A $10 million civil lawsuit brought against Dietrich High School officials and football coaches connected to a sexual assault that took place last October is revealing some disturbing details. According to the lawsuit, a mentally disabled black high school football player endured months of racist verbal and physical bullying, unchecked by the Idaho high school’s administration and football coaches, ending with a group of the young man’s teammates sodomizing him with a coat hanger.
According to prosecutors, the sexual assault happened Oct. 23, 2015 in the high school locker room. The lawsuit describes one teammate pretending to offer the victim a hug, then holding him down as another boy inserted a coat hanger into his rectum. A third attacker then kicked the coat hanger several times, forcing it farther into the victim's body and causing rectal injuries that required treatment at a hospital, lawyers say.
"The Plaintiff screamed and cried out but no staff member came to his assistance or even attempted to investigate the clamor from within the locker room," attorneys R. Keith Roark and E. Lee Schlender wrote in the filing.
Not named in the lawsuit is John R.K. Howard and Tanner Ward who were charged as adults with “forcible sexual penetration.” A third teen was charged as a minor. Tanner Ward has since cut a plea deal.
Tanner Ward still faces at least one juvenile charge in the case, but a prosecutor Tuesday asked District Judge John Butler to dismiss the adult felony charge against Ward.
According to the teen’s lawyer, the dismissal of the adult case was the result of plea deal talks.
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Ward was 16 at the time of the alleged attack, but Idaho law mandates that juveniles age 14 to 18 accused of committing certain crimes on or near school campuses are charged as adults. Those crimes include rape and the charge that Ward faced, forcible sexual penetration by the use of a foreign object.
As with all of the defendants, one thing they have going for them is that they are white. Most of us can agree if these were “super predator” black kids, any plea deal we would hear about would include some kind of 15 year minimum sentence. The allegations against the three white rapists were that the unnamed juvenile attacker asked the victim for a hug, then held him while Ward penetrated him with a coathanger, followed by Howard kicking the coathanger a few times. Howard, for his part, sounds like a real piece of affluenza.
“Mr. Howard is a large and aggressive male who had been sent to live with his relatives in Idaho due to his inability to keep out of trouble in Texas,” the complaint says. “Mr. Howard is a relative of prominent individuals in the community and, at least in part due to his athletic ability and community connections, the Defendants ignored or were deliberately indifferent to the behavior of Mr. Howard which included aggression, taunting and bullying of The Plaintiff and other students in the District. With deliberate indifference, the Defendants did nothing to curb the vicious acts of Mr. Howard who brought with him from Texas a culture of racial hatred towards the Plaintiff.”
The new information that has come out is the result of lawyers for the victim in the civil suit, demanding that they get access to the uncensored reports from the school’s internal investigation—reports that have been unavailable to the public. Here are some of the school’s findings on (probably) Tanner Ward’s activities:
▪ More likely than not on Oct. 22 gave the victim a “wedgie” that ripped his underwear before practice. “This happened in front of other student athletes.”
▪ More likely than not, the victim was wearing the torn boxers after practice when the same teammate who gave him the “wedgie” picked up a black plastic hanger and abused the victim.
▪ It is possible that the teammate who inserted the hanger, when told by another player to stop, told that teammate “something to the effect, ‘shut up or I’ll do the same thing to you.’”
On (probably) John R.K. Howard:
▪ More likely than not “kicked the hanger multiple times, either embedding it into the rectum of (victim), or embedding it further.”
▪ More likely than not, the teammate who kicked the hanger “on other occasions … has ‘dry humped’ or simulated having anal sex with younger players.”
▪ “It is possible but not certain that, before practice on Oct. 22, (the player who kicked the hanger) pushed (the victim) into the corner of the bathroom on the Junior High School side of the locker room, after his underwear had been ripped, and simulated having sex with him.”
On (probably) the player charged as a juvenile:
▪ More likely than not had his arm around and was possibly hugging (victim) when (redacted) grabbed (the victim’s) underwear.
▪ “More likely than not ... was present and turned off the lights in the bathroom when (the second player) pushed (the victim) into the corner and simulated having sex with him.”
▪ More likely than not “‘dry humped’ or simulated having sex with (the victim) in the cold storage room the football team keeps its pads, but this happened on a separate date than the other incidents.”
The fact that Ward has cut a plea deal is pretty remarkable since there seems to be no lack of eye witness testimony as to how criminal he or his cohorts’ behavior was.