Two Idaho teens were charged as adults with a felony count of forcible penetration by use of a foreign object after a lawsuit says they sexually assaulted a disabled football teammate in their high-school locker room. Tanner Ward, 17, and John R.K. Howard, 18, are both charged in the Dietrich, Idaho, criminal case. In the October 2015 incident, they tried to lure the boy—who suffers from mental disorders and learning disabilities—into a hug before holding him down and attacking him with a coat hanger, according to court documents. Another teammate is accused of luring him and was charged as a juvenile. The boy’s family his filed a $10 million lawsuit against Dietrich High School, alleging the alleged rape was another example of repeated racist abuse by the white students against the black victim. Eleven school employees are named as defendants in the lawsuit, which claims they did nothing to stop the mental and physical abuses the boy suffered. The lawsuit claims that the boy “was taunted and called racist names by other members of the team, including ‘Kool-Aid’ ‘chicken eater’ ‘watermelon’ and [the N-word].” In one case, football coaches are reported to have cheered on others to fight the victim, knocking him unconscious after yelling racial epithets at him.
Read it at The Washington Post
