March 2021 — Silver Chips Print

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Patterns of player p

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Trigger warning: This article contains information about and descriptions of sexual harassment, assault, and abuse.

Where only first names appear, names have been changed to protect the identity of the sources.

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hen Alex, a former student and football player at Thomas S. Wootton, first heard about the 2018 locker room assaults within the Damascus football program, he was

appalled.

Veteran players on Damascus’ junior varsity football team raped and sexually assaulted four freshmen team members as part of an alleged hazing ritual, and while the Damascus junior varsity team forfeited the next night’s game, Alex thought there would be further disciplinary action taken against the school’s entire acclaimed football program.

“We didn’t hear anything about Damascus slowing down their program,” he says. “We thought maybe it was because they were on a 50-game win streak.”

A lawsuit filed about a year and a half later corroborates Alex’s concerns. The victims claim the school culture placed athletic success over team member safety and that the 2018 locker room rapes were just one example of this behavior. “Defendants placed winning football games over the health and safety of some of its most vulnerable students,” the lawsuit reads.

Issues of sexual misconduct within athletic programs extend beyond Damascus. Last year, a former junior varsity football player from Seneca Valley and a former junior varsity wrestler from Gaithersburg filed two additional lawsuits; they similarly contend that their respective school and athletic leadership were negligent in preventing their assaults.

Some experts say a trend of athlete protection—schools and other officials nationwide shielding athletically valuable individuals from punishment—runs rampant within high school, collegiate, and professional athletics alike, especially among prestigious programs.

currently listed as violations include athletes accepting and profiting from brand deals, using marijuana, and engaging in academic fraud.

In order to change the acceptance of sexual misconduct in athletics, Ridpath believes high-profile leagues must stop shielding star athletes and coaches from punishment. “If you punish a superstar when they’re young and they deserve to be punished and other kids see that, it really does send a message and can be a cultural change,” he says.

“We cannot let superstar athletes or superstar coaches get away with everything, especially assault, sexual assault, and crimes against others.”

Moreover, this culture of athletes “get[ting] away with everything,” as Ridpath calls it, extends beyond sexual misconduct. During an investigation into alleged rapes at Baylor University in 2017, a group of Baylor regents filed a statement arguing that several of the team’s assistant head coaches failed to share allegations of other types of misconduct with the appropriate authorities. “[The] football program was a black hole into which reports of misconduct such as drug use, physical assault, domestic violence, brandishing of guns, indecent exposure and academic fraud disappeared,” their file reads.

Tracy feels many of these damaging patterns stem from the country’s overall reverence of athletes. “We just idolize athletes; we’ve decided that they’re all heroes, and we don’t look at them as normal people… [Society has] decided that they must be good people because they’re athletes,” she argues. “The idea that our hero could do something like that is beyond us. We can’t rationalize it.”

Athletic lawsuits at MCPS high schools

As demonstrated by the allegations in the Damascus, Seneca Valley, and Gaithersburg lawsuits, MCPS is not immune from concerns of athletic protectionism.

On Feb. 6, 2020, three of the four 2018 Damascus victims filed a lawsuit against the Board of Education as well as then-principal Casey Crouse, former athletic director

Pro players under-punished

David Ridpath, an associate professor of sports administration at Ohio University, verifies this trend in the context of athletic programs nationally. “When [athletes are] being told [they’re] great all the time and that [they] literally can get away with anything… it makes it very difficult to enforce any standards or any discipline,” Ridpath, who has extensive experience with intercollegiate athletics, explains.

According to ESPN, in October 2019, after a female swimmer in an unnamed Division I college reported that she was raped by a male basketball player, she was informed by a member of the athletic staff that an informal Title IX process could not end in her alleged perpetrator’s suspension because, as the athlete told ESPN, it “‘wouldn’t be fair to other players’ and it ‘would have a negative impact on the community’ who attended games expecting to see [him] play.”

In April of 2020, seven women filed a lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for failing to protect them from sexual assaults by male college athletes. Also per ESPN, one of the plaintiffs—volleyball player Capri Davis—claimed that “the [University of Nebraska] failed to appropriately respond to her report that two Nebraska football players grabbed her buttocks at a party.”

As rape survivor and national activist Brenda Tracy explains, “rape and sexual assault are still not considered NCAA violations.” Contrastingly, according to the NCAA website, actions

When [athletes are] being told [they’re] great all the time and that [they] literally can get away with anything... it makes it very difficult to enforce any standards or discipline.

