The school and its former track and cross-country coach are being sued by the parents of a deceased disabled Florida student-athlete they claim “humiliated” their daughter and disregarded her cries for assistance before she committed suicide.
Just two months after being dropped from the cross-country team, Jacksonville University (JU) student Julia Pernsteiner, 23, passed away in her dorm in 2021.
Her parents, Ray and Lynne Perstiner, filed a wrongful death lawsuit on February 3 alleging that JU permitted team coach Ron Grigg torment the team’s young female members.
Persteiner was persuaded by Grigg to transfer to JU and join the cross-country team despite having learning disabilities that affected her reading, writing, spelling, and math abilities.
The parents of Persteiner claim that JU failed to provide their daughter with the services necessary for academic success because it did not adhere to the ADA’s requirements.
Persteiner tried to stay focused on her sport as her grades started to slip, but she was confronted with “a toxic atmosphere of humiliation and intimidation,” the lawsuit claims.
“Teammates recall Grigg taking a special satisfaction in humiliating Julia, referring to her as ‘retarded,’ the slowest f—— runner on the team’ and unable to ‘wipe your own a–,” the suit claims. “Julia, already struggling academically, now found that the sport she loved and found comfort in was the source of her coach’s targeted ridicule and harassment.”
The female runners were frequently “fat shamed” by the coach, who insisted they maintain a body mass index below 10%. According to the court document, this kind of behaviour “prompted eating disorders in some young, impressionable women on the team.”
According to the lawsuit, Grigg was the subject of complaints from other students as well, but “the school closed ranks around Grigg and refused to take any action,”
Pernsteiner sent an email to Alex Ricker-Gilbert, the university’s athletic director, a month after she was dismissed from the team, expressing her “more than heartbroken” feelings.
“I just don’t know where to go from here,” the email says. “I rely on the athletic academic help to do well. I would like to stay and work on improving my grades. I just am not able to do it myself. I’m looking for advice on how to proceed.”
Her concerns “spiralled into desperation and depression” after receiving no response to her email. After a month, Pernsteiner committed suicide.
Grigg was unavailable for comment, according to the Florida Times-Union.
Soon after Ricker-Gilbert revealed that the school had received “concerning information” regarding the treatment of its student-athletes, he resigned by the end of July.
