Editor’s note: This story includes details of alleged sexual and racial harassment that readers may find disturbing.
MEAD, Wash. — The parents of a former Mead High School football player are taking legal action against the school district over allegations that a group older players hazed and physically assaulted their son and racially harassed others.
The plaintiffs are seeking damages for emotional and physical harm along with injunctive relief to stop the hazing, which has allegedly taken place since 2022.
Filed in Spokane County Superior Court on Wednesday, the tort claim is another chapter in the hazing scandal that when the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office said it was had sufficient evidence for the county prosecutor to bring up charges against some members of the football team.
The claim argues the Mead School District failed to stop the hazing, which allegedly consisted of older teammates restraining younger players and using a massage gun in their private areas. The plaintiffs call it a “pattern of assaultive rituals” which the boys called the “sacrifice.”
“The sacrifice is a form of sexual harassment, intimidation and bullying against targeted members of Mead’s athletic teams,” the complaint reads. “Plaintiff is but one of the male athletes who was assaulted over the years.”
In 32 pages, the plaintiffs spell out allegations of hazing dating back to a football camp at Eastern Washington University in 2022, as well as claims that coaches and administrators were aware of the hazing and did little or nothing about it.
The Mead football team attends the EWU camp annually. The complaint provides a screen capture of a message from coaches indicating the camp is mandatory for those interested in being on the football team, and Mead coaches are responsible for supervising the players.
The first victim, identified in the filing as “KK,” was dragged out of his dorm at down two flights of stairs to a different room past an adult supervisor, according to the plaintiffs.
An adult supervisor saw this and asked what the boys were doing, but took no further action, according to the complaint.
After the complaint says more than 20 teammates witnessed KK get pinned down, have most of his clothes removed and have a massage gun pushed into his private parts, KK walked more than a mile to a relative’s home.
The complaint says no coaches tried to find him or contact his parents, and KK requested to leave camp early the next morning.
Video was taken of the assault, per the complainants, and that video was shared among teammates for months, even among sons of Mead’s football coaches.
At KK’s request, his family left the Mead School District that year.
Ahead of the same camp in 2023, the harassment escalated and took on an overtly racist character, according to the filing.
“Emboldened by a culture of impunity, a group of white upperclassmen targeted younger black players,” the complaint reads. “At the camp’s outset, these white players stated an assault on these black players was coming.”
One student told at least one coach that a group of older white players were going to “rape” him, and the complaint says coaching staff did nothing.
That student, identified in the court documents as CM, was later pinned down and assaulted in the same manner as KK, according to the complaint, and the incident was once again recorded by some of the players.
Throughout the rest of the camp, the filing alleges the group of older players mocked CM, saying things to the effect of, “Look the monkey is quiet now, maybe we should do that to him more often.”
At this point, the court documents claim the complainants’ son, identified as GP, “tried to do the right thing” by warning two other black players that they were going to be targeted. Another student hid them in their room.
GP confronted the group of older students to tell them to stop assaulting teammates and, per the complaint, his “bravery was met with brutality.” GP was treated in a manner similar to the other two students, and video was taken of the incident.
The complaint says a parent shared the video of GP’s assault to Mead’s Athletic Director John Barrington in early July. A few days later, GP was approached head coach Keith Stamps about the assault.
Stamps told GP the issue would be taken care of, but the complaint says that went nowhere after the coach learned the students accused of the assaults are “standout players.”
Instead of following mandatory reporting laws, which in Washington dictate that authority figures report abuse of children to police, the complaint says Stamps chose to speak informally with some of the players.
The plaintiffs said those chats didn’t work.
“Over the coming months, black players were called the n-word,” the complaint says. “They were called ‘monkeys’; they were called ‘snitches’; they were told they should be ‘leashed’; they were told they deserved to be assaulted because ‘black people squeal.'”
Harassment against GP continued as well, according to the complaint, and no one in the Mead School District offered support until nearly eight months later. GP ultimately transferred out of the district before the 2023-24 school year ended.
Several school administrators, including Stamps, Barrington and Mead High School Principal Kimberly Jensen, where all made aware of the allegations and didn’t escalate the concerns to law enforcement, according to the complaint.
In February, GP’s parents set up a time to meet with Jensen to review the videos. The plaintiffs say Jensen didn’t show up to that meeting and instead sent them a public records request to fill out.
When reached for comment on Thursday, Mead School District spokesperson Todd Zeidler said the district hadn’t been served the claim (that’s despite the fact the claim and a summons have both been filed in Spokane County Superior Court and those are publicly available on the court’s website) and as a general practice doesn’t comment on pending litigation.
In May, the Mead School District held a meeting for football players and their families. While the district refused to let reporters in, parents leaving that meeting were frustrated by what they saw as an .
Also in May, the district sent a acknowledging the lack of communication was “far from ideal.”
That letter, signed by Superintendent Travis Hanson as well as Jensen and Stamps, provided few details about the harassment. For the first time the district publicly admitted players took part in “inappropriate and offensive behavior that involved elements of hazing, including acts of intimidation and targeted harassment.”
The Spokane chapter of the NAACP addressed the alleged .
Spokane NAACP President Lisa Gardner called on other victims to come forward to help the sheriff’s office investigation.
Gardner also attended the meeting the district hosted and sharply criticized the way it was managed.
“To me, there was a lack of humanizing it,” Gardner said. “It was very scripted, it was very legal, it was very cold.”
According to court documents, a status conference is scheduled for Nov. 1. All defendants have 20 days as of Wednesday to respond to the summons.
