4 Okla. high school wrestlers charged with raping others

[MatriculatingHank]

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/4-oklaho...0CBS%20News%29

NORMAN, Okla. - Four high school wrestlers in Oklahoma have been charged with sexually assaulting two other wrestlers on a bus.

Officials with Norman North High School have said an incident involving students from the school occurred as the junior varsity wrestling team was returning from a tournament on a bus on Jan. 9. The victims are 16 and 12 years old.

Online court records show an 18-year-old, a 17-year-old and a 16-year-old were each charged Monday with three counts of rape by instrumentation. Another 17-year-old was charged with one count. Court records do not list attorneys for any of the teenagers.

School officials have said an undisclosed number of students, a coach and an adjunct coach have been suspended.

According to the court documents, CBS affiliate KWTV reports three of those charged each assaulted the 16-year-old at the back of the bus by restraining him and using their fingers to sexually assault the boy over his clothing.

Later, all four suspects attempted to lure a 12-year-old middle school wrestler to the back of the bus as well, before pulling the boy to the back. All four suspects then assault the boy in the same manner as before. This time, however, the suspects placed a condom over their fingers before the assault, the report states.

When the bus arrived back at Norman North, the 12-year-old was assaulted again; once in a secluded area on the side of the building and again between two vehicle in the parking lot when the victim briefly escaped. According to the report, the assault only ended when the 12-year-old boy's parent arrived at the school.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla

Putting their fingers or anything else up someone's ass is not an example of "boys will be boys."

I agree, but the article doesn't say that's what happened.

[Ming the Merciless]

Good thing they weren't charged with raping themselves


Glad this was extremely clear in op

[Red Dawg]

Kill them all. Nasty evil bastards.

[The Franchise]

Originally Posted by Pablo

All Notre Dame fans, no doubt.

[Easy 6]

These 4 aggressively crawled all over one too many fellow males and latent tendencies emerged.

[Pasta Little Brioni]

They called it the "rico"

[WilliamTheIrish]

Originally Posted by DaFace

I know it's a PC world and all, but I kind of wish these articles would just come out and say what happened.

Punching someone in the nuts could theoretically be described as "sexually assaulting the boy over his clothing." There's a wide spectrum between that and jamming a finger up his ass that ranges from "boys will be boys" to "rape."

It's tough to really have an opinion without knowing what really happened.

This happened a couple of years ago in Colorado. The assaulter(s) were the sons of the wrestling coach, who was also the school board president. The assaultee was th child of the local K-12 principal.

When the principal went to the cops, there was outrage from the community, forcing the principal to resign..

I'll hunt the link.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by alpha_omega

Ummmm, where was the bus driver?

Busy holding the camera.

[Otter]

Should have put more reps into escapes.

[WilliamTheIrish]

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_2350599...victim-outcast

Sodomy hazing leaves 13-year-old victim outcast in Colorado town

NORWOOD, Colo. — At the state high-school wrestling tournament in Denver last year, three upperclassmen cornered a 13-year-old boy on an empty school bus, bound him with duct tape and sodomized him with a pencil.

For the boy and his family, that was only the beginning.

The students were from Norwood, Colo., a ranching town of about 500 people near the Telluride ski resort. Two of the attackers were sons of Robert Harris, the wrestling coach, who was president of the school board. The victim's father was the K-12 principal.

After the principal reported the incident to police, townspeople forced him to resign. Students protested against the victim at school, put "Go to Hell" stickers on his locker and wore T-shirts that supported the perpetrators. The attackers later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges, according to the Denver district attorney's office.

In at least four cases of sodomy hazing last year, the coach or supervising teacher was alleged to have known about it, ordered it, witnessed it or laughed about it, according to police reports and court filings.

At Maine West High School in Des Plaines, Ill., a Chicago suburb, varsity soccer players allegedly "rewarded" new teammates by holding them down and sodomizing them with sticks and their fingers, while coaches did nothing to intervene, according to court documents and police reports.

After witnessing an attack on a 16-year-old in July, varsity coach Michael DiVincenzo allegedly congratulated the victim and asked him "if it was all good," according to a police report. During a freshman drill, he was alleged to have told players they would be sodomized by the varsity team if they failed to communicate effectively, according to a police report.

DiVincenzo was arrested last month on misdemeanor charges of hazing, battery and failure to report child abuse, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez in Chicago said in a statement. He was released on cash bond and hasn't entered a plea. Charges against varsity players were dropped at the request of the victims' families, Alvarez said.

DiVincenzo's attorney, Thomas Breen, didn't respond to phone messages or email requests for comment. In April, DiVincenzo issued a statement denying "guilt of any kind." In a police interview, he denied knowledge of the alleged attacks.

Maine West, whose board voted to fire DiVincenzo, has cooperated fully with the investigation and hired a former U.S. attorney who cleared the district's handling of the matter, said David Beery, a spokesman. The school has also instituted more training for staff and set up an anonymous Web-based tip line for students to report hazing.

In at least four cases of sodomy hazing last year, the coach or supervising teacher was alleged to have known about it, ordered it, witnessed it or laughed about it, according to police reports and court filings.

At Maine West High School in Des Plaines, Ill., a Chicago suburb, varsity soccer players allegedly "rewarded" new teammates by holding them down and sodomizing them with sticks and their fingers, while coaches did nothing to intervene, according to court documents and police reports.

