Where it came from

My tastes may seem inconsistent from the outside. Have always gotten off on body hair in its natural state -- whether a lot or a little -- but not crazy about beards and/or tattoos. Fine for you who do, to each his own. It started in our high school gym class that mixed guys from different grades -- freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors. We'd dress out in the locker room, leaving our clothes on hooks (it was an old building), work through the class, and come back hot and sweaty to no-barrier gang showers. Not quite as primitive as this . . .

But without a lot of light, like this . . .

And sometimes there were incidents like this . . .

Coaches enforced the rule that we all had to take part. Seeing hot older guys who had hair in exciting places, I'd go home with the sights, sounds, and scents filling my head(s).

What is it with creeps like these?

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/04/12/lawsuit-coaches-knew-about-varsity-rape-hazings.html


DARK SECRETS
Lawsuit: Coaches Knew About Varsity Rape Hazings

As police arrest more students in the sex assault scandal rocking La Vernia, Texas, a new lawsuit claims that high-school coaches failed to protect kids from varsity predators.

BRANDY ZADROZNY | OLIVIA MESSER | 04.12.17

An explosive high-school sexual assault scandal rocking the small town of La Vernia, Texas, widened Tuesday, with the arrest of three additional students and the filing of a federal lawsuit alleging school officials knew about criminal hazing going on in the athletic program and failed to protect student victims.

Colton Weidner, Christian “Brock” Roberts, and John Rutkowski, all 18 and members of the school’s basketball team, were released from the Wilson County Jail after they were booked on sexual assault charges on Tuesday, according to an official in the Wilson County Sheriff's Office.

According to arrest affidavits, three high school athletes—Weidner, Rutkowski, and an unnamed juvenile—overpowered and held down a struggling 15-year-old while Roberts inserted a flashlight into his rectum. The victim did not report the alleged assault to his parents at the time, but later described the attack in a videotaped interview in March at the Children’s Alliance of South Texas.

Dozens of alleged victims have come forward to authorities in the last month with claims of sexual assault, including sodomy, as part of hazing rituals practiced by La Vernia High School’s varsity athletes. A total of 13 students—six of them adults—have now been arrested and charged with sexual assault.

But the case goes beyond just students, according to a new lawsuit filed in Texas’ Western District Court on Tuesday. School coaches allegedly “sanctioned these rituals,” while other school officials “turned a blind eye toward the abuse, even after the abuse was reported to them,” according to the 19-page complaint. The school district, superintendent José Moreno, principal Kristen Martin, and coaches Brandon Layne, Richard Hinojosa, Chris Taber, Scott Grub, and Keith Barnes, are all named as co-defendants in the case. On Tuesday, Moreno released a statement noting, "the La Vernia Independent School District was made aware of a federal lawsuit via the news yesterday. We will continue working closely with the authorities as they conduct a full and thorough investigation."

John Kemmerer ‘J. K.’ Ivey, the attorney who filed Tuesday’s lawsuit on behalf of the parents of “Child Doe,” told The Daily Beast on Wednesday that the case is just the first in what he believes will be a “tidal wave” of civil suits.

“We’re just the first shot,” he said. “I would not be surprised if this was just the first of what will be many lawsuits.”

According to the lawsuit, as a 15-year-old freshman, Doe advanced to the varsity football team in the fall of 2015.

During one of his first away games, the suit alleges, three upperclassmen forced Doe face down on the locker room floor and pushed a Gatorade bottle into his anus through his shorts. The following week, everyone at school seemed to know about the attack, including a teacher, who emailed the athletic director, Brandon Layne, according to the complaint. Layne, who left the school last year after only a year of employment, allegedly talked with the varsity players about the assault. According to the complaint, Layne told the team to “Cut it out,” and instituted a requirement that a coach supervise the locker room at all times.

“You won’t be able to get a job, no girl will want to date you, and you could go to prison,” the complaint quotes Layne as saying. Layne did not return phone calls requesting comment and has not yet been served, according to court documents.

Despite the warning, and staff presence, Doe alleges in the complaint that over the next calendar year, his teammates attempted to assault him on five different occasions—most of which he was able to escape. But in August 2016, three senior varsity players overpowered him, according to the complaint. In the locker room after a shower, Doe alleges he was forced down by two of his teammates while a third sodomized him with a cardboard tube stripped from a coat hanger. The players allegedly laughed during the attack, and said, “New year, new initiation.”

The new allegations mirror other accounts of sexual assault within the athletic department. In a detailed affidavit associated with three March arrests, a 16-year-old victim reported teammates marked his graduation to the varsity football team by sodomizing him with the threaded end of a carbon-dioxide tank at a home off-campus. When the arrests began in mid-March, a mother of another victim told a local reporter: “Kids were holding them down in the locker rooms, there was a lookout at the door watching for coaches not to come. They hold them down and stick various items up their rectum… including Coke bottles, deodorant bottles, steel pipes, baseball bats, and broomsticks.”

“The school had actual knowledge,” Ivey said in an interview with The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “The principal and the head coach were notified. Their own guidelines and rules weren't followed.”

Texas state law mandates that incidents of child abuse be reported within 48 hours to the proper authorities—a requirement that Ivey said La Vernia staff failed to comply with.

