Reply to Reported hazing incident involving Damascus High School JV Football team

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "Reported hazing incident involving Damascus High School JV Football team"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]This was in USA Today yesterday:

"When the Damascus (Md.) High School junior varsity football team was accused of sexual assault in connection with a hazing incident, it sent shockwaves through the Maryland prep football community. Now that some of the details of the alleged incident have been revealed in court, the sophomore-on-freshmen incident appears even more horrific than ever.
Here’s how the Washington Post described the lead-up to the alleged sexual assaults that occurred in the Damascus locker room, as described in court Monday:
When the sophomore football players entered the freshman locker room, authorities say, one held up a four-foot broom. He pumped his fist and chanted.
Lights went off. The handle of the broom could be heard banging against a wall.
“It’s time,” another sophomore said.
One of the freshmen tried to leave. A sophomore blocked him from doing so.
If the idea of being sodomized by a broom wasn’t already horrific enough, consider that brief foray into a C-rated horror script intended to intimidate a group of freshman football players. Perhaps more significantly, it’s a pretty clear indication that the suspects now in court had an idea about what they were doing.
The four 15-year-old suspects were all released Monday on $20,000 bond.
The school is still awaiting the result of the case against the teens before launching its own investigation into the supervision of the athletes. It remains to be seen what impact that has on the larger Damascus football program, but given the events that apparently transpired in the locker room, it may not reflect too well on whichever coaches are deemed to be responsible for the JV program."[/quote]

This description is absolutely horrifying.  Both ABC and NBC national evening news programs had lead stories about Damascus.  NBC had to give a warning for viewers that the details were disturbing.

What is MCPS doing to improve the culture in it's athletics programs? Unfortunately with this type of details and media attention, absolutely nothing.

At our school's Winter Sports Night, no mention of how to report abuse, hazing, or harassment in athletics.  No mention of what our school is doing to prevent an incident like Damascus.  My children have openly said there are big problems on teams from drug use, to bullying, to predatory behavior by some of the coaching staff.  It was business as usual at our school and lets not talk about what is in the news or what is going on in our school's athletic program that presents a danger to children.

God bless the victims for stepping forward.  I was an advocate for trying the offenders as juveniles but after reading the News Week description of what they endured, I can see why Maryland is prosecuting them as adults.  [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics