A shocking study conducted by the Associated Press (AP) reveals that many incidents of sports hazing and bullying reported by school districts are actually cases of student-on-student sexual assault.
Even more alarming, is that the incidents become so “normalized” that players who were once the victims of violent sexual assault often become the attacker the year after they were attacked.
And despite many coaches claiming they did not know these attacks were occurring, the AP investigation discovered many cases where coaches not only knew the assaults were happening, but tried to cover these incidents up.
The AP looked at state education records and federal crime data, examining approximately 17,000 reports of sexual assaults by students over a four-year period. The official reports covered students in grades K-12.
Although the majority of cases involved high school students, there were cases that involved middle school students. In the majority of incidents, the majority of aggressors were male students.
Some of the cases the AP discovered include:
- A football player in Idaho hospitalized with rectal injuries after he was sodomized with a coat hanger;
- A teen from North Carolina suffered rectal injury after jabbed with a broomstick through his clothes;
- Multiple sexual assaults by a Georgia baseball team on its own rookie players; and
- A Vermont athlete was sodomized by his teammates with a broom and later committed suicide.
In case after case after case, the AP discovered that coaches either ignored the behaviors, ignored the pleas of help from victims, and often covered up and destroyed evidence of the assaults. Many times, it was hospital personnel who reported the crime when the victim was brought to emergency rooms for medical treatment, not the coaches.
Experts say that the major issue in why these assaults continue is the culture that surrounds team sports and many of these incidents are shrugged off as “jock behavior” by society. Compounding the issue for victims is that if they do speak up about being assaulted, they risk losing their place on the team and sport that they have likely worked so hard to obtain a spot on.
In a discussion about the AP’s report, Attorney Goldstein said, “This is outrageous that our children are being victimized and assaulted while school districts and coaches look the other way or cover up these crimes. They should be held as criminally responsible as the offenders are.”
