SAN JOSE — A day after San Jose State’s athletic director was demoted during a sex abuse scandal involving an athletic trainer and female athletes, a campus finance executive was named Saturday as her temporary replacement.
Charlie Faas, the university’s chief financial officer and vice president for administration and finance, will run the athletic department until a successor to former director Marie Tuite is hired, University President Mary Papazian announced Saturday.
Tuite, who became director in 2017, was reassigned to a fundraising position Friday. She had been the subject of three recent lawsuits, including one from swim coach Sage Hopkins who claims Tuite retaliated against him for raising concerns over the behavior of head athletic trainer Scott Shaw, and another from an employee who supported Hopkins.
In 2009, 17 female swimmers complained that Shaw inappropriately touched them under their bras and underwear for injuries to their shoulders and hips. Hopkins took their complaints to the university, which conducted an in-house investigation and concluded in 2010 that Shaw’s “pressure point therapy” was legitimate medical treatment. The trainer continued working on female athletes for the next decade, despite Hopkins’ protests to Tuite and others, according to Hopkins’ lawsuit.
Tuite arrived shortly after the conclusion of the first investigation, but was informed soon after of its results.
A second investigation conducted in 2020, this time by an outside law firm, and completed last month reversed those findings and substantiated most of the sexual abuse claims. It also included two new victims from 2017.
In a statement Friday, Tuite apologized to the campus community.
“As a leader, I am deeply sorry our student-athletes were impacted by Scott Shaw,” she said in the statement. “I will continue to fully cooperate with any and all investigations. My key objective here is to let our community heal.”
Faas, who has a background in sports management, will be part of the search committee for a permanent athletic director.
“Charlie Faas is a strong leader with professional integrity,” Papazian said in a statement Saturday. “His sports and business acumen will help us maintain forward progression during this transition.”
Faas helped develop the Spartan Athletics Center and South Campus renovations and is the chair of the Board of Directors of the San Jose Sports Authority. He served as executive vice president and CFO for Sharks Sports & Entertainment and CEO of the USA Pavilion at Expo Milano.
Joining Faas on the search committee are faculty athletics representative and chair of the kinesiology department Tamar Semerjian and former Super Bowl-winning wide receiver and SJSU alumnus James Jones.
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Author: Julia Prodis Sulek