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Mountain View police say that no arrests have been made following a sexual assault investigation at Mountain View High School last month. The investigation was prompted by an article in the school’s newspaper.
The story, titled “Locker room misconduct raises questions,” ran in the April 4 issue of the Oracle student newspaper and explored bullying and hazing within the school’s football and lacrosse teams. With names redacted, the story included first-hand student accounts of bullying, including one football player’s description of a sexual assault in the locker room. The incident allegedly occurred about 18 months ago, during the 2014-15 football season.
The Oracle story reports that a football player described being “stabbed in the rear end” with the handle of a hammer by fellow team members. An unnamed witness in the story said the student had been tied down to a table with straps when he was allegedly assaulted with the hammer.
The interviews by the student reporters were enough to prompt an investigation by school and Mountain View-Los Altos High School District administrators — and then the Mountain View Police Department — prior to the story going to print.
When the story ran in early April, high school district officials kept quiet about the investigation, prompting parental concerns that an alleged sexual assault incident had gone unreported.
Some parents voiced concerns that school and athletic staff may not have done their due diligence in reporting the assault, and were nonchalant in their response. Athletic Director Shelley Smith is quoted in the story as saying he did not investigate the incident further after “conversations with players and parents,” and that the alleged victim told school administrators he was fine, and that the incident was a “joke.”
In a letter addressed to Smith, Principal Dave Grissom and Superintendent Jeff Harding, Kris Peterson, a parent, wrote that there is no excuse for the apparent “abdication of responsibility” to report the incident to police immediately.
Requirements for reporting child abuse and neglect are contained in both the California Education Code and the penal code. Almost any campus staff member is a “mandated reporter,” and has an obligation to make a report to the local police department or sheriff’s office if there’s a reasonable suspicion of child abuse or neglect. The report must be made within 24 hours.
Superintendent Jeff Harding defended the district’s response, and told the Voice that a juvenile officer got involved immediately once administrators caught wind of the student interviews. He said the district notified the Mountain View Police Department soon after hearing the interview recordings.
“Police were involved within hours of us having any knowledge of what had happened 18 months before,” Harding said.
The subsequent Mountain View Police Department investigation started in late March, but police were not able to provide an exact date. Police have since concluded the investigation and did not make any arrests, according to police spokeswoman Katie Nelson.
Harding said he believes the claims in the story that ran in the Oracle were mostly unfounded, based on the student interviews he reviewed, and that the police investigation affirmed that. He added that bringing attention to the allegations with a school or districtwide statement would have been unnecessary.
“I think these two (reporters) got it in their mind that it happened in a way that was not reflective of what the boys on the football team described,” Harding said. “There just wasn’t any suggestion that that’s what happened,”
Peterson, who is a marriage and family therapist at El Camino Hospital, told the Voice in an email that the district should have used the alleged incident as an opportunity to “clearly articulate to the student body that sexual assault will be addressed swiftly and aggressively by administration.” By burying the investigation, she said, the seniors this year will be heading into college with the message that sexual assault is both minimized and dismissed by school officials.
“The theme of the Mountain View High School winter formal this year was ‘consent,’ but the impact of this message has been summarily extinguished if the student body is not informed that this incident was, in fact, responded to thoroughly and appropriately,” Peterson said.
Why do these football players always choose this sort of “hazing” behavior as described in the article, or some variation. It makes one wonder.
This sort of thing doesn’t just happen to football players. I’ve heard of incidents (not just locally) of similar behavior in swimming teams, cheerleading teams, high school bands, college fraternities and sororities, etc. Pretty much anywhere you have a lot of intensely organized but poorly supervised young people in a private room.
not the most important point of this article, but I never even knew school newspapers covered topics like this. mine mostly contained crossword puzzles.
This article leaves more questions than answers. For one, either there was a sexual assault or there was not? Clearly the athletic director, who quotes the student/victim as saying it was a joke, implies there was not (surprise surprise). And he later states he also talked to “players and parents†and the player is fine. That’s good – the guy responsible for a safe locker room says he’s fine. We can all go back to our lives.
The article says the Oracle’s story included “one football player’s description of a sexual assaultâ€, this seems to imply there is a witness to a sexual assault or is this the victim speaking? Or was this another person who was in on the “jokeâ€? Was the ‘unnamed witness’, who is mentioned later in the article, who says the victim was tied to the table with straps, been disqualified for some reason? Yet the fact that we have a front page story seems to indicate there is more to it than a joke where the punch line is 18 months after the fact. It feels like a lot of plausible deniability.
