Clay Officials Brace for High School Hazing Lawsuit

Freshman Wrestlers Subjected to Physical, Mental and Sexual Assaults

Stock photography by Vitor Monthay.

This story contains language that some might find offensive.

Part 1

Members of Clay County’s school board won’t publicly comment about hazing on the Clay High wrestling team. They say they are anticipating a multi-defendant lawsuit that threatens to turn a repulsive secret into a public nightmare.

Hazing has plenty of names around the county that make it sound like fun—horseplay, roughhousing, teasing, initiation and a particular favorite, “boys being boys.” These euphemisms obscure behavior that often shares the elements of crimes such as assault and sexual attack.

According to the Hazing Prevention Network, a national nonprofit formed to study and stop the practice, 79 percent of college athletes reported being hazed initially in high school; 25 percent said it happened by age 13.

Hazing is a crime in 44 states, including Florida, and carries criminal penalties. State law also requires schools, victims and witnesses to report hazing to the local governing law enforcement agency. The vast majority of hazing is kept secret, however, no matter how brutal. Only an estimated five percent of all hazing is reported, and some only because of a tragic outcome.

Although research has proven hazing is prevalent in many different school organizations from grammar school throughout college, this account is about sports hazing in Clay County.

This story is based on interviews with Clay County parents, students, former students and sources within the school district who spoke on the condition of anonymity about hazing. These sources had experienced, witnessed or knew important details about what was happening. This story also relies on police reports.

Culture of Concealment

The “telling” wasn't easy, as Clay High School wrestlers recalled how team members were forced to endure, watch or participate in a humiliating and dangerous hazing rituals. Freshmen athletes were “held down” in the locker room and on the “mezzanine” at Clay High while upperclassmen sodomized them with a broom handle.

These witnesses and participants said when these acts happened on the mezzanine at school, victims were allowed to keep their pants on. However, sometimes the handles penetrated the layers of pants and underwear. Players were repeatedly threatened that if anyone revealed the practice, severe punishments would result.

This behavior, with and without pants, has become a ritual in high schools and college wrestling teams throughout the entire U.S., and has been reported in other sports’ teams and fraternities as well. A media search yields numerous stories of athletes who have been the victim of sodomization with everything from pool cues, soda and Gatorade bottles to fingers and fists.

Schools have different names for the practice: Brooming, Jubie, Yoshi. At Clay High, whose sports teams are “Blue Devils,” the ritual is called the “Devil’s Dildo.” Students said certain members of local law enforcement were aware of the practice.

Team members in several schools around the county also told how the lights in the locker rooms were turned off and they were forcefully stripped and restrained. Then lights were turned on as upperclassmen simulated degrading sexual acts against them, which were sometimes filmed. An apparently popular hazing custom in Clay County is the practice called “teabagging,” when freshman athletes are held down while an upperclassman takes off his pants and rubs his testicles in students’ faces. 

In 2019, the School Board voted to form their own police force, the Clay County District Schools Police Department, which gave the department oversight for all criminalities in schools, including hazing cases. Nevertheless, according to sources inside the schools, hazing incidents are sometimes “handled in-house” by school administrators, even if school police officers assigned to the school were aware of the occurrence. Without law enforcement participation, wrongdoing is only recorded in students’ personal records, which are confidential and not subject to Florida’s public records laws. 

“Handling it at school keeps the incident quiet,” one insider said. “Because it makes the school, principal, and coaches look bad if it gets out.”

Two Police Reports 

To date, Clay News & Views (CN&V) has obtained two investigative reports from the school police, but the State Attorney’s Office, which makes prosecution decisions, has not responded to requests for public records made more than a month ago.

In the first reported incident, Assistant principals at Clay High School, Bonnie Bishop King and Laurie Coburn, became aware of the hazing within the wrestling team at the school and conducted their own investigation. In his report, Officer D.C. Kennedy wrote that the principals said, “Multiple students in the schools wrestling program were involved in possible ‘hazing’ of other team members’ that happened on Oct. 12, 2022.” 

