By Scott Brinton
The father thinks constantly about the victims, who were attacked with a broomstick, pine cones and golf balls. He is deeply saddened that the three ninth-grade boys were brutalized by three older teammates, Phil Sofia, Ken Carney and Thomas Diasparra.
This father's son is sad as well. His thoughts often turn to the victims. The Mepham High School senior was to serve as one of four co-captains and quarterback of the Mepham High football team, until the season was canceled in the wake of the sex-abuse allegations.
The father says his son is a truly decent young man. He's an honors student who takes Advanced Placement classes. He's quiet and reserved, yet popular. He is kind and polite, a loyal friend who, the father says, wouldn't want to see anyone, let alone his own teammates, hurt.
Yet there is a pall that hangs over the young man. He and many other members of the Mepham High School football team believe they were unfairly portrayed as monsters after the attacks came to light.
The Bellmore-Merrick Central School District, Pennsylvania law-enforcement authorities and the media all charged that team members had refused to tell what had happened during the five-day camp. The public now assumes that most of them saw the attacks and willfully kept their mouths shut to protect the assailants.
The trouble is, the father says, as many as 40 of the 60 players at the camp likely knew nothing about the attacks until they returned home. After the camp, the father sat his son down and asked what he saw or knew. His son swore that he only learned of the attacks during a team meeting after the camp.
The father believes his son.
Could it be? Had two-thirds of the Mepham football team been unjustly vilified for throwing up a so-called wall of silence or, as one Newsday columnist rather too cleverly put it, a green hedge of silence when they honestly didn't know about the attacks and learned about them only after camp?
Interviews with football players' parents and other knowledgeable school-district sources, and analysis of three months of news reports, shed light on how, precisely, it came to be that many of the football players might have been stigmatized without cause.
As it turns out, as many as 36 football players might not have known about the attacks during the camp. Moreover, of the remaining 24 who did know of the sex abuse, at least some, perhaps many, were 13- and 14-year-old underclassmen who were forced to witness the assaults and, in effect, became terror victims. They were, by all accounts, scared out of their wits during and after the camp. If they aren't already receiving counseling, they probably need it.
It's impossible to say with certainty that these numbers are accurate. But they appear to be highly plausible.
What happened?
At the camp, the five football coaches assigned two team leaders, all upperclassmen, to watch over the players in their bunkhouses. The 60 players were divided into five cabins roughly 12 players per bunkhouse, which were spaced about 10 to 15 feet apart. Coaches performed bed checks until 10:30 or 11:30 p.m. After that, players were on their own until morning.
The repeated attacks were carried out in one, or perhaps two, cabins, at night and possibly during the day. Sofia, one of the confessed assailants who was to be a team co-captain and who was an Eagle Scout candidate, was put in charge of a bunkhouse.
After the attacks came to light, media outlets reported how word of the sex abuse quickly spread through the camp. The implication was that everyone knew. The assertion, however, appears to be only partly true.
There is no doubt that players learned about the attacks from teammates during the camp. Terry, the mother of a junior-varsity player who was unhurt, said her son's friend, also a JV squad member, walked in on an attack and told her son what had happened while they were still in Pennsylvania.
Both were frightened. The boy who witnessed the attack, Terry said, was shoved up against the bunkhouse wall and told, If you say anything, you'll be next, and it won't be pretty. At night, at least some ninth-graders hid in the woods and in the recreation room to avoid the assailants, the mother said.
It's apparent, however, that not every player learned about the attacks while at camp. Victor Reichstein, who has repeatedly criticized the district for its handling of the case, said his son, who was a JV squad member, learned about the attacks on the bus ride home. It wasn't until then that some of the players started talking more openly although still in whispers about the sex abuse.
Shaping public perception
One Newsday columnist played a major role in fueling the public's perception that every player knew about the attacks at the camp, but did nothing. Ellis Henican was among the paper's first columnists to opine on the Mepham case. On Sept. 19, the day after a group of 50 to 100 Mepham students walked out of school to protest the Board of Education's decision to cancel the football season, Henican wrote a scathing column titled, One School's Wall of Silence.
The column, which ran on Newsday's page 2 beside a news story about the protest, came at a time when people were only starting to form mental images of the attacks. Henican wrote, Authorities say many Mepham players and their families have refused to provide information about the assaults, which were reportedly witnessed, to one extent or another, by several dozen players. Out of fear, loyalty or some twisted kind of tribalism, they've chosen to protect the attackers, to close ranks and to seriously hamper the investigation.
Several dozen players witnessed the attacks? Henican was asserting that most or all of the team members there were only five dozen players at the camp watched as three teammates carried out their awful deeds. Yet only a week earlier, Newsday had reported that the attacks took place in one cabin's closet, without witnesses.
