DETROIT, MI — Sixteen former University of Michigan hockey players have filed a federal lawsuit in Detroit accusing the school of allowing sexual hazing and abuse to continue for years. The men say teammates forced them into degrading acts, including genital shaving, heavy drinking and other humiliating treatment, while coaches and staff knew what was happening.
The complaint says the conduct was not isolated or casual. Attorney Michael Pitt said it was organized, repeated and designed to pressure players into accepting abuse as part of belonging to the team. The players involved say the behavior took place between 1984 and 2001, with some of the men only coming together in 2024 to discuss what they had experienced.
Lawsuit says the abuse was built into team culture
The 72-page sex discrimination lawsuit describes a pattern of rituals that the former players say went far beyond ordinary hazing. According to the filing, players were forced to drink excessive alcohol, eat live fish and submit to acts meant to humiliate and dominate them.
One of the most disturbing allegations says teammates shaved hair around players’ genitals. Another player, identified in the complaint as John Doe 7, said he was taunted with a blowtorch while lying on a table. The suit says these acts were part of a “ritualized” system that made abuse a condition of remaining on the team.
Attorney Pitt said the men were told that enduring the abuse was expected of Michigan men’s ice hockey players. The lawsuit argues that the abuse was planned, repeated and sadistic rather than spontaneous horseplay.
Former coach Red Berenson is accused of knowing and failing to stop it
The complaint says longtime coach Red Berenson was aware of the hazing and did not step in. Berenson coached Michigan from 1984 through 2017, spanning the years covered by the players’ claims. The lawsuit says one player, John Doe 3, told Berenson he did not want to take part in the hazing.
According to the filing, Berenson responded by telling him to be a “Michigan Man” and a “good teammate,” which the player says pressured him to go along. The lawsuit presents that exchange as evidence that the coaching staff reinforced the behavior instead of stopping it.
Berenson, who is 86, did not comment when contacted by The Associated Press. He told MLive.com that there was a “certain element of initiation” led by older players, but said no one complained to him. He also said any problems were not the result of direction or encouragement from coaches or administrators.
Michigan says hazing violated policy and rejects responsibility
The University of Michigan described the allegations as disturbing but said it denies responsibility. In a written statement, spokesperson Paul Corliss said that any hazing or misconduct by student athletes would have violated university policy.
Corliss also noted that Michigan adopted an official anti-hazing policy in 1982, which the university says made it one of the first schools in the country to do so. He said the school has long seen itself as a leader on hazing prevention.
The university has not publicly accepted the claims in the lawsuit. Its statement frames the behavior described in the complaint as the actions of individuals rather than evidence of institutional direction.
The lawsuit emerged after former teammates began talking in 2024
The plaintiffs are former players who wore Michigan uniforms from 1984 to 2001. According to the complaint, the lawsuit appears to have grown out of conversations among several former teammates in 2024, when the men began comparing memories and realizing how many of them had experienced similar treatment.
That gathering appears to have helped transform private memories into a formal legal case. The men are now asking a federal court to recognize the abuse as sex discrimination and to hold the university accountable for what they say happened within the hockey program over many seasons.
The case adds to a broader national reckoning over abuse in sports settings, where athletes have increasingly described toxic team cultures that were once dismissed as tradition. Here, the players say the conduct went well beyond pranks or initiation rites.
Timing may become a major issue in court
The university may try to argue that the men waited too long to sue, a defense it used in 2020 when former athletes brought claims involving a campus sports doctor. That earlier case ultimately led to a $490 million settlement covering more than 1,000 people.
Whether the current case can move forward may depend in part on deadlines for filing claims and how the court treats allegations that date back decades. The lawsuit, however, is focused on the idea that the harm was hidden, tolerated and allowed to continue long after it began.
For now, the filing places renewed attention on one of the country’s most prominent college hockey programs and on the lasting impact of abuse that former players say shaped their lives long after their playing days ended.