DAVID RIDPATH Joe Doody, former varsity football coach Eric Wallich, and former junior varsity football coach Vincent Colbert on the basis of negligence from school staff and county officials. The suit, which moved to federal court this month, alleges that older students assaulted four younger players by performing a Damascus hazing ritual known as “brooming”—one that involves older students raping younger students with a broom.

A second lawsuit, also filed on Feb. 6, 2020, alleges that a fifth athlete at Damascus was similarly assaulted in 2017, with the overall lawsuit contending that similar incidents had occurred at Damascus unchecked “on a weekly basis” since 2016.

The lawsuit documents allege, “Assistant Athletic Director and Varsity Head Coach Wallich, JV Coach Colbert, and it is believed the school administration, were repeatedly advised in 2016-2017 by multiple adults and athletes that

brooming was occurring in unsupervised Damascus High School locker rooms” but that the school and athletic program did nothing to intervene or protect the victims.

According to The Washington Post, after a parent of one of the victims first reported the 2018 incident to Colbert, 12 hours elapsed before Crouse notified county police.

The spring after the alleged assaults, Crouse stepped down from her position, and Doody and Colbert were both replaced. Wallich retained his position through the next year, during which Damascus won another state championship, before resigning from coaching in 2020; he still teaches physical education at the high school.

The Damascus varsity football team won their conference’s state championship in 2015, 2016, and 2017—three consecutive years before the 2018 season—and again in 2019. Overall, the team boasted a record of 133 wins to 18 losses under Wallich’s time as coach, and in 2020, a Damascus student who played for Wallich ranked as the No. 1 collegiate football recruit.

Silver Chips reached out to several Damascus football players for this article; the one response we received was an inappropriate sexual solicitation over social media.

On March 9, 2020, a month after the Damascus suits were filed, a former member of the Seneca Valley junior varsity football team filed another lawsuit against school and county leadership alleging that he was raped by teammates in an unsupervised locker room on Sept. 17, 2018— about a month prior to the alleged Damascus rapes.

“Prior to September 17, 2018, Defendants knew that locker room sexual assaults had occurred in the past but, despite this knowledge, did not take steps to protect its students from assaults,” the Seneca Valley lawsuit reads.

Though Seneca Valley earned its last divisional title in 2011, the school—like Damascus—has historically prided itself on having one of the state’s top football programs.

Since 1981, Seneca Valley has won a total of 16 divisional titles; Damascus has earned 21.

Athletic litigation facing county officials is not relegated to football teams. On July 8, 2020, the mother of a former Gaithersburg wrestler filed yet another suit, this one contending that her son was sexually assaulted in an unsupervised locker room on Feb. 8, 2018—over half a year before the alleged Damascus rapes.

Norm Pollard, the retired Dean of Students at Alfred University and a counseling doctor who has extensively studied hazing, says that even after initiating litigation and executing punishments, school districts must still work harder to certify change. “The likelihood that [any hazing incident] was a one-time incident that had never occurred before is just unrealistic,” Pollard explains. “There needs to [be] effort [put] into how you change the culture of the school, of a community, where [hazing is] not just minimalized and ignored.”

The WilmerHale report

In an effort to change that culture specifically after the 2018 Damascus rapes, MCPS took several steps to improve athletic culture and bolster student safety districtwide, including commissioning an external review and updating supervision guidelines.

In May of 2019—six months after the alleged 2018 Damascus assaults—the school district tasked a law firm called Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr (WilmerHale) with reviewing MCPS bullying and harassment reporting protocols as well as supervision regulations for athletics and extracurriculars. To achieve this, the Board of Education authorized a $250,00 contract to the Washington, D.C.-based company.

On Oct. 7, 2019, MCPS superintendent Jack Smith issued a press release announcing the review’s conclusion; he cited the report as a tool for prevention of more incidents akin to Damascus.

The final 17-page document reveals that WilmerHale conducted interviews with 29 individuals at Damascus, including “administrators, staff members, coaches, parents, and after-school activity sponsors,” and held an additional “student focus group.”

Outside of Damascus, WilmerHale

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within and beyond MCPS visited another four of MCPS’ 25 high schools, including Seneca Valley; spoke with “key administrators from the MCPS central office,” like superintendent of schools Jack Smith; and held four focus groups.