As stated in the article, the student interviews described an incident which required the administration to report child abuse. This lead to a MVPD investigation with no arrests which implies the accusations in the interviews were untrue or didn’t rise to a level sufficient to file charges. And the Superintendent says the accusations were “mostly unfoundedâ€. So was there an assault or not? Was this a ‘typical’ playful gag in the locker room or did someone go over the line? And if so, how has being strapped down and being stabbed in the rear with a hammer’ become typical and or playful?
If this poor kid was coerced into characterizing his behavior as a joke after the fact, either to protect himself or the administration, this is a very big deal. And if he made it all up, why is this front page news? My guess is he backed off his accusations and didn’t want his friends busted. Which means the AD has no idea what’s going on in his locker room.
This article leaves more questions than answers. For one, either there was a sexual assault or there was not? Clearly the athletic director, who quotes the student/victim as saying it was a joke, implies there was not (surprise surprise). And he later states he also talked to “players and parents†and the player is fine. That’s good – the guy responsible for a safe locker room says he’s fine. We can all go back to our lives.
The article says the Oracle’s story included “one football player’s description of a sexual assaultâ€, this seems to imply there is a witness to a sexual assault or is this the victim speaking? Or was this another person who was in on the “jokeâ€? Was the ‘unnamed witness’, who is mentioned later in the article, who says the victim was tied to the table with straps, been disqualified for some reason? Yet the fact that we have a front page story seems to indicate there is more to it than a joke where the punch line is 18 months after the fact. It feels like a lot of plausible deniability.
As stated in the article, the student interviews described an incident which required the administration to report child abuse. This lead to a MVPD investigation with no arrests which implies the accusations in the interviews were untrue or didn’t rise to a level sufficient to file charges. And the Superintendent says the accusations were “mostly unfoundedâ€. So was there an assault or not? Was this a ‘typical’ playful gag in the locker room or did someone go over the line? And if so, how has being strapped down and being stabbed in the rear with a hammer’ become typical and or playful?
If this poor kid was coerced into characterizing his behavior as a joke after the fact, either to protect himself or the administration, this is a very big deal. And if he made it all up, why is this front page news? My guess is he backed off his accusations and didn’t want his friends busted. Which means the AD has no idea what’s going on in his locker room.
This article leaves more questions than answers. For one, either there was a sexual assault or there was not? Clearly the athletic director, who quotes the student/victim as saying it was a joke, implies there was not (surprise surprise). And he later states he also talked to “players and parents†and the player is fine. That’s good – the guy responsible for a safe locker room says he’s fine. We can all go back to our lives.
The article says the Oracle’s story included “one football player’s description of a sexual assaultâ€, this seems to imply there is a witness to a sexual assault or is this the victim speaking? Or was this another person who was in on the “jokeâ€? Was the ‘unnamed witness’, who is mentioned later in the article, who says the victim was tied to the table with straps, been disqualified for some reason? Yet the fact that we have a front page story seems to indicate there is more to it than a joke where the punch line is 18 months after the fact. It feels like a lot of plausible deniability.
As stated in the article, the student interviews described an incident which required the administration to report child abuse. This lead to a MVPD investigation with no arrests which implies the accusations in the interviews were untrue or didn’t rise to a level sufficient to file charges. And the Superintendent says the accusations were “mostly unfoundedâ€. So was there an assault or not? Was this a ‘typical’ playful gag in the locker room or did someone go over the line? And if so, how has being strapped down and being stabbed in the rear with a hammer’ become typical and or playful?
If this poor kid was coerced into characterizing his behavior as a joke after the fact, either to protect himself or the administration, this is a very big deal. And if he made it all up, why is this front page news? My guess is he backed off his accusations and didn’t want his friends busted. Which means the AD has no idea what’s going on in his locker room.
Adults, need I remind you that it’s your responsibility to decide if this is an assault. You should not allow children to dictate to you that being tied down and stabbed in the rectum is just a “joke”.
Where are the adults? These kids are minors, are they completely unsupervised? Sounds like Lord of the Flies and apparently this type of thing is happening across the country according to WSJ http://www.wsj.com/articles/what-sayreville-teaches-us-about-high-school-locker-rooms-1415822743
probably was a spic doing his thing
he wanted it
The brave young muckraking journalists of the Oracle are not your standard fare set of kids. Remember ‘the sex issues’ reporting just a couple years ago? Wow – stood up to some parents for their Free Speech rights.
It is clear that the Superintendent is not leading ‘his adults’ the way that he should. They, the entire athletic department, need to have mandatory retraining on these issues. Sooner rather than ‘later’. If Kris Peterson gives an “all’s clear” then I will believe MVLA has fixed it’s problem. It is a problem – it should involve the head administrator’s head if it isn’t fixed.
Otherwise – you end up with college athletes and athletic administrators like Baylor’s. I hope Jeff Harding, head administrator, reads this – and pays close attention to the fate of the Baylor University president.