Lawsuit: Dietrich School District
“The white adoptive mother of a black, mentally-disabled football player claims she spent months warning his school about racist threats to her children prior to her son’s alleged sexual assault at the hands of three of his teammates.
Shelly McDaniel has filed a $10million lawsuit against the Dietrich School District after her son, 18, was allegedly held down by one teammate while two others brutally sodomized him with a coat hanger.
Three teens have been charged in the October 23 assault: two with felonies in adult court and one in juvenile court.
In the lawsuit, the victim contends one of his teammates pretended to want to hug him but instead held him down so 17-year-old Tanner Ward and 18-year-old John Howard could assault him.
Ward has pleaded not guilty, and Howard has not yet entered a plea. The juvenile court case is sealed.
The victim was adopted by the McDaniels after being exposed to drugs and alcohol in utero. He has been diagnosed with disorganized schizophrenia.
‘I needed to know how to keep him safe, and we were just shunned,’ McDaniel said in an interview with The Washington Post.
The attack came after the woman said she spent months trying to convince school officials that her and her husband’s concerns about the repeated racist harassment directed at their children needed to be treated seriously.
The allegations of prolonged racist taunts and physical abuse were revealed this month when the family filed a $10million lawsuit against the Dietrich School District. It claims the school failed to prevent the abuse even though much of it happened in front of football coaches and school officials.
McDaniel found out about most of the abuse from her son Rasaan, who is the equipment manager on the football team.
He told his mother the boys were taunting his older brother, and when the boy came home one day with torn underwear after receiving a ‘wedgie’ from the boys, McDaniel said she decided to go and speak with the school principal.
The principal told her to instruct the coach of the team, Michael Torgerson.
Soon after the coat-hanger assault occurred, which McDaniel learned about from Rasaan.
She took her son to the hospital where the assault was confirmed and authorities were notified by hospital staff.
The victim’s mother said her son was not alone in experiencing hurtful comments from fellow students.
Another son was called the N-word in grade school, a daughter was called ‘Aunt Jemima,’ and another child was told by fellow students to ‘go back to Africa.’
The school district treated the taunts with indifference, she said.
School officials have repeatedly denied requests for comment.
The black student was called a ‘n*****’, a ‘chicken eater’, ‘Kool-Aid’ and ‘watermelon’, as well as a litany of other racial slurs, it is alleged in the lawsuit.
He also claims in the lawsuit that teammates would ‘hump’ him and simulate anal sex by jumping on him from behind during football practice.
The teammates are also alleged to have stripped the teenager naked on a bus and taken photographs of him naked.
He was also allegedly forced to sing a Ku Klux Klan song called Notorious KKK, which Howard learned when he lived in Texas, as the other players displayed a Confederate flag.
The black teenager also claims that Howard beat him unconscious at a training camp designed to ‘toughen up’ the team.
Howard was bare-knuckled but the alleged victim was made to wear boxing gloves, he claims.
‘The beating of the plaintiff was accompanied by catcalls, taunts and racial epithets of the football players/students in full view of the coaches who not only failed to prevent the abuse but actively promoted it,’ the lawsuit states.
The family, which includes 20 adopted children as well as the McDaniels’ five biological children, was at the center of another controversy just last week when one of their daughters went to visit her father at the high school.
Tim McDaniel, 60, is a biology teacher at the school.
The young girl walked into the school unannounced which caused the evacuation of all students.
She wrote about the incident on Facebook, saying: ‘Well I officially made things worse… I’m sorry mom and dad.
‘I ruined it more than what it should have been… But justice will be served.’
She later wrote in her post: ‘I’m very sorry… All I wanted to do is go see if my dad was OK… Something I do eveytime… My parents cry… I try to hug them and try to lighten up the day a bit.
But instead I get detained… For an unspecified man… When those guys knew who it was… I love you mom and dad.’
However, other residents of the town that revolves largely around church and school sports say it’s a safe and welcoming place. They’re stunned by the allegations, but some are unhappy the family took the district to court.
Melissa Towne, 37, who has spent her whole life in the town of about 330 people, says Dietrich is a good place despite the negative attention. People wave at one another as they pass on the mostly gravel roads, and Towne makes it a point to welcome the occasional new neighbor.
‘We never had this kind of attention when I was in school,’ she said.
‘But I still like it here. We have good people here. I like living in a small town, and so do a lot of people who live here.’
Most residents attend church in the simple Mormon building that marks the town’s main entrance. Basketball is the favored sport because of a series of state championships, but the high school football program is gaining popularity thanks to a recent winning streak and new equipment donations.
‘In this town, it’s all about your name and how athletic you are,’ the victim’s mother said.
She and her husband have lived in Dietrich for more than two decades, though many of their children are older and have moved away. Large families and adoptions are common in the Mormon faith.
Most families in Dietrich, about 125 miles east of Boise, tally their time there in decades, not years.
‘Everyone who is from here pitches in and helps each other,’ said Clay Divine, who has lived in the town for more than 30 years.
‘Those kids were not from here. This is a nice community.’
Still, Ward is practically a next-door neighbor in the rural region where the nearest Wal-Mart is 40 miles away. He hails from Richfield, a slightly larger town of about 480 just 16 miles away.
Howard, accused in the lawsuit of being the ringleader in the attack, moved to Dietrich last year from Keller, Texas, a city nestled inside the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area.
But he’s related to a Dietrich celebrity — Acey Shaw, a beloved girls’ basketball coach who led the team to a record five state championships.
The town rallied around Shaw after he contracted a rare bovine disease that stole his ability to walk and most of his ability to talk.
The victim’s lawsuit cited that family connection, arguing school officials looked the other way on Howard’s behavior because of his relatives.
Divine said he felt bad for the victim and understands why the state pressed charges against his teammates. But the lawsuit has given the town another black eye, Divine said, and in the insular community, that offense can be hard to forgive.
‘This lawsuit really has people divided,’ Divine said.
‘But it happened on the coaches’ watch, and this is something that young man is going to have to live with his whole life.’
Divine’s children grew up in the Dietrich school system, where they played sports and studied hard in a safe environment. He’s not sure that’s the case now.
‘This is a good town for my grandchildren. I just don’t think I would send them to the school anymore,’ he said.
Just down the road, the victim’s mother was working in her front yard, waiting for a call back from a real estate agent. After 21 years in Dietrich, they’re searching for someplace safer.”
[DAily Mail 5/31/16 by AP]
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