Specifically, these groups included two conversations with a total of eleven athletic directors, one with seven high school principals, and one with nine of MCPS’ over 55,000 high school athletes in that year.

Defendants knew that locker room sexual assaults had occurred in the past but, despite this knowledge, did not take steps to protect its students from assault.

LAWSUIT AGAINST SENECA VALLEY In an email to Silver Chips, WilmerHale Public Relations Director Molly Nunes said neither the firm nor the involved lawyers can speak to the evaluation process due to client confidentiality.

Smith, who will retire from the district this June, feels the WilmerHale report offered valuable insight into system-wide trends and encourages future superintendents to conduct similar reviews. “I do think those sorts of studies can really provide beneficial kinds of paths forward,” he said during a February interview with Silver Chips Print and Silver Chips Online. “With that particular study, it really caused us to step back and look at all 25 high schools.”

WilmerHale’s study reported “a generally positive culture around athletics and other extracurriculars.” The authors continue, “the few extracurricular-associated hazing and bullying incidents of which we became aware appeared to be isolated events, rather than part of a larger, continuing pattern.”

The report does acknowledge its potentially limited scope. “We did not find evidence that bullying, hazing, or sexual assault is currently widespread in athletics or other extracurricular activities at [Damascus] or the other schools we visited,” the report reads, “but we did not perform a comprehensive, historical review of unreported incidents.”

“After Damascus, nothing changed”

In February of 2019, four

months after the 2018 Damascus locker room rapes, MCPS released a new set of guidelines for athletic supervision. The seven-page protocol document imposes more stringent requirements for athletic staff, mandating that coaches supervise all players before a game or practice and that coaches and athletic directors remain on school grounds until all their students leave campus.

School staff were also tasked with showing athletes a presentation that discourages hazing and bullying in order to foster a safer atmosphere for student athletes.

Eight months later, when WilmerHale released its October report, the law firm offered an additional set of recommendations for the district, including increased supervision from coaches and “interactive hazing training” for student athletes, extracurricular participants, athletic directors, administrators, and staff club sponsors.

The district pledged to take action accordingly, including, but not limited to, restructuring the supervision of athletics and other after school activities, clarifying reporting processes, and briefing the Board of Education annually on athletics and extracurriculars.

Blair athletic specialist Rita Boule feels that the county-mandated presentation helps promote healthier environments among Blair athletes. The slideshow includes an explanation of how to report any form of sexual misconduct, hazing, or bullying to the county, with emphasis on the process’ confidential nature,

Boule explains.

Hailey Hill, a former Seneca Valley varsity soccer and lacrosse player who graduated in 2020, recalls protocol changes going into effect last year. In May, two months after news of the lawsuit against Seneca Valley broke, Hill explained that every athletic team engaged in anti-hazing instructional modules. “Each sports team was required to do a clinic-type thing on what hazing looks like, the different types of hazing, and what qualifies as sexual abuse,” she said. “We went over MCPS guidelines and reviewed hazing policies.”

However, specific protocol implementation varies across buildings because—as Boule confirms—details like supervision times and locations are “dependent on [each] school.”

As such, some athletes feel that these reforms have neither been enforced consistently across the county nor sufficient to create lasting structural change. At Wootton, for example, Alex does not recall any Wootton staff members ever directly addressing the incident at Damascus; he also says he does not remember his team receiving a lesson about hazing.

“I feel like there could be some things done to help protect athletes better,” Alex explains. “I don’t think we’ve ever had a talk about hazing. We’ve never been told not to do it.”

Alex feels the supposed reforms have been ineffective overall. “After Damascus, nothing changed,” the former football player asserts.

Jeffrey Sullivan, the MCPS Director of Systemwide Athletics, declined to comment for this story because of ongoing litigation.

To universally deconstruct this toxic and dangerous culture that such ongoing lawsuits demonstrate, Ridpath thinks more leaders must stand up to athletic institutions— even and especially within high schools.

“You have to be able to say to that coach, ‘He’s not playing,’ or the superintendent has to be able to say to that principal, ‘He’s not playing.’ But we’re so afraid to go up against… the athletic machine, even at the high school level, that people won’t do the right thing,” Ridpath explains.

“The true tenet of leadership is doing the right thing. And sadly, we don’t have enough leaders in athletics.”

Anika Seth contributed reporting.

Story by Marijke Friedman, Kathryn LaLonde, and Lilia Wong Art by Sonia Pivovarov Design by Sean Li and Simran Thakkar