Last week, the Board of Education hired a man we hope will be able to right our Hamilton County school system.
This almost two-year-long process was jump-started in large part by community outrage after reports emerged about a pool cue rape that happened during an Ooltewah High School basketball trip in 2015.
The details are grotesque. The ultimate nightmare for every parent became the one thing that galvanized our county to demand change. It led to the end of the Rick Smith regime. At the school board level, three of four incumbents were ousted in the next election.
There was no way to imagine anything much worse for 14-year-old boys than this experience.
That is, until the men charged with protecting them decided that they are now the victims.
The news that Jim Jarvis, Jesse Nayadley and Andre "Tank" Montgomery are filing federal lawsuits as victims - victims - in this horrific climate of hazing that I believe they not only knew about but tolerated is outrageous.
This latest act by the Three Blind Owls is spelled out in a lawsuit - a 33-page motherlode - that claims negligence, age and race discrimination, wrongful termination, defamation, fraud, and breach of fiduciary duty in connection with the rape case. Race discrimination? Really? Because Montgomery claims he was discriminated against for being black and Nayadley claims he was discriminated against for being white? If everyone is discriminated against, is anyone discriminated against?
The suit also says there are teachers at Central and East Ridge high schools who have had sex with students who are still employed. If that's the case, then those people need to be fired.
Fight it all.
Fight the charges, Hamilton County school board, and countersue for the legal fees your insurance company paid defending these three people.
If Hamilton County settles this it will completely lose the trust of 99 percent of the county, which thinks officials must have known a hazing culture existed at the school and should have done something to change it to prevent an assault like this.
Plus, if you settle this case involving the rape of a teenage boy with a pool cue, what will it take for a school employee to ever get terminated without risk of the system facing a lawsuit?
Fight the suit, Neal Pinkston. Yes, the Hamilton County district attorney was named, and in truth we applauded his decision to try to find an adult to pay the price for not stopping this.
Everyone else named in the lawsuit should fight it, too. Even Rick Smith, who, while he did not handle this as well as he could have, at least he took his punishment and walked away.
The Three Blind Owls as victims?
Please.
That's the ultimate definition of adding insult to injury to the real victims in this case.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com and 423-757-6343.