Older players allegedly turned off the lights and sexually harassed four of the football team's younger players on four separate occasions in September.
According to a report from The Associated Press, seven football players at Sayreville War Memorial High School are facing sex-crimes charges over alleged locker room hazing. Six of the seven students were taken into custody on Friday night and a seventh was arrested on Saturday.
Sayreville War Memorial High School, a regional football powerhouse in New Jersey, won’t have a season this year because the school district’s superintendent canceled the football season due to the allegations.
“There were incidents of harassment, intimidation that took place on a pervasive level, in which the players knew, tolerated and in general accepted,” Superintendent Richard Labbe said in a statement obtained by CNN. Labbe added that the school district “takes this matter extremely seriously and thus will continue to make the safety and welfare of our students, particularly the victims of these horrendous alleged acts, our highest priority.”
According to CNN, older players allegedly turned off the lights and sexually harassed four of the football team’s younger players on four separate occasions in September. The younger players were reportedly touched in a sexual manner with at least one of them being penetrated.
According to a release from the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s office cited by the New York Daily News, three of the football players were charged with “aggravated sexual assault, aggravated criminal sexual contact, conspiracy to commit aggravated criminal sexual contact, criminal restraint, and hazing for engaging in an act of sexual penetration upon one of the juvenile victims.”
One of these three football players and the other four players “were charged with various counts, including aggravated assault, conspiracy, aggravated criminal sexual contact, hazing and rioting by participating in the attack of the remaining victims.”
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