Mead High School football players accused of attacking teammates at summer camp | KREM 2 study

MEAD, Washington. Five Mead High School students are facing assault charges following an incident that occurred last year during a summer football camp at Eastern Washington University (EWU).

Police reports indicate the attack occurred last June, but was not reported until late February, eight months later.

A summer camp held at Eastern Washington University is an annual tradition for the Mead High School football team. Last year it took place from June 19 to 22 and students in grades nine to twelve stayed in a dormitory on campus.

KREM 2 spoke with a man directly involved with a Mead player who says he was targeted by older players on the team. He is asked not to be identified.

He said the alleged assaults began with some hazing, which ranged from verbal and racial slurs to an assault or multiple assaults.

But what's even more troubling, he told KREM 2, is the way the incident was handled by the Mead School District in the weeks and months that followed.

According to a Feb. 23 EWU police case report, a player's father called to report an attack that occurred in June, indicating that “younger students were preyed upon/targeted for hazing on purpose by upperclassmen.” The report states that “masked suspects entered a student's dorm room, grabbed another male subject and began sexually assaulting him.”

Another report from another parent says the victim was held down by upper-class men and sexually assaulted with a massage gun. Cell phone video obtained by KREM 2 from that evening shows several teens holding someone on the ground and another teen holding a massage gun.

Both parents say this and other videos were widely distributed to Mead High School students on social media. They also both told police that “it was very likely that more victims had been attacked as well.”

But a police report was not filed until late February, eight months after Mead's football camp. According to investigators, the Mead High School principal says she first heard about the alleged attack on Feb. 20, when videos surfaced on social media showing the attack as it happened.

District officials say they immediately notified the school resource officer and launched their own Title IX investigation. The Spokane County Sheriff's Office then took the lead in the criminal investigation.

State and federal law requires school officials to notify the district's Title IX coordinator whenever they become aware of an incident that could constitute sexual harassment. The district must then conduct an investigation and, if it determines that the harassment has occurred, the school must take immediate and effective steps to end the harassment, eliminate the hostile environment, prevent its recurrence, and, if necessary, mitigate its consequences. remedy.

Mead school officials would not agree to an on-camera interview with KREM 2, but did provide the district's internal investigation report stating that athletic director John Barrington sent an e-mail about three weeks after camp in early July. received an email from a parent. The parents' email reportedly stated that their child had a video showing an attack on a Mead player with a massage gun. But at the time, the school said the video only depicted “laughter, yelling and what appeared to be a 'dog pile' on an individual,” and that it was “difficult to determine what was happening other than horseplay and/or roughhousing” behaviour'.

The district says Barrington and head football coach Keith Stamps then agreed to talk to some of the students in the video and identify them as “team leaders.” According to the report, the students told Stamps that they were just “messing around” and that the targeted student said that “everything was fine” and that he was “having a good time” at the camp.

The coach and athletic director did not report the behavior to district officials at the time. In fact, the district says it wasn't until nearly six months later that another parent showed them new videos that officials say showed “a much different (clearer) perspective of what had taken place in the dorms.”

On December 11, 2023, Mead officials say the high school principal was informed of the video amid “concerns that what had happened in June could be bigger than they thought.”

It wasn't until Feb. 20 that the district says Principal Kimberly Jensen actually viewed the videos and notified the school resource officer and parents of the victims.

Marcus Sweetser is a Spokane attorney representing two families who say their sons were attacked during last summer's football camp. In addition to the initial attack, he says the victims have faced continued harassment and retaliation from teammates.

“This incident is now a milestone for this child's entire life in the future, the day everything changed. And that tells me that these concerns were extremely important and ongoing for these families.”

Sweetser says he's concerned about how long it took for the school to notify parents about the video, and says he's equally concerned that Mead's principal didn't receive the video until two and a half months after she received it Viewed.

“We have a school district with multiple cases of sexual assault involving multiple students,” he explained. “And the evidence, as far as we have seen thus far, leads us to believe that Mead School District staff became aware of them very quickly and actually had conversations internally within the school about the incidents, but for reasons that only they knew, they decided not to inform the parents of what they had learned.”

Mead officials told KREM 2 that they completed their internal investigation in late March, finding that two students had been assaulted twice during the EWU football camp. Both incidents were reported to reflect “typical features of hazing” and “given the area of ​​the body targeted, may constitute a form of sexual harassment.”

District officials said each incident was handled on an individual basis, but conceded that the videos showed a clear violation of the behavior expected of Mead students and athletes.

Investigators said there was probable cause to charge five students, all under the age of 18, with fourth-degree assault. They determined there was no evidence of sexual motivation, so they did not pursue charges of sexual assault.

Because none of the suspects had a criminal history and fourth-degree assault is a gross misdemeanor, they were all referred to a diversion program. That means the children agreed to certain conditions, and the Spokane County Superior Court agreed not to file criminal charges as long as they meet those conditions.

The district has announced it will hold an open meeting for current and prospective football families to ask district officials questions about this investigation. It will take place at Mead High School on May 13.

Eastern Washington University's summer camp is happening again this summer, but only for day trips. The university said Mead students will no longer be able to stay overnight on campus.

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