Kennedy and another school police officer, Sgt. Sarah Taylor began interviews. During the interviews, wrestlers said an upperclassman told them he had a “massage gun” or “vibrator” and would bring it to wrestling practice. He told his teammates they were to arrive early at practice the next day and that all freshmen would be held down and the vibrator’s “end piece” would be placed on victim’s “butts,” “buttocks,” “genital regions,” and “private areas.” 

Numerous boys were victims and witnesses, but many said they just wanted to try to forget it had ever happened. Nevertheless, wrestlers identified the suspects who held the boys down, the wrestler who brought the vibrator and advised upperclassmen of the plan, and those that used the vibrator.  

While Kennedy and Taylor were investigating the vibrator incident, another hazing was reported. It happened earlier, on Sept. 21, 2022, but the victim had been afraid to report it. After the Oct. 12 vibrator incident was reported and an investigation ensued, the victim, a freshman wrestler at Clay High, found the courage to tell his parents about the abuse. They reported it on approximately Nov. 1. According to school police documents, school police Detective Stanley Putman was assigned the case and began an investigation on Nov. 4.

Putman’s case report disclosed that the victim told the officer that a friend on the wrestling team approached him in the stairwell at Clay High and said, “Kids would be held down and ‘stuff’ would happen to them.”  

When the freshman went into the locker room to change clothes after practice, he was attacked by four fellow wrestlers. They held the victim and tried to remove his pants, while one stood in front of him with a hacksaw and told the victim he was going to “cut off his penis.” The victim said he believed the wrestler was going to do as he said. 

Other witnesses confirmed the boy’s statement. One said while the victim was being held, “older wrestlers” were trying to remove his pants and another wrestler was holding a hacksaw in the air saying “I’m going to cut your dick off” as “multiple wrestlers in the locker room” watched. 

Another witness told the investigator the wrestler holding the hacksaw said, “Cut his dick off.” 

A third witness said he walked into the locker room as upperclassmen wrestlers were “initiating” the freshman. In his report, Putnam wrote, “Older wrestlers were attempting to ‘pants’ (remove pants), slap with a belt, scare with a hacksaw and butt in the face.” The witness said he left the locker room, according to the report.

The suspects were not able to remove the victim’s pants as he fought his attackers. The officer wrote in his report, “The wrestling coach (possibly named Reed) entered the locker room and the suspects released the victim.” The suspect holding the hacksaw laid it on top of a locker and the boys disbursed. 

No Comment from Coach

Although the officer’s report clearly noted that a coach had entered the locker room during the hazing, there were no police reports provided to CN&V which showed head wrestling Coach James Reape or any other coaches having been interviewed about either incident.

Did Clay School police interview Coach James Reape or not? (Photo from the Clay Wrestling website)

Reape did not return a call seeking comments on the subject.

Two suspects were identified by witnesses and after investigating,  Putman contacted the mothers of the two suspects on Nov. 14 to make appointments for interviews.  Neither mother agreed to an interview.

Putman completed arrest warrants for two Clay High School students for the vibrator hazing and warrants for two other students for the hacksaw hazing. He sent the warrants to the state attorney’s office for approval on Dec. 2, 2022.

On Dec. 15, 2022, Putman met with Assistant State Attorney Hector Bustos, who would have been in charge of prosecuting the two cases. Bustos said warrants would not be issued because he “needed additional time to decide the proper course of action for the suspects.”

On Jan. 12, 2023, Putman again contacted Bustos, who advised he still needed more time to decide about the warrants in the two cases.

On January 13, 2023, schools police Chief Kenneth Wagner wrote in a “case supplemental report” that he had spoken with the hacksaw victim’s mother. He advised her that the case “started off as ‘horseplay’ and two students took the ‘horseplay’ too far. Those students have been identified by witness(es).”

According to Chief Wagner’s report, the mother said her son was “unable to attend school” and he “no longer has friends within the neighborhood after reporting this incident.” 

Since the hazing happened at the beginning of the school year wrestling practice, the boy did not know the suspects’ names, but he identified them in wrestling photos. Witnesses had also confirmed the identifications of the suspects, as stated in Wagner’s report, and one of the wrestling coaches concurred with the names of the suspects.

On Jan. 18, with arrest warrants still pending at the state attorney’s office, Wagner met with Clay High Principal Jennifer Halter and interviewed the suspect identified as the student holding the hacksaw. The student denied any part in the incident, and named two other boys who hazed the victim. 

