It’s not your everyday ESPN sports story. It’s not even your everyday high school hazing story. The Town of Wilson, NY, previously known in the sports world for its outstanding student athlete, broke onto the national scene in just about the worst way possible. Two students on the Junior varsity baseball team were sexually assaulted/raped in the back of a school bus on the return trip from an away game. It is reported that a group of varsity players pinned these undersized students down, and inserted foreign objects ( cell phone, several fingers ) through their pants into their anus. The two victims had long feared what happened on the back of the bus; so much so that on several occasions begged their parents not to go to baseball. After the incident the victim’s mother’s broke down while recollecting the conversation, “but you love baseball ( .)” The victims were too embarrassed to confess what happened to their parents, but it came out within a few weeks of the incident. The remainder of the Varsity season was cancelled, and the the violators face 3rd degree rape felony and sexually assault misdemeanor charges. The two coaches present on the bus have been suspended, and also face criminal charges and the lifetime labels as sex offenders. This story has naturally blown up on the national level, cluttering the once quiet small town of Wilson with members of the press.
Many people, and fellow teachers in Wilson have come to defend the coaches on the bus, suggesting it is impossible to see everything that is going on in a classroom, school bus, etc. This group of people have created the slogan, “30 years of good gone in 30 minutes by a few bad kids.” After reading more about the case, I discovered that this particular hazing incident was by no means isolated. Within the last 4 years there had been several complaints regarding hazing within the baseball program. Although the majority of the complaints were not sexual in nature, they were specific to the program, and consistently fell upon deaf ears. In one instance, and this next exerpt is from the Buffalo News:
“School officials also allegedly were told last year of a sexual hazing attack in which a player was sodomized with a baseball bat. And when nothing was done, the sodomy victim from last year became one of the alleged attackers in this year’s sexual hazing on the baseball team bus, according to the notice of claim, a precursor to a possible lawsuit.”
While reading this story one specific image came to mind, a scene from the movie Sleepers starring Kevin Bacon. In this movie a group of best friends, no older than 12, were sentenced to a juvenile correction center after accidentlyputting a hot dog vendor in a coma as a result of joke gone bad. In this home the guards sexually assaulted the boys. They were separated from their parents, and the people that were suppose to protect them, did the exact opposite. When I think about how helpless they must have felt, It disturbs greatly, but at the end of the day it’s just a pretty damn good movie. Unfortunately this isn’t the case for the young men at Wilson High. These students parents sent their kids to school to be protected, and safe, now they will never be the same.
I am not one to argue the limit of an adults supervision, but to think that in a school bus, no bigger than 40 rows, a group of students could covertly sodomize another student without drawing noticeable attention is absurd, and irresponsible. The two violaters, an 18 year old, and a 16 year old have been offered a plea bargain that would allow them to plead guilty to a charge of forcible touching, a class A misdemeanor, as well as three counts of second-degree hazing, a violation. I do not mind offering these young violators a plea-bargain. I believe, and especially in the instance of the violator who was formerly sodomized by a baseball bat, that they are a product of their environment, and the weight of the responsibility lies on the shoulders of a schools administration that ignored complaints, and obvious red flags, creating an environment where this type of behavior was unacknowledged, unpunished, and prevalent.
Further supporting this tolerance, the Buffalo News reports, “Four adults, including coaches, were on the bus at the time of the attack. Coaches were told about violent behavior before the April bus trip was over, as well as after the team arrived back in Wilson. The player who asked school personnel to intervene did so while standing beside one of the victims in a school parking lot — but no further action was taken.”
The father of victim turned violator, reportedly called a school representative after the baseball bat incident last year, and players were told to run extra laps at practice as discipline. I recall running disciplinary laps in college, one of the worst times was because I got caught watching a dvd in mandatory study hall, I had to run for an hour. I wonder what the going rate of running time is for sodomizing another player with a baseball bat? Two hours?
The player who was sodomized with the bat last year said he participated in this year’s attack “because things like that happened to me before,” according to the notice of claim.
About May 2007, another player told his mother about physical abuse he and one of this year’s victims suffered at baseball practice. On two separate occasions, she talked with a school representative and was assured the problem would be resolved, the legal document claims.
Two coaches, William M. Atlas and Thomas J. Baia, were charged on April 29, one week after one of this year’s victims was attacked a second time.