In an interview with the Herald on Tuesday, Henican defended the column. I'm extremely proud of the piece, he said. Sometimes the truth stings. The behavior of those in the community who thought the appropriate response was to throw up a wall of silence and protect alleged sex assaulters was a dreadful thing to do under the circumstances.
He also said, I know that column played a role in making some people step forward and speak more openly about what happened in Pennsylvania.
When asked how he arrived at the several dozen figure, Henican responded, I'm not going to talk to you about my sources on this story.
Perhaps and only perhaps Henican misinterpreted a school board statement. On Sept. 17, after closed-door meeting, board President Charles Reinhardt said the district was canceling the season because a significant majority of Mepham football players had violated the school's code of conduct in failing to report the attacks.
The trouble was, significant majority wasn't defined, leaving the actual number of players open to interpretation. The statement certainly implied that more than 50 percent of the football squad knew of the attacks during the camp, but did nothing to aid their teammates.
School officials never said that any of the players saw the attacks.
A week after Henican's column was published, Robert Kelly, an attorney for two victims, said that an estimated 15 players had seen the attacks. The Herald and Newsday reported Kelly's comment.
During those early days, many media outlets applied pressure to the team to talk. In a Sept. 25 editorial, the Herald criticized team members for their reported silence. We wrote, Worst of all besides the attacks has been the continued refusal of the Mepham football team to tell authorities what they know about the attacks. The Bellmore-Merrick board decided to end the season because of their silence.
We didn't charge that any of the players had witnessed the attacks, and we didn't use the term wall of silence.
But other media outlets have. On Oct. 6, CNN broadcast a report on the Mepham case. Correspondent Maria Hinojosa said much of the story didn't come out immediately ... because there appears to have been something of a wall of silence, a tremendous amount of fear on the part of these young football players to come forward.
The entire Mepham football team and by extension, Mepham High School fast became sources of national ire. Henican's column did much to set the stage for all of this. Note the column's title, One School's Wall of Silence. Never mind that of the 1,200 students who attend Mepham, only 60 of them or 5 percent had any connection to this case whatsoever. Yet Henican branded the entire school.
At the time, the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District had witnesses' written statements in hand. In late September, Wayne County (Pa.) District Attorney Mark Zimmer charged that the district was withholding key evidence in the case, including those statements.
During a news conference, Zimmer said that Pennsylvania investigators were informed [by the district] that certain information they needed including the written statements obtained by school officials from witnesses would not be released without receipt of subpoena.
Dr. Thomas Caramore, the Bellmore-Merrick district superintendent, said that federal law prevented school officials from handing over the records without a subpoena. The district eventually provided the records to the D.A. when one was served.
We'll likely never know how many statements the district had. But school officials had them, meaning that some of the football players were talking. Many in the public, however, didn't realize that until Zimmer lashed out at the district.
Disturbing silence
Perhaps directed by their attorneys to remain silent, district officials failed to communicate with the public about information as critical as the existence of witnesses' statements. If people had known that at least some players were talking, the phrase wall of silence would have likely never entered the dialogue here. Mepham would not have been stigmatized as it was. Instead, the public perceived school officials' silence as an attempt to hunker down, to circle the wagons, to cover up.
Worse, an air of stoicism fell over district officials, including most members of the Board of Education. The public wanted to hear them speak from their hearts. Instead, they read from lawyer-prepared statements, or they said nothing at all. But at times like these, people don't want to hear legalese. They want to see leadership. They want to hear compassion. Think New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001.
What people outside the Bellmore-Merrick community apparently believed that the Mepham football team, the high school and even the district were trying to cover up an alleged crime was confirmed by the Oct. 1 school board meeting. The session, attended by more than 700 people, looked like a pep rally, as students, parents and community members defended Mepham High School, its principal, John Didden, and head football coach Kevin McElroy, boasting of their many accomplishments.
No one said the assailants should receive get-out-of-jail-free cards. But few showed any regard for the victims, sending a signal that the community didn't care about their welfare. The general public couldn't understand that. Bellmore-Merrick looked like a closed little suburban society that didn't want its reputation for academic excellence tarnished by scandal, nor any of its celebrated officials held accountable for their actions or decisions.
Turning points
As residents and students later started wearing green ribbons and Mepham held a walk-a-thon fund-raiser for the Long Island Crisis Center to show solidarity with the victims, the public learned that the good people of Bellmore-Merrick do care.
Then came the Westboro Baptist Church from Topeka, Kan., to spew hate, saying that Mepham High and the entire Bellmore-Merrick School District were immoral because they enabled gay students. Mepham students walked past the Westboro Baptist Church protesters, saying and doing nothing. The church's demonstration must have stung them deeply. Yet without exception, they acted like mature young adults.
And, if we look at the balance sheet objectively, Mepham students including many of the football players have behaved with unquestioned dignity. Have there been exceptions? Yes. There always will be. But they aren't the rule.