The chief then re-interviewed a witness who had earlier identified the hacksaw holder, but the witness changed his story. He said he now couldn’t remember who was involved. 

The victim and his mother met with the Assistant State Attorney Bustos, Chief Wagner and Sgt. Taylor on Jan. 19, 2023.  Although the victim’s mother asked that a “victim’s advocate” be present during the interview of her son, no advocate was provided. 

The report, written by Taylor, disclosed the victim brought pictures of the wrestling team and identified the suspect in the pictures as the one that was threatening him with the hacksaw. 

“Bustos asked the victim how sure he was that (redacted) was the one threatening him with the hacksaw,” Taylor wrote. “The victim confidently advised he was 100 percent sure that (redacted) was holding the hacksaw.”  

Even so, the final report written on Jan. 19 by Detective Putman, who, according to records, was not at the meeting, appears to have reached a conclusion at odds with the boy’s positive identification.

“The victim was unable to positively identify the suspects in this incident. Therefore, Assistant State Attorney Bustos determined that arrest warrants would not be issued for the listed suspects. The case is rendered inactive (unable to determine identify of suspects.),” Putman wrote.

Putman contacted Bustos on Jan. 27, 2023 and again on Feb. 16 about a decision to issue warrants for the vibrator case. Finally, after a Feb. 23 phone call to Bustos, he learned that this case too would closed with no action.

Ending the Violence

Susan Lipkins, a psychologist who studies hazing, said hazing has increased in “frequency, severity, and in sexuality” with social media.

Numerous studies and research have also determined how and why hazing starts and has produced myriad programs and proven methods to intervene in hazing and halt it. 

One Clay high school appeared to have used intervention programs. According to one mother, Middleburg High School was rife with hazing. While coaches and school personnel were quiet about incidents, they instituted a no-tolerance policy and “did other things to make it stop.” 

“Supervision is an issue.” said Paul Boxer, a professor of psychology at Rutgers University. “For this kind of behavior to stop, the messaging has to come from the people who have the most influence over it—coaches, athletic directors, and teachers. The kids have to know the coaches don’t support it.”

Yet, researchers and experts on hazing found cooperation from coaches does not always exist. Studies showed over a third of all athletes interviewed said their coaches were aware of hazing episodes, while another one-third said coaches were present during some acts.

According to studies, some coaches and players view hazing as a “bonding” experience, but researchers and even coaches of major league teams have spoken out against the practice. They contend hazing simply establishes “who’s got the power” and is a form of violence that creates distrust, division, fear and has a negative effect on team performance.

Enduring Shame

It was 2008, and although former students said it had been happening to Clay’s athletes for decades, for the first people in the county were allowed a quick peek at what athletes actually endured.

A senior at Fleming Island High School—the son of a Jacksonville police officer—along with other upperclassmen, physically, sexually and mentally abused freshmen on the school’s wrestling team. The abuse happened over an extended period. The offenders called it “initiation.” According to law enforcement officers not involved in the case, participants would have been charged and faced jail time had the vicious attacks not been associated with a high school sports team.

The punishment was fast, quiet and minimal, even though as a result of the hazing, freshman students left the team, left school, and several suffered long-term mental anguish over the incidents.

Clay’s school officials said the hazing was an “isolated incident” and would never happen again. It was not isolated. And the testimony of the victims since the Fleming Island High case indicates that hazing continues.

In Florida and elsewhere, there have been lawsuits over hazing. New Mexico State University recently agreed to an $8 million settlement for hazing similar to that which has been reported here. Coaches and players, no matter how athletically gifted, were removed and sports programs were discontinued for the season.

Other districts have chosen to shelter coaches and players after hazing reports.

Hazing rituals that have been detailed in this story could not happen in a vacuum. Their persistence suggests a systemic problem. The question is whether reform will come from within, or must parents wait until a judge holds individuals or institutions accountable. We don’t know because no one is talking publicly…yet.

Next in Part 2: Florida has regulations that allow schools to distance themselves from the liabilities of hazing. One local coach may be creating a safe-space for it to happen.