Deposition: Wrestling Coach Saw Me Being Threatened by Boys With a Hacksaw
This Adult Witness Declined To Intervene, Lawsuit Plaintiff Testifies
With all the scandals involving school wrestling in Clay County, it can be hard to keep track. This story is a follow-up to our 2024 series on hazing at Clay High School, including disturbing reports of real or threatened sexual violence.
Clay Schools have asked a judge to toss out a hazing case that involved a wrestling practice at Clay High School. District lawyers say the county is not responsible for bad things that happen within school walls as long the space is being used by a third party.
The district’s lawyers attached a single, lengthy deposition to the June 4 filing—that of the former student Mark Cormier, now 18. He spoke in his own words about how he came to be at the after-school practice session, during which he was held down by four other boys and threatened with penile amputation by one of them holding a hacksaw.
The June 4 motion for dismissal was filed before scheduled depositions had been taken from Clay’s High’s principal, vice principal, athletic’s director and coaches.
Cormier testified that he was a Clay High freshman when a friend and neighbor invited him to attend wrestling conditioning sessions. He had never wrestled before and attended only a small number of conditioning practices before the incident.
The former student said he believed he was participating in activities associated with the Clay High School wrestling team because the practices were held on school grounds and the coaches were from the school. He said he was unaware that the practice was under the auspices of the Green Cove Wrestling Club and unaware of the very existence of the club.
Cormier testified students were frequently unsupervised because coaches were absent or late. He said he watched others being hazed while no coach was present.
Through interviews with parents, Clay News & Views has documented incidents in which a number of wrestlers suffered hazing which was tantamount to assault. Male wrestling students from Clay High and their parents told CN&V that boys witnessed and were also victims of sodomization with broom handles—a practice that media stories recount as typical in various wrestling communities across the nation.
Students said wrestlers were forcefully stripped and restrained as upperclassman simulated various sexual acts against them, some of them violent.
Cormier’s case is the only one that has gone to court. Victims and their parents said they decided against filing complaints because they feared social consequences and physical retribution from other wrestlers. As you will read later in the story, Mark Cromier’s case validated these fears.
The former student testified that he was initially afraid to tell his parents about his assault. When he did, his mom called the police. But the investigating detective ridiculed him and minimized his experience calling it “horseplay.” Arrest warrants were finally obtained, but police had chosen the wrong students. Cormier said he had never been asked by officers to identify the suspects beforehand.
He said that while the assault was underway, a coach entered the room and went to an area of “cubbies.”
“There was a coach that walked in and looked at the cubbies and was doing something in the cubbies in front of us, so they slowly set me down,” he told the inteviewer, a lawyer for the wrestling club.
The coach said nothing and went about his business. Cormier was asked whether the coach might not have noticed what was happening.
“I mean, not unless he was blind. I mean, you can walk in the door, and you can see the whole room,” Cormier said." “You can see everything that’s happening around you. And he just basically looks away and does stuff in the cubby.”
The deposition established that Cormier was not able to identify the coach from photographs. However, he was able to identify students.
Although the former student suffered brusing around his waist from the boys pulling his pants down, he testified that the lasting injuries were not physical but psychological, including anxiety, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, depression, nausea and vomiting when discussing the incident and fear triggered by reminders of the event, such as knives.
The experience, he said, disrupted what had been a normal high school life and discouraged him from attending social events or participating in school activities. He was shunned and lost friends.
Parents of other wrestlers told CN&V their students were told by members of the Clay High faculty that if they associated and communicated with Mark Cromier in any way, they could be sued by the Cromier family, which is not true. The wrestlers said because of the warning, they avoided Mark Cromier.
Cromier’s response was to become more involved with church youth groups where he found new friends. He did not graduate from Clay High, instead getting a high school GED. Cormier also testified that hazing incident brought out an interest in public speaking because he does not want the same thing to happen to other kids. He spoke of attending a Bible Institute to help spread the word of God.
Judge Gary Wilkinson has not ruled on Clay County School’s motion for summary judgement. Cormier’s lawyers have proposed a settlement with the other defendant, the Green Cove Wrestling Club. Trial has been set for five days in September.