A public school district in Spokane, Washington must pay $15 million to two former high school student victims of a hazing assault at a football training camp at Eastern Washington University in 2023, and another $2 million to their families, a jury decided last week.
The former Mead High School students — one Black, one white — and their parents sued after football coaches minimized and the Mead School District took eight months to report and investigate the sexual assaults that occurred at the hands of their fellow teammates in June 2023 at the camp.
The jury awarded the Black victim $8 million and the white victim $7 million, The Spokesman-Review reported. The jury also awarded each of the victims’ four parents $500,000.
Sexual Hazing and Racial Harassment by Teammates
The trial arose from hazing incidents at the camp where teammates of the two victims allegedly pinned them down and forcibly applied a battery-powered massage gun to their anal and genital areas. The football players recorded videos of the assaults, which spread throughout the school and the community for months afterward.
The Black student-athlete, who is now 17, testified at trial last week that he faced racial slurs and taunting from his teammates in the months leading up to the camp. He told the jury that racism permeated Mead High School, where his teammates regularly used the N-word around him and his coaches, who did not correct them.
He said he was called a “monkey” by teammates who said he “needed to be put on a leash,” and that they often threw around racist terms such as “fried chicken” and “Kool-Aid” to their Black teammates, “making us feel less like a person.”
The Black student described feeling targeted leading up to the attack, The Spokesman-Review reported. Just before the football camp, he used another player’s water bottle without his permission, angering him. He overheard a peer on the team saying, “We’ll get him back at camp.”
During the weekend of the attack, he sensed his teammates were “plotting” against him. A group of upperclassmen tried to get a key to his room from his roommate.
On the second night of the three-day camp, those upperclassmen tracked the sophomore victim down in his friend’s dorm, where they pinned him to a bed and assaulted him in his private areas with the massage gun. One student wore a mask, and some chanted “sacrifice” during the assault, while others recorded the attack on their cellphones, he said.
‘I Miss Who I Was’: Black Student Feels Lost After Attack
“Before that day, my life was light; I could feel the sun,” the Black victim said. “Since then, it’s been hard to find that again. To find myself, to bring that character that they took out, what they took from me.”
“I lost whatever type of faith, whatever amount of trust I had in people,” the student testified. “I don’t trust anyone.”
Because of the emotional trauma from the attack, the Black student said he moved to Texas with his uncle and mother for his final years of high school, The Spokesman-Review reported.
His mother testified, “I watched it absolutely destroy my son. He went from being this class clown, happy, fun kid to being so distraught about what happened.”
In the years since the attack, the student said, he has become more “robotic” and less spontaneous in his social interactions. Before the attack, he said he took for granted, “not caring about my next sentence. Not caring about what people might think of me if I started randomly dancing or something. I miss who I was.”
Despite this change in demeanor and struggling with depression, he said he earned “almost all A’s” and all-star awards for football, and is now bound for a university in Texas, where he will play football.
White Student Targeted For Defending Black Teammates
The victims’ attorney, Marcus Sweetser, said the Black student was targeted for his race, while the other victim, who is white, was targeted for standing up for his Black teammates.
On the last night of the football camp, the white victim, then a sophomore, warned two other Black players that they were the next target of the hazing, and they hid in another student-athlete’s room. He then told his marauding teammates the assaults needed to stop and refused to tell them where the Black players were hiding.
The white student said he was then tackled to the ground as several of his teammates pinned his arms down, pulled his legs apart and held them toward his head as about 15 players yelled, cheered and filmed. A masked player with the massage gun declared a “price must be paid” as “punishment” and repeated the sexual assault on his anus and genitals, his lawsuit said.
Coaches and School Officials Downplay the Assault
Cellphone videos of the assaults circulated widely among students at the high school and in the Mead community, prompting some parents who had seen the videos to complain to school officials that a sexual assault had taken place.
But it wasn’t until February 2024, eight months after the camp, that the Mead School District notified the victims’ parents about the videos and the assault allegations.
In a deposition, former Mead High School Principal Kimberly Jensen said football coach Keith Stamps and athletics director John Barrington kept the true nature of the incidents from her for months, describing it as “boys roughhousing in a dorm room.”
Once a parent told her during a meeting that what had happened at the camp was similar to a gang rape, Jensen said she demanded to see the videos, and notified Mead School District Superintendent Travis Hanson about the severity of the allegations.
During the trial, Hanson admitted under questioning from Sweetser, the attorney representing the two former student-athlete plaintiffs, that he had deleted references to racial discrimination from a district fact-finding report on the camp hazing incidents that had found “a concerning and persistent pattern of racist comments and discriminatory harassment” in Mead’s athletic programs.
