MANTI — A high school football player described in court Tuesday how a teammate had inappropriately grabbed him with such force he thought his insides were being yanked out.
The teammate did the same to another boy, who said he was bedridden with pain but too ashamed to tell a doctor what happened.
A third young athlete recalled thinking, "Why would someone do this to someone they had grown up with?" when the now 16-year-old sexually assaulted him in the same way.
"I was harboring a secret that was eating away at me every day at wrestling and football," he said.
Seven teens — six boys and a girl — filed into a courtroom in Manti on Tuesday to recount similar and sometimes repeated encounters with the same classmate at Gunnison Valley High School, a boy who was a wrestler there and has since been expelled.
One of the students said he has considered suicide. Several fought tears as they said their grades have plunged and they no longer have a desire to play the sports they once loved.
After their statements, a judge sentenced the young athlete, who admitted to eight incidents of forcible sex abuse last month as part of a plea deal, to move in with his grandparents in St. George, undergo therapy and complete community service while attending an alternative high school with added supervision.
The Deseret News typically does not identify victims of sexual crimes and has also chosen not to identify the 16-year-old offender at this time.
The teenage victims, of which prosecutors say there are 12, had largely avoided telling anyone what happened, including parents or authorities, until a 14-year-old junior varsity football player spoke up. The boy alleged that two teammates held him down in September before practice one day while the 16-year-old athlete rubbed his genitals on the player's face.
When a police officer got wind of more allegations and called another boy to gather evidence, "I minimized my story and sugar-coated it," one teen recalled, fearing he hadn't fought back hard enough during the assault. "It was the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, but I (eventually) told him what happened."
"This is not something you think will ever happen to your child," his mother told the judge. "We are struggling every day just to try to find a new normal."
The case has put on trial the spirit of Gunnison, a town of about 3,000 where some say the teen's behavior doesn't fit a crime and amounts to hazing or kids having fun.
"Our community is being divided. There's friends that we had before who will not even acknowledge you as a person anymore," said the father of another boy, who tries to explain to others in town what his son has gone through. "There are misconceptions out there that are just tearing our community apart."
Greg, the teen who reported the assault on the football field, said after the hearing that he will continue to play the sport. He and his mother previously have agreed for him to be identified by his first name.
"I felt glad that I spoke up, but I felt if they would have spoke up, it could have been a different outcome," he said of the teens who were victimized before him. "I don't want it to happen to other people."
His aggressor sat quietly in a collared shirt and showed little emotion during the hearing, at times fiddling with his tie and shifting his weight as the judge addressed him. He spoke only once, replying "yeah" when asked if he understood his sentence.
Sixth District Juvenile Judge Brody Keisel told the teen he is concerned by the boy's lack of empathy, noting the accounts of his behavior "made me queasy."
He will order the 16-year-old to be placed into the state's custody at a hearing in three months if he reoffends or doesn't make progress in therapy, he warned.
Prosecutor Wes Mangum argued that the teen and his family have downplayed the severity of the assaults and said the boy should be placed with Juvenile Justice Services. An evaluation prior to sentencing revealed that the boy admitted to inappropriate touching and "tapping" classmates but denied hurting them, Mangum said.
He said the teen told an investigator, "I feel like people are trying to make me out worse and get me to not participate in sports so their child can have all the glory."
Defense attorney Greg Smith said his client took responsibility when he pleaded guilty and fails to understand his physicality, arguing that the boy is "also a kid and there's trauma we're not going to get into right now that he's been through."
The teen was originally charged with six counts of object rape, a first-degree felony, and five counts of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony. Last month, as part of an agreement with prosecutors, he admitted to eight counts of forcible sexual abuse, a second-degree felony.
The charges and convictions reflect a total of 12 student victims, but still more similar reports were not prosecuted, Mangum said.
Two of his teammates who participated in the September incident, ages 14 and 15, are scheduled to be sentenced next month.
In October, Greg's mother sued the South Sanpete School District in federal court, arguing that administrators didn't do enough to stop ongoing abuse at the high school. The district has argued that after administrators learned of the allegations, they offered services to the victim and warned students not to retaliate.
from Deseret News https://ift.tt/2TehWL5
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