murphy, determining that the statute of limitations had expired. The men have appealed the dismissal.
NC State launched a 2022 Title IX investigation that determined Murphy's conduct while treating Locke for sports injuries was "unwelcome and of a sexual nature," "pervasive" and "sufficiently severe," according to redacted documents obtained by ESPN. The investigation focused solely on Locke's allegations and determined by a preponderance of the evidence that Murphy made repeated nonconsensual contact of a sexual nature with Locke's genitals with his bare hands or fingers during therapeutic massage sessions.
University officials did not immediately respond to an ESPN request for comment Wednesday.
Murphy resigned from his role at NC State in the spring of 2022 before the Title IX investigation was completed.