He said an attorney had advised him to do so, since the district’s investigation was focused on sexual harassment, not racial discrimination.
Several Lawsuits Seek Millions in Damages
The lawsuit originally filed on behalf of three Black students and one white student alleged that the Mead School District was negligent in failing to supervise the students and to ensure their safety from the foreseeable harms of assault, sexual assault and harassment, bullying, hazing, racial discrimination, and gender discrimination.
The lawsuit said the district failed to inform the parents of the plaintiffs or the parents of the perpetrators, preventing both from appropriately intervening or taking steps to protect their children or mitigate harm. It alleged school officials and the district failed to provide safety plans, enforce safety plans, or provide appropriate support to the students.
Two of the four Black victims previously settled with the school district.
Another Black student filed a federal lawsuit in March seeking $50 million in damages against the school district, Eastern Washington University, and several of the boys accused of carrying out the hazing.
The two victims involved in the civil jury trial that ended last week sued the district for damages for physical and emotional pain and suffering, and for enduring humiliation and harassment following the assault.
Judge’s Early Ruling
Spokane County Superior Court Judge Annette Plese had already ruled leading up to the civil jury trial that the district was liable by failing to protect students from “foreseeable harm,” did not follow mandatory reporting laws after receiving several reports of sexual harassment and assault and engaged in gender-based and racial discrimination.
Sweetser told the jury that no one can give back to the players the three years of high school they suffered through with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The father of the white student victim testified at trial that his son was reserved and spoke little when he returned from the camp in June 2023. He said his son isolated himself in a basement and refused to eat dinner with the family, and became agitated and short-tempered, slamming doors. His grades soon began to fall.
In February 2024, after Jensen called to tell the father and mother about the camp assault, they approached their son about it.
“It was difficult,” the father said. “He was angry. He was embarrassed. It took a while for him to admit to us that it happened.”
The student received counseling but refused to talk about the assault with the counselor and continued to become more withdrawn each day, his father said. He left Mead High School and transferred to Spokane High School, where he continued to stay to himself and started wearing headphones in school to drown out interactions with others.
The father said through tears that he sees flashes of his son’s old self, but they are fleeting, and that the hazing cost him precious time with his son that he won’t get back.
He said his son graduated from high school two weeks ago and plans to try a firefighting program in Oregon.
School District Still Minimizing The Assault At Trial
The lawsuit sought $47 million in damages for the two students and their families, including $14.5 million for each student’s mental suffering; $2.5 million for each student’s humiliation; $1.5 million for each student’s physical pain; and $1 million for each student’s loss of life enjoyment. He also asked for $1.95 million for each of the four parents.
In closing arguments last week, Sweetser said the school district must be held accountable for its “recklessness” with how it handled the student victims’ complaints and because it caused them “tremendous suffering,” which is ongoing.
He said the students’ personalities and moods changed after the assault as well as their relationships with their parents, families and the world.
Francis Floyd, one of Mead’s attorneys, acknowledged that the behavior of certain district employees was “wrong” and “totally unacceptable.”
But he told the jurors not to let undue sympathy or bias overcome their rational thought process, noting, “You need to base it on facts,” and “compensate these two young men for any injuries that were proximately caused by the incident.”
He said the emotional distress the two players were going through after the assaults could have been linked to other stressors in their lives, including conflicts with their parents and the typical rough patches of adolescence.
Noting that one of the victims reported the assault lasted 15 seconds, he asked, “So that’s worth $1.5 million dollars?” He added, I don’t think so; that’s not reasonable.”
District Changes Tune
After the jury returned its verdict of $17 million, the Mead School District said in a statement that it respected the process that led to this outcome.
“We are deeply mindful that two former students and their families have been harmed, and that acknowledgment will always come before anything else we might say,” the statement said.
“This matter has had a significant impact on those involved, their families and our school community. We remain committed to the ongoing process of improving as a result of what we’ve learned from these events. Our primary focus is to ensure that every student in our district is safe, supported and protected.”
The district said it would not offer further comment until it had time to carefully consider the most appropriate next steps.
“The families of these two young men who endured horrific hazing at Mead High School are deeply moved by the jury’s unanimous verdict,” Sweetser said in a statement to 4 News Now. “A jury’s impact is not merely financial. It is profoundly moving on an emotional and psychological level to be heard, to be seen, and to have accountability for the harm and injustice suffered.”
“For these young men to take the stand and speak their truth, having to relive painful events in a public courtroom, is a powerful testament to their bravery and resilience,” Sweetser continued. “We thank the jury for their dedicated service, careful attention to the evidence, and recognition of the harm that was done. We hope the verdict leads to meaningful change within the Mead School District.”
