Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min<\/p>\n
As they prepared a list of charges in connection with a pair of hazing incidents involving Cheltenham High School\u2019s football team<\/a>, the members of a Montgomery County<\/a> grand jury closely scrutinized the figures and institutions that often place vulnerable young people in positions where they can be victimized in the first place.<\/p>\n There were the players themselves \u2014 as many as 19 of them<\/a> took part in one of the assaults \u2014 who on two separate occasions last summer, the grand jury found, beat a 15-year-old teammate and attempted to insert a broomstick into his anus.<\/p>\n There were the coaches, whom the jurors said allowed a hazing culture to flourish, discouraged the victim from reporting his injuries, and engaged in a cover-up that was remarkable both for its clumsy execution and brazen audacity.<\/p>\n Finally, there were school administrators, who, despite conducting three separate inquiries, were so inept that they were still unclear about how many times the student was attacked and took no steps to exclude the head football coach (who would eventually be charged with leading the cover-up) from taking part in their investigations.<\/p>\n \u201cThis level of incompetence didn\u2019t just fail one child,\u201d the jury wrote<\/a>. \u201cIt put every young man on the football team at risk.\u201d<\/p>\n Notably, though, the jury found, the victim may not have been helped by another factor: the law itself.<\/p>\n In Pennsylvania and practically every other state, the so-called mandatory reporting guidelines \u2014 rules that require teachers, coaches, school administrators, and others who work with youths to inform the authorities of suspected harm \u2014 do not include hazing in its definition of what constitutes child abuse.<\/p>\n As horrifically illustrated by the case in Cheltenham \u2014 and so many other high-profile hazing incidents involving adolescents \u2014 this must change.<\/p>\n As the grand jury noted, allegations of child abuse generally must be reported when the accused are adults or \u201ccertain juveniles\u201d \u2014 such as caregivers, family members and those living in the same household \u2014 or when the accusation involves crimes such as rape, sexual assault, or indecent exposure.<\/p>\n \u201cHazing should be considered a form of reportable child abuse to protect children,\u201d the grand jury wrote. \u201cIf hazing was a reportable offense, the Cheltenham High School administration would not have had the opportunity to mishandle the juvenile victim\u2019s disclosure and the ensuing investigation as poorly as they did.\u201d<\/p>\n The failures at Cheltenham High School come less than a decade after legislators in Harrisburg enacted a sweeping overhaul of the commonwealth\u2019s anti-hazing laws. That change was largely prompted by the alcohol-related fraternity hazing death<\/a> of Timothy J. Piazza, a 19-year-old sophomore at Penn State<\/a>, in 2017.<\/p>\n The measure, known as the Timothy J. Piazza Antihazing Law<\/a>, was signed by Gov. Tom Wolf in 2018. It increased the range of penalties for hazing, required both secondary schools and higher education institutions to adopt anti-hazing policies and publicly report violations. (Lawmakers in Trenton \u2014 Piazza was a native of Hunterdon County, N.J. \u2014 authored their own version of the legislation in the Garden State; it took effect in 2021<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Despite the adoption of new laws, the cycle of hazing persists.<\/p>\n Set against the painful legacy of Piazza\u2019s death in University Park, hazing continues to be a problem at Penn State. In May, administrators suspended a chapter of the Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity<\/a>; it is the ninth Greek organization currently serving a suspension for hazing violations on the university\u2019s flagship campus.<\/p>\n Earlier this month, prosecutors filed felony hazing charges<\/a> against a strength coach at Bucknell University in connection with the death of a player in 2024. And in April, former Eagles player DeSean Jackson, now the head football coach at Delaware State University, was sued by a player after a hazing incident<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u00bb READ MORE: Cheltenham High\u2019s hazing scandal isn\u2019t the outlier you think it is | Jonathan Zimmerman<\/a><\/p>\n While some of the most high-profile hazing cases involve colleges and universities, researchers say that the seeds of mistreatment are often planted in high school \u2014 or earlier. (A 17-year-old Cheltenham student, who witnessed last summer\u2019s locker room attacks, told the Montgomery County grand jurors that he had seen that kind of child-on-child violence on other teams \u201cmultiple times\u201d<\/a>; he\u2019s been playing since he was 5.)<\/p>\n According to one study, 47% of college students<\/a> said they experienced hazing before they ever set foot on a college campus. \u201cThere\u2019s a bit of a normalization that happens when they\u2019re already experiencing \u2014 and perhaps expecting \u2014 that type of behavior, if they\u2019ve already gone through that in high school,\u201d Meredith Stewart, of the advocacy group Stop Hazing<\/a>, said in an interview with members of this board.<\/p>\n To end the grim experience and bleak expectations of adolescents being harmed in sports teams, youth clubs, and other organizations, lawmakers should craft legislation to reclassify hazing as a form of reportable child abuse.<\/p>\n Unless Harrisburg takes action to close this perilous gap in the state\u2019s anti-hazing protections, the cycle of violence will keep churning \u2014 and more of Pennsylvania\u2019s young people will continue to be placed at risk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to article \u2022\u00a00:00 min As they prepared a list of charges in connection with a pair of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[110207,28,30,29],"class_list":["post-259741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pennsylvania","tag-cheltenham-high-football-hazing-mandatory-reporting-child-abuse","tag-pennsylvania","tag-pennsylvania-headlines","tag-pennsylvania-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}