Photo Credit: New York Daily News
A mentally impaired boy held out his arms as his teammate asked him for a hug. What he thought was an act of kindness was instead a ploy to engage him in a vicious rape. As the teammate restrained the boy, another football player allegedly thrust a coat hanger into the boy’s rectum. Then a third teammate kicked the coat hanger several times, according to a criminal complaint.
A black football player with “mental disorders including learning disabilities” in a predominately white school, was allegedly attacked by his teammates after practice in the school locker room in Dietrich, Idaho on Oct. 23, 2015.
This spring, after several months of investigation, the state Attorney General’s office filed sexual assault charges against all three alleged attackers. Two of the teenagers are being charged as adults and could face life in prison, under Idaho law.
The boy’s family also filed a $10 million lawsuit against Dietrich High School. According to the suit, the rape wasn’t a one-off offense but instead the culmination of months of racist abuse by white students against the boy, who is black. The boy “was taunted and called racist names by other members of the team which names included ‘Kool-Aid’ ‘chicken eater’ ‘watermelon’ and [the N-word],” and forced to recite a racist song titled “Notorious KKK” the suit alleges. It also names 11 employees as defendants, claiming no one did anything to stop the racial and physical abuse against the boy. In fact it also alleges that Dietrich football coaches encouraged other players to fight the boy, allowing a much larger student to knock the boy unconscious as other students shouted “catcalls, taunts and racial epithets.”
18-year old John R.K. Howard (mugshot above) is allegedly the ringleader who kicked the coat hanger inside the boys rectum causing serious injuries, knocked him unconscious during forced boxing match, taunted and bullied the boy with racial epithets and “aggressive ‘humping’, jumping on him from the back and simulating anal sex” with other students.
17-year-old wide receiver Tanner Ward in addition to Howard, has also been charged as an adult with forcible penetration. He allegedly “physically forced a coat hanger into the Plaintiff’s rectum” before Howard kicked it.
A third football player, age 16, has been charged as a juvenile. His name has not been released.
“I screamed,” the victim testified, according to MagicValley.com. “I was pretty upset. I felt really bad. A little bit betrayed and confused at the same time. It was terrible — a pain I’ve never felt.”
A preliminary hearing against Ward has already begun while one for Howard is set for June 10.
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source: Washington Post