After witnessing an attack on a 16-year-old in July, varsity coach Michael DiVincenzo allegedly congratulated the victim and asked him "if it was all good," according to a police report. During a freshman drill, he was alleged to have told players they would be sodomized by the varsity team if they failed to communicate effectively, according to a police report.

DiVincenzo was arrested last month on misdemeanor charges of hazing, battery and failure to report child abuse, Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez in Chicago said in a statement. He was released on cash bond and hasn't entered a plea. Charges against varsity players were dropped at the request of the victims' families, Alvarez said.

DiVincenzo's attorney, Thomas Breen, didn't respond to phone messages or email requests for comment. In April, DiVincenzo issued a statement denying "guilt of any kind." In a police interview, he denied knowledge of the alleged attacks.

Maine West, whose board voted to fire DiVincenzo, has cooperated fully with the investigation and hired a former U.S. attorney who cleared the district's handling of the matter, said David Beery, a spokesman. The school has also instituted more training for staff and set up an anonymous Web-based tip line for students to report hazing.

About 4,000 sexual assaults occur each year inside U.S. public schools, as well as 800 rapes or attempted rapes, according to a letter the U.S. Education Department sent to educators in April 2011.

"We don't tolerate this anywhere else in our society," said Antonio Romanucci, a Chicago attorney representing some of the alleged Maine West victims in a civil lawsuit. "So why are we tolerating it in our schools?"

State anti-hazing laws enacted in the 1990s have had little effect as victims are often reluctant to testify and penalties are mild. While the Education Department hasn't warned schools about sexual hazing, it has offered guidance on bullying, cautioning schools that they can be held liable for tolerating or ignoring it.

"We leave it up to the states to monitor it," said Elaine Quesinberry, a department spokeswoman.

Norwood sits 7,000 feet high on a mesa in the Colorado Rockies, a six-hour drive southwest of Denver. Its single main street, with laundromat and diner, presents a working-class contrast to the lavish Telluride ski and summer resort 33 miles away. The area was once home to Spanish explorers and mountain men. Robert LeRoy Parker, better known as Butch Cassidy, worked the ranches here more than 100 years ago.

Norwood is so small that its 300 students in preschool through 12th grade attend classes in a single building. The football team fields eight players instead of the usual 11. Still, glass cases lining the school's hallways show off sports trophies celebrating decades of triumphs from basketball to cheerleading.

"Pain is temporary" reads a poster on the wall. "Pride is forever."

Inside the school office is a large framed display of Norwood's victory in the 2011 state wrestling championship.

A year later, in February 2012, members and coaches of the wrestling team boarded a bus to Denver for the state tournament, the culmination of the season. The school principal and local Norwood school officials drove separately to cheer on the team.

The principal's wife, a banker, grew up in Norwood and they met when he moved to town as a high school senior. They dated in college and returned to Norwood about 12 years ago when an opportunity arose to buy an auto repair shop. He worked for the school for 10 years, first teaching computer science and auto repair, and served as principal for two years.

"We always thought it was a great area to raise kids," the principal said in an interview. "They were really happy kids, liked going to school, straight-A students."

Their 13-year-old son was especially good at sports. A sturdy teenager with dimples and a quick smile, he started Pee Wee wrestling at age 3. At home he dazzled his family with his knowledge of sports trivia and enjoyed hanging out with his older brother. Yet in the months leading up to the attack, his mother become concerned that her usually easy-going son was being teased at school, she said.

In February 2012, the boy rode the bus to Denver as the team manager, in charge of videotaping the older high school students at the meet. After the coaches and wrestlers left the bus to weigh in, three older and bigger boys pinned the younger boy down, bound him with the tape, pulled down his pants and assaulted him, according to the principal. His parents were at a hotel, awaiting the start of the meet.

Bloomberg isn't naming the boys involved because they are juveniles.

Just before the meet started, the principal's older son heard the attackers laughing about the assault on his brother and told his father.

"I was shocked beyond belief, and I was mad," the father said. "I do believe I was madder than I have ever been. You're trying to protect your kids, and then something like this happens."

The father sought out his son, who told him what had happened. He then confronted Harris, the head coach, who at first said nothing had occurred, according to the father. In subsequent conversations, Harris said: "This happens 1,000 times a day around the U.S.," the principal recalled.

Harris, who was also school board president, was a builder in Norwood. The two families were close. They had vacationed together, though in recent years they began spending less time together because the principal's family felt the coach's boys had become too rowdy, the victim's mother said.

Harris, through attorney M. Colin Bresee, declined to comment.

[DaFace]

Originally Posted by WilliamTheIrish

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_2350599...victim-outcast

Yikes. That's ****ed up (both the crime and the town's reaction), but not entirely surprising in a tiny town like that.

Hopefully a city like Norman can take care of business as it should.

[DaFace]

Not sure why I cared enough to Google this, but fwiw, they definitely shoved shit up the kid's ass. Well, allegedly.

http://www.alvareviewcourier.com/new...768d39004.html

[KCUnited]

Originally Posted by DaFace

Not sure why I cared enough to Google this, but fwiw, they definitely shoved shit up the kid's ass. Well, allegedly.

http://www.alvareviewcourier.com/new...768d39004.html

thank god they connected the dots.

[DaFace]

Better article. And by better I mean more disturbing.

http://fox6now.com/2016/02/02/felony...-12-year-olds/

Kids are gonna be locked up for a long time if all of this is on tape.

[SAUTO]

That's ****ing horrible.