Doe, whose alleged abuse started in the fall of 2015, has withdrawn from classes and is being homeschooled, Ivey said.

The lawsuit seeks damages for medical expenses, physical pain and mental anguish, as well as punitive damages. The family is also seeking to censure school district employees and force the district to develop policies that would protect students in the future.

“It’s a small town and it’s a difficult situation and these were traumatic events,” Ivey said. “I don’t think any amount of money in the world could fully and fairly compensate this child for what he’s been through.”

Earlier this month, the Texas Rangers took over the investigation from the La Vernia Police Department. Attorney General Ken Paxton is now overseeing the criminal cases. Neither office provided any further information following the new arrests.

The school district has also remained relatively quiet on the allegations, citing the ongoing investigation. Superintendent Jose Moreno, named in the federal lawsuit, spoke last month at a school board meeting and called for patience.

“The alleged behavior will be evaluated by the judicial system,” he said to a crowd of about 100 assembled parents. “We must have facts before we move forward. All children deserve due process and the privacy they’re entitled to.”

Inside La Vernia High School, a student who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity, said the Texas Rangers have been at the school “every day,” and have set up shop in the school auditorium where they “pull kids out of class to be questioned,” the student said.

Guidance counselors have also come to each class to reintroduce themselves and offer support services, the student said.

“There’s not much learning going on around here these days,” the student said.

# # #

Chicago Tribune: High School Hazing

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-hazing-lake-zurich-football-sexual-acts-edit-0203-jm-20170202-story.html

Editorial: 

Lake Zurich hazing: When adults look the other way

Editorial Board

The reports have been largely redacted. The school inquiries have concluded. Two athletic officials at Lake Zurich High School have resigned, with a third expected to leave at the end of the school year.

But that's not the end to hazing allegations that arose a few months ago. An attorney for two alleged victims says the hazing involved sexual assault and acts of degradation involving football players. Parents of alleged victims filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday against the district, claiming school officials knew, or should have known, about locker room rituals that had been going on for years and were dismissed as tradition. Horseplay. Team bonding. Boys will be boys.

Uh, no. The alleged hazing — described in the lawsuit somewhat vaguely with portions redacted to protect identities — involves the football team engaging in acts of nudity and assault. The plaintiffs' attorney, Antonio Romanucci, says the behavior and culture dates back decades, though this case centers on two incidents last fall.

A security guard working for the district told investigators he heard music and chanting in the school locker room one weekday evening and interrupted an act he later described as "wrong." From the reports, he walked out but notified a team official later.

Another incident earlier in the school year had been brought to school officials' attention and involved forced nudity and urination, according to the lawsuit.

When administrators learned about the second incident, they sent a note to football parents describing the behavior as "egregious" and took steps to provide players with hazing education. They made the players perform community service work. Two athletic officials were placed on administrative leave and later resigned. Ex-head coach David Proffitt, who also was a physical education teacher, and assistant coach Chad Beaver, who also was a student dean, resigned with severance packages. Proffitt will receive $25,516 and Beaver will receive $12,146, documents show. Athletic director Rolando Vazquez has submitted a resignation effective at the end of the school year.

Lake Zurich police and the Lake County state's attorney's office opened investigations. No charges were brought. But Romanucci said the hazing involved forcing younger teammates to undress and undergo nonconsensual sexual acts. In prior years, according to the lawsuit, players urinated on other players, forced them to perform oral sex and shoved genitals in their faces.

These allegations are astounding, as is the charge that school officials did not address the accusations with the seriousness warranted. With the two incidents described in the lawsuit, the team was forced to do community service and learn about the dangers of hazing. Yet the alleged offenders got to keep playing football.

Kids often partake in hazing incidents because they're kids. They do stupid things. They suffer from group-think. They're under pressure to go along. It's up to the adults to draw a bright line that kids know is not to be crossed.

But where were the adults at Lake Zurich? Did no school officials or coaches realize what was going on? Did no parents question why their sons were in the school locker room on Thursday nights before game days, unsupervised?

This case should be another alarm bell to school officials, coaches and parents everywhere. Hazing is not cool or funny or playful. It's dangerous. It's humiliating. It's illegal.

Why it persists, often without serious punishment, boggles the mind. It ought to be met with zero tolerance.

At Glenbrook North High School in 2003, 33 seniors were expelled for throwing pig intestines, feces and chemicals onto younger classmates as a form of initiation. A year later at Glenbrook South, lacrosse players were suspended and the season canceled after they were accused of smacking younger players' behinds with wooden paddles.

A year later, Loyola Academy lacrosse players were accused of hazing students in an alcohol-related incident. Two players were forced out of the private Wilmette high school, and several others were suspended and dropped from the team.

In Maine Township High School District 207, a soccer coach was fired following a 2012 incident during which players allegedly poked younger players with fingers and sticks in their private parts.

It's so tragically unnecessary. What will motivate school officials to take swift and decisive action? Protecting kids is their job.

For that matter, when will all adults learn to take it seriously?

Related articles: 

Lawsuit: Lake Zurich High hazing included forced sex actsReport offers new details into Lake Zurich High football hazing caseLake Zurich athletic director, head football coach, assistant resign after hazing scandal

You Ever Do This? Question of the Evening

Gotta be staged for the camera, right?