Sohn: We must change the culture of team-building

Grundy County Sheriff Clint Shrum speaks to media on Thursday, Oct. 12, 2017, at the Grundy County Sheriff's Office in Altamont, Tenn., on an investigation into a "hazing" incident that happened Wednesday at Grundy County High School's football field house.
Grundy County Sheriff Clint Shrum speaks to media on Thursday, Oct. 12, 2017, at the Grundy County Sheriff's Office in Altamont, Tenn., on an investigation into a "hazing" incident that happened Wednesday at Grundy County High School's football field house.

Here we are again - reading news stories of high school boys raping other boys in the name of sport.

Two years ago it was basketball players from Ooltewah High School.

This week it's football players at Grundy County High School.

Don't even think about calling this hazing. It isn't hazing. Holding down younger players and violating them by pushing pool cues or, in the Grundy case, the metal handle of a dust mop, up their rears is rape. Rape.

No, it doesn't just happen here in Tennessee with a "Deliverance" banjo tune playing in the background.

It's happened in Atlanta suburbs, in Florida, in Idaho, in Texas, in New Mexico, and at hundreds of schools all over the country, according to a May investigative report by The Associated Press.

Relying on state education records, supplemented by federal crime data, a yearlong investigation by AP uncovered roughly 17,000 official reports of sex assaults by students over a four-year period, from fall 2011 to spring 2015 - including our Ooltewah case.

"Ranging from rape and sodomy to forced oral sex and fondling, the sexual violence that AP tracked often was mischaracterized as bullying, hazing or consensual behavior," according to the report. "It occurred anywhere students were left unsupervised: buses and bathrooms, hallways and locker rooms. No type of school was immune, whether it be in an upper-class suburb, an inner-city neighborhood or a blue-collar farm town."

Some of those words jump off the page: "Mischaracterized as bullying [or] hazing. "

Yep. That's we were told here. It was "hazing." Some even characterized it as "horseplay."

But it's rape. And it is violence. And it is being normalized by the very coaches and school officials who use those soft-soap words to describe it.

Ask yourself: If you were pulled into an alley and assaulted with a dust mop handle or pool cue or baseball bat, would you describe the violation of your body as hazing or bullying? Of course not.

The AP wrote that rapes in the name of hazing are so normalized on some teams that it persists for years, "as players attacked one season become aggressors the next."

Coaches frequently say they're not aware of what's happening. But AP found multiple cases where coaches knew and failed to intervene or, worse, tried to cover it up.

You'll recall that the Ooltewah coaches didn't report the pool cue rape at a Gatlinburg cabin during a basketball tournament, even after they had to take the injured victim to the hospital. It was a hospital worker who called police. And school officials back here also tried to keep the story under wraps even from school board members. The team played four more games - one the next day - before the embattled county schools superintendent canceled the remainder of Ooltewah's basketball season. Three players were charged. Two were found guilty of aggravated assault and one was convicted of aggravated rape.

In the Grundy case, five football players face charges of attempted aggravated rape.

Oregon psychologist Wilson Kenney, who has helped develop student intervention programs, told the AP: "Everyone feels like we don't have a problem, and the reason they feel that way is they have their heads in the sand."

So how do get our heads out of this sand?

The criminal charges are a start. But we owe our students - both the victims and the perpetrators - protection long before we get to charges.

Schools must work to prevent these actions with communication, education and policy. Coaches, teachers and parents must take things back to where they started - the basics of team building.

Yes, teams need to bond. But students must be helped to understand that bonding doesn't entail humiliation, intimidation, secrecy, alcohol, rape, pain or violence.

Hazing should not be taught - even thought of - as a time-honored tradition.

If your students need a tradition, have a hike day or a group dinner.

If your team needs to bond, build a ropes course or sponsor them to build a Habitat For Humanity home.

Often in sports - and even in homes - a culture of acceptance sets in and enables further abuse.

B. Elliot Hopkins, a sports safety expert at the National Federation of State High School Associations, told the AP that sexual violence could end "overnight" if schools stressed the dangers to players and coaches, encouraged speaking out and taught healthy team bonding.

"We have the power and skill sets in schools to end it," Hopkins said. "But adults aren't saying the proper words to the kids, and adults aren't saying the proper words to the coaches. And that's why it goes on."

Let's end it.

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