What happened inside the locker room several years ago is well-known. Four junior varsity football players at Damascus High School in Maryland set upon their teammates, pinning three of them down and jabbing a broomstick handle into their buttocks.
“Plaintiffs have put forward evidence that a reasonable jury could conclude that reckless or callous indifference occurred here,” U.S. District Judge Peter Messitte said from the bench.
Attorneys for the families say that school officials knew of at least three, earlier sexual assaults inside Montgomery County high school locker rooms, including an alleged 2017 incident among Damascus football players involving a broomstick that has emerged as perhaps the most critical and contentious part of the litigation. The families also say school officials, partly motivated to protect the powerhouse football program, allowed a player to remain on the JV squad despite his history of violence and sexual harassment, and that they left the JV locker room unchecked for an hour every day between the end of classes and the start of practice.
Messitte did not set a trial date, but indicated that if the sides could not reach a settlement, the case could go before jurors for three weeks in February at the federal courthouse in Greenbelt. Potential damages could top $1 million, according to attorneys in the case.
Messitte didn’t say if the victims’ claims were true; rather he said they put forth reasonable evidence that they could be.
“It was well established that school officials owed a special duty of care to their students with regard to the safety and security of their students,” Messitte said. “There is evidence that defendants were fairly on notice, that they were indifferent to the possibility of locker room assault, among other conduct, and that it could result in constitutional violations.”
Lawyers for the school system and school officials have argued that the victims’ attorneys exaggerated specific allegations and incorrectly applied them to state and federal laws.
A spokeswoman for the county’s school system and board of education declined to comment specifically on Messitte’s opinions. But she took issue with the ruling as a whole and indicated they might appeal. “The board disagrees with the decision and is evaluating all options,” said the spokeswoman, Jessica Baxter.
The attacks occurred on Oct. 31, 2018, at the last practice of the season. At the time, the varsity squad had a 51-game winning streak and the JV team was a force in its own right.
A Montgomery County grand jury indicted four JV players on counts of rape and attempted rape, under Maryland laws covering a range of nonconsensual acts involving the use of an object. The cases were moved to juvenile court, where at least two of the teens pleaded to reduced counts of second-degree rape and attempted second-degree rape, according to three people familiar with the outcome of the juvenile court hearings, which were closed to the public.
In subsequent lawsuits filed in 2020, the victims’ attorneys zeroed in on the now contentious 2017 incident, a year before their clients were attacked. According to court hearings and school records obtained by The Post, a parent of a different Damascus student came to the school that year and told then-principal Casey Crouse an unnamed JV football player had been “sodomized through his uniform with a broom stick” in the locker room.
Crouse reported the meeting to her supervisor and to Jeffrey Sullivan, the head of countywide athletics for the school system, and she called the Montgomery County Police Department’s juvenile sex assault division, according to school records and court hearings. But without the name of a victim, a police detective told Crouse that investigators wouldn’t go on a “witch hunt,” according to court hearings.
Crouse also asked a police officer assigned to her school to look into the matter, and he ended up speaking with the purported victim, who denied anything happened, according to school system attorneys.
In their defense of the lawsuit allegations, attorneys for the school system said Crouse never learned the name of the victim. For that and other reasons, the attorneys said, the system could not be held liable for damages under Title IX, which is a federal education law that in part is designed to protect students against sexual harassment.
The families’ attorneys have pushed back on the argument, asserting Crouse overlooked that a scared teenager would be reluctant to report the matter and the principal never really wanted to find out what happened.
“They did nothing,” Timothy Maloney, an attorney for one of families, said in court.
After the 2018 case surfaced, according to court records, the alleged victim of the 2017 incident told police and his attorneys that he in fact was attacked by teammates with a broomstick in the locker room.
In his ruling, Messitte summed up evidence over the incident brought forward by the families’ attorneys:
“By November 2017, Crouse and other officials at the school had been informed of [the] assault, and that their failure to ask for names of the victim and perpetrator, to investigate further, or take other action amounted to deliberate indifference,” the judge said.
In addition to suing Crouse and the school system, the families also named as defendants Sullivan, the county wide-athletics director; Joseph Doody, the former Damascus High athletic director; Eric Wallich, the former varsity football coach at Damascus; and Vincent Colbert; the former JV football coach at Damascus. Doody, Wallich and Colbert left their posts after the 2018 assaults.
Baxter, the school system spokeswoman, declined to comment on behalf of Sullivan, Wallich and Crouse. Sullivan remains in his position and Wallich and Crouse are still with the school system in different positions, according to the school system. Colbert could not be reached for comment. Kevin Karpinski, an attorney for Doody, also could not be reached.
Messitte’s opinion and order this month was prompted by challenges filed by the school system and individual defendants. Such requests at this stage of federal litigation, Messitte noted, should be evaluated “in the light most favorable” to the responding party. That weighed in favor of the families.
The families also asserted that all five school officials were liable under Maryland’s gross negligence laws by acting in “wanton or reckless disregard” for the victims’ rights and lives. And on these claims — and whether they should be tried — the families had precedent going for them. “Generally, in Maryland,” Messitte said, “gross negligence goes to the jury so long as reasonable minds could disagree.”
Only one of the defendants challenged the gross negligence claim as it related to all of the victims: Doody. Messitte denied that effort, citing among other reasons the families’ claims that he failed to supervise whether coaches had taken anti-hazing training and if they were properly monitoring the locker room.
The families singled out a JV football player — indicted in the 2018 attacks — who they say had an extensive record of sexual harassment and yet was allowed to keep playing football. Their attorneys cited an email that Wallich, the varsity coach, sent to the player’s teachers just 20 days before the attacks.
“I get an email or a phone call almost daily about his behavior in class, bullying, etc.,” the email stated, according to court hearings. “I have spoken to him and made it clear that he could be suspended indefinitely from the football team. … It’s a shame, because this kid needs football.”
“He can’t control himself,” the email also stated.
“He was let loose in the locker room,” Maloney, an attorney for one of the families, said in court last month, “and we see what happened.”
School officials have argued that, even by the plaintiffs’ own allegations, it was clear the school system tried to intervene in the student’s behavior over the years — calling his mother more than 100 times, for example. He was so new to Damascus High School, they added, that the school didn’t necessarily have time to ramp up responses to the student’s behavior.
As for supervision, the families argued that school officials not only allowed the JV locker room to go unchecked before practice, they got rid of a study hall that had previously kept the JV players occupied even as they were ignoring complaints from teachers and school staff about the players being unruly during that time.
Messitte sided with the defendants on some points, but they had largely been conceded by the families. He ruled that the families were not eligible for punitive damages under the Title IX claims, though he did say they were eligible for emotional distress damages.
Lawyers Tom DeGonia and Jerry Hyatt, who represent one of the 2018 victims, said they were pleased with Messitte’s rulings. “The court recognized the evidence,” the two said, “which revealed that the sexual assaults could have been prevented by the defendants with minimal effort.”
Attorney Malcolm Ruff, who represents families from both the 2018 and 2017 incidents, said school officials violated the trust the families had placed in them. “Our clients,” he said, “look forward to laying all of these facts out to a jury at trial.”