DETROIT _ Faculty members at the University of Michigan raised concerns during the hiring process of a noted opera singer in 2015, going so far as to wonder who was going to tell him to keep his hands off male students, according to depositions included in court filings.
The previously unreported depositions, included in a mid-January lawsuit filing in U.S. District Court in Detroit, detail how faculty raised issues as singer David Daniels was being brought to Ann Arbor. Years after his hiring, an internal U-M investigation found in 2018 that Daniels had sexually harassed more than 20 students, including offering to pay them for sex. Daniels has denied the allegations. He also is facing criminal charges in Texas for alleged behavior that occurred before his stint at U-M.
"The harm Daniels caused was entirely predictable and preventable," attorney Deborah Gordon wrote in federal court pleadings. Gordon is representing former U-M student Andrew Lipian who alleges he was sexually assaulted by Daniels while at U-M and is suing the school.
U-M disputes school officials knew about any sexual misconduct concerns about Daniels, and its lawyers say even if they knew about Daniels' reputation, they aren't legally liable for his actions.
Daniels is at least the third case to come to light in recent weeks where U-M administrators are accused of knowing about patterns of sexual misconduct and harassment by employees who regularly interacted with students, but kept them on the payroll and even promoted them. Each case involved allegations against someone prominent _ Daniels gained fame nationally for his singing, another of the accused headed a university department and a third was a star of academia.
The late Dr. Robert Anderson has been accused of sexually assaulting students during a long career at U-M. In 1980, Anderson was pressed to step down as head of U-M's University Health Service because of complaints he was sexually assaulting male patients. He wasn't out of work long _ landing as team doctor for the football program under legendary coaches Bo Schembechler and Lloyd Carr.
Anderson died in 2008. This month, more than 30 people called a hotline in the first two days it was operational to offer information on Anderson. U-M officials and police, as they conduct investigations, believe there could be hundreds of victims, according to a police report.
When a police detective recently told Tom Easthope, a former university administrator who oversaw Anderson's department, that Anderson's tenure in the athletic department was under scrutiny, Easthope became "visibly shaken" because he thought the doctor had been forced out of the university years ago after Easthope confronted Anderson about allegations he was sexually assaulting patients while head of the student health service.
Speaking about Anderson, Easthope told the detective "he was sure that he had left the university," according a police report.
Also recently, U-M Provost Martin Philbert was accused of sexual misconduct and harassing women during his long career at U-M. The university promoted him from faculty member to assistant dean to dean to provost, the top academic officer at the school.
Former U-M Provost Phil Hanlon said the university was aware of complaints early in Philbert's tenure, but has said an independent probe cleared Philbert in the early 2000s. Since January when U-M suspended Philbert, more than two dozen women have come forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct and harassment, including several who say this happened after the long-ago investigation.
