High school football players ‘tormented’ Black teammates with sexual assaults, suit says
It was mandatory for a Washington high school’s football players to attend an overnight summer football camp, where white athletes targeted and sexually assaulted Black teammates with a massage gun, a lawsuit says.
In June 2023, a group of white Mead High School players declared an assault on three younger Black teammates “was coming” at the beginning of the camp, which was sponsored by the Spokane school and held at Eastern Washington University in Cheney, according to the lawsuit.
It was going to be “a repeat of the same assault” involving a massage gun that a “standout” athlete, another Black player, faced a year earlier at the camp in June 2022, a complaint dated Nov. 8 says.
On the second day of the 2023 camp, one Black player learned some white teammates were searching for him as their “first target,” according to the complaint.
He tried to get help from his coaches and told them the players “were going to ‘torment and rape’ him,” the complaint says.
The coaches are accused of doing nothing.
The teammates found the player hiding and trying to barricade himself inside a dorm room, and they “pushed their way” inside, according to the complaint.
Two students “violently pried (the player’s) legs open,” the complaint says.
Another white player, who was 6 feet, 6 inches tall and weighed 285 pounds, pinned the Black player down, according to the complaint, which says he was sexually assaulted with a “battery-powered massage gun” in an attack that was captured on video.
The next evening, the same group of white players searched for “their next victim,” another Black player, the complaint says.
When they couldn’t locate him, they attacked and sexually assaulted his friend — a white player who wouldn’t reveal where the Black teammate was — instead, with the massage gun, according to the complaint.
In the months that followed, the group of white players continued to harass their Black teammates, calling them racial slurs, according to the filing.
“A group of white football players went unchecked as they tormented Black teammates,” the complaint says.
Staff at Mead High School knew about the assaults in 2022 and 2023 that were filmed, shared to social media and sent to them, according to the complaint.
The school district’s coaches and administrators are accused of ignoring a culture of racial and sexual harassment targeting Black athletes in the football program — and not notifying parents of the assaults until eight months later, when the “assault videos began widely circulating,” the complaint says.
Mead School District Superintendent Travis Hanson said in an emailed statement to McClatchy News on Nov. 12 that the district “is committed to maintaining a safe and respectful environment for all students and staff” and “discriminatory harassment (in any form) has no place in our schools and is not tolerated.”
He said the lawsuit’s allegations are being taken “seriously.”
“We will not be commenting (publicly) about the numerous inaccuracies in the lawsuit or on the specifics of the case,” Hanson said. “Our attorney has asked that we allow the facts to come forward in the context of the litigation.”
The parents of four Black students are suing the Mead School District on a few claims, including negligence and failure to report abuse.
This is the second lawsuit filed against the school district in connection with the assaults.
A complaint was brought against the district on behalf of the white football player who was sexually assaulted at the 2023 camp, according to attorney Marcus Sweetser, who represents both cases.
‘Horrific assaultive ritual’ repeated
The white player, a sophomore, told his white teammates that the “assaults needed to stop” during the 2023 football camp, according to the complaint filed July 24.
When he exited his dorm room that night, he was tackled, pinned down and had his legs pulled apart by four older teammates, according to the complaint.
A masked student declared the “price must be paid” as “punishment” for “not revealing the location” of his Black teammates, the complaint says.
The student “repeated the horrific assaultive ritual” on the white player, using a massage gun, according to the complaint, which says this attack was also filmed.
Within two weeks, a parent sent videos showing this assault, which was shared to social media, to the athletic director, the complaint says.
Despite mandatory reporting duties, the athletic director is accused of not notifying parents and other administrators, according to the complaint dated Nov 8.
One of the Black players who the white student tried to protect at camp was sexually assaulted by teammates in a locker room in October 2023, the complaint says.
‘In our day we used a stick’
In August 2023, another parent had emailed a coach saying her son, while at the June 2023 football camp, heard “‘some senior boys were bragging’ that they had ‘pinn(ed) down a student player’” and “used ‘a massage gun on his privates,’” the Nov. 8 complaint says.
She wrote that one of the coaches was aware of the assault and told the students “in our day we used a stick, you guys have gone soft,” according to the complaint.
A Nov. 12 news release issued by Sweetser Law Office, Sweetser’s law firm, accused district officials of downplaying the assaults, describing them as “roughhousing” or “boys being boys.”
In an internal note in January, the high school’s principal wrote that “if this had been a girl involved we’d call it gang rape,” the complaint shows.
The assaults were first reported by KREM 2 News last year, according to the TV station.
After police were notified, the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office began investigating, according to KREM 2 News.
Authorities had probable cause to charge four students with fourth-degree assault, but charges weren’t filed because the teens entered into a diversion program, the TV station reported.
“This case is not about isolated incidents; it’s about a pervasive culture within the Mead School District,” Sweetser said in a Nov. 12 statement
“The district’s inaction wasn’t some profound series of coincidental oversights — they made repeated and deliberate choices that betrayed the trust parents place in schools to protect their children.”
The lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount in damages and asks the court to “deter similar conduct harming students in the future.”
This story was originally published November 13, 2024 at 12:01 PM with the headline "High school football players ‘tormented’ Black teammates with sexual assaults, suit says."
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