Tag: football hazing

No victim needed to charge De La Salle (Warren, Michigan) hazing suspects, prosecutor says

The Warren De La Salle hazing scandal ended the football season after allegations surfaced that teammates held a player face-down on the floor while another sexually taunted and prodded him with a broomstick. The victim won’t talk, but that doesn’t mean charges won’t be filed, a prosecutor said.

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Just because the De La Salle football hazing victim won’t talk, doesn’t mean charges won’t be filed, a prosecutor said Friday.

After agreeing to take the De La Salle hazing case, St. Clair County Prosecutor Michael Wendling sought to clear up a public misunderstanding: He can charge the suspects, he said, even if the victim doesn’t want that to happen.

That’s been the case thus far in the Warren De La Salle hazing scandal, which abruptly ended the football season last month after allegations surfaced that teammates held a player face-down on the locker room floor while another sexually taunted and prodded him with a broomstick. There was no penetration.

According to police, the victim has refused to talk, and, doesn’t want charges brought.

Wendling said that doesn’t matter.

“That is not a determining factor for our office going forward,” Wendling told the Free Press on Friday. “If there’s a crime and we can prove it, and we feel that charges are justified, we will go forward.”

Wendling, who plans to announce a charging decision next week, said it’s not uncommon for prosecutors to try cases without a victim’s testimony.

Warren De La Salle players run across the field to celebrate winning the MHSAA Division 2 championship after defeating Livonia Franklin 42-6 at the Ford Field in Detroit, Friday, Nov. 24, 2017. (Photo: Junfu Han, Detroit Free Press)

“We do it all the time,” Wendling said. “There are a lot of crimes where victims are apprehensive about testifying … if it’s viable and we can go forward without a victim, we will do that if justice requires that. But we’re also cognizant of the victim’s wishes.”

Wendling’s comments contrast with those of Macomb County Prosecutor Eric Smith, who recused his office from the case due to a conflict of interest and expressed some skepticism about the case.

“If the alleged victim does not wish to go forward — well, that would normally be the end of the case right there,” Smith told the Free Press earlier this month. “If we don’t have a victim on an assault and battery case, you don’t have an assault and battery case.”

Read the Detroit Free Press for more.

Ill. high school football coach, district sued over alleged naked oreo run, other hazing

A lawsuit filed against the Byron School District and a series of high school football coaches holds that the plaintiff was hazed and bullied as part of a larger toxic culture.

An Illinois high school coach and his school district are facing a lawsuit in connection with allegations that he fostered a culture of “long-standing, systemic, ritualized” hazing and bullying, including an incident of the “naked oreo run.”

As reported by the Rockford Register Star, Byron (Ill.) High School head football coach and math teacher Jeffrey Boyer, assistant coach and Super Bowl champion Sean Considine, others in the athletic department and the Byron school district are all co-defendants against a plaintiff who claims he was assaulted on the return leg of a bus ride to the team’s 2018 state title loss at the University of Illinois. Per the lawsuit, former Byron football player Richard Messling placed his penis on the plaintiff’s face while he was sleeping on the bus.

That act allegedly followed a “naked Oreo run,” — in which players ran naked across the school’s football field with an Oreo wedged between their butt cheeks — that reportedly took place in late October of 2018, immediately after the team returned from a team building exercise at Considine’s farm.

In a unique twist, the lawsuit in question claims that the plaintiff was bullied because he refused to take part in the Oreo run, not that he was bullied into participating against his will.

The suit directly implicates such a large swatch of defendants because it claims a general atmosphere of indifference to the acts of hazing and bullying directly led to more such events taking place.

“There is a pattern and practice of indifference that has been evident throughout my client’s tenure at Byron High School, and that the bullying that has gone on has been part of this code of silence for the sake of the football program,” Stephanie White, senior trial attorney for the Sandman, Levy and Petrich law firm of Chicago, said in a statement to the press. “The fact that the district would not take measures to follow their anti-bullying, anti-violence protocol in responding to incidents, and in fact target the student or make him a target when he does voice his concerns has revealed itself since he started at Byron High School.”

The lawsuit officially seeks, “more than $50,000 in damages,” a total which White told the Register Star they hope to exceed by far. Further news about the timing of the case will come in days ahead.

Settlement reached in Hamilton High (Arizona) football sexual assault civil lawsuit

A settlement has been reached in the Hamilton High School football hazing and sexual assault case stemming from incidents from 2015-17.

The Chandler Unified School District and Hamilton High School employees accused of allowing students to sexually, physically and emotionally abuse their football teammates have reached a settlement in the civil lawsuit, according to court records.

A lawsuit was filed on the behalf of five students in May 2018 claiming the students had been abused by members of the Hamilton football team and alleging that the school did not take the necessary actions to protect them.

A draft of the terms of the civil settlement was signed in federal district court on Monday. According to a minute entry, the settlement was not recorded and no document is available to the public at this time.

The exact details of the settlement are unknown, but it does not include other defendants in the case — including accused students.

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According to court records, once the paperwork is filed, the civil case will be dismissed against the school district, former Hamilton High School principal Ken James, former athletic director Shawn Rustad, former football coach Steve Belles and former coach Manuel Palomarez.

The students’ lawyer, Dan Raynak, told The Arizona Republic, he couldn’t provide a statement at this time.

The attorneys representing both the school district and former staff did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

What were the allegations?

The lawsuit alleged that upperclassmen on the football team attacked younger teammates multiple times from 2015-2017 on school grounds.

Players engaged in what they called “initiation” rituals aimed primarily at freshman players, according to police interviews with witnesses and the targeted students.

In most cases, a group of upperclassmen would hold a younger player and penetrate him with fingers or objects. Sometimes the incidents would be recorded and shared among friends, according to police documents.

School personnel, among other mandatory reporters, must notify law enforcement if they reasonably believe a child has been abused.

One of the students claimed Palomarez saw him being attacked in 2017 but the coach did not stop it. The lawsuit states the student reported the abuse to Rustad and nothing was done.

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According to the lawsuit, Palomarez admitted to law enforcement he knew the abuse was happening among the players since 2016. The lawsuit stated that parents and students reported abuse to staff but their claims were dismissed.

“In or about September 2016, Defendant S. Belles told his players not to ‘do sexual things to each other,'” the lawsuit stated.

According to the lawsuit, Rustad received an anonymous voicemail message about the abuse but he did not report the claim.

Palomarez still works at Hamilton as a teacher.

Belles, Rustad and James were reassigned to non-teaching duties in September 2017. Belles resigned in 2018.

Rustad is currently the school district’s director of secondary of education. James is the district’s executive director of education programs.

Criminal case

The Maricopa County Attorney’s Office chose to not pursue charges against school administrators even though police said there was evidence of them failing to report the abuse.

Chandler police recommended to the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office that criminal charges be brought against James, Belles and Rustad.

Chandler police said many of the sexual assaults could have been prevented if school officials who knew about them had followed the law.

“Had these offenses been properly reported it is possible that many of the sexual assaults would not have occurred,” Amanda Janssen, the Chandler Police Department’s lead investigator on the case, wrote in a report.

Former County Attorney Bill Montgomery said during a news conference in 2018 that not enough victims came forward to make a strong case.

Three teenagers were charged in connection with the allegations. Two 16-years-old were prosecuted as minors.

One student, Nathaniel Thomas, who was 17 when he was arrested, was charged as an adult. Thomas was charged with sexual assault, kidnapping, aggravated assault and child molestation.

His trial is scheduled for January.

Stay up-to-date on the trial at The Arizona Republic.