By Hector Flores
In order to protect them, Terry and her son aren't being identified further. Recently, parents who have spoken out about the attacks have received threatening letters saying that they, too, would be sodomized with broomsticks if they didn't keep quiet. Terry came to the Herald, she said, to clarify numerous points that have been reported in the media in recent weeks, but she asked for anonymity.
Branded as cowards
Terry said that before the trip, her son often got phone calls from 15 different friends. But since the sodomy case came to light, he talks with only three close friends.
Terry believes that her son is surrounding himself with only a few friends because he worries about how other students will perceive him. After the attacks, Central High School District officials said no football players had come forward to offer eyewitness testimony, essentially branding all the football players as cowards, Terry said.
District officials stated, "No student came forward to alert the coach while at camp or to alert school officials after the team returned."
Terry believes the district issued the statement to shift blame away from school officials, including the coaches, to the students, and officials have failed to acknowledge their part in allowing the attacks to happen.
"There are women who are raped and made to look like it's their fault," Terry said. "There are also women who are battered and are made to feel embarrassed to come forward, and these are adults. Now we are saying that these kids are at fault for not coming forward? The only thing these kids did wrong was trust the wrong people, and that is what I did."
Lack of information
Terry said that from the beginning, she felt uneasy about sending her son to the football camp, and she said her concern surfaced after she spoke with Mepham head coach Kevin McElroy.
"Before the trip, I had asked the coach if ninth-graders would be placed with 12th-graders, and I was told that they wouldn't," she said. "[Coach McElroy] said that the ninth and 10th grades would be placed together, and the 11th and 12th grades would be placed together. He made me feel like I was an overprotective mother who was annoying him with all these questions.
"The reason I was curious about the sleeping arrangements," Terry continued, "was because I was afraid of the rough-housing, or that ninth-graders would be introduced to alcohol or tobacco. But I had no idea that this [the alleged sexual attacks] was going to happen; if I did, I would have never let my son go."
Terry later found out that players' sleeping assignments were not what she had expected. Twelfth-graders were mixed with ninth-graders, and 11th-graders were mixed with 10th-graders.
She was also uneasy because parents received little information about the Pennsylvania camp. "My son has been at sleep-away camps before," she said. "But this was the first time we were not given any information about the camp." According to Terry, the only thing parents were told about the trip was the name of the camp -- Camp Wayne in Preston Park, Pa. -- and the dates their children were scheduled to attend.
Terry said that phone numbers, addresses and contact information weren't made available to parents. The only way she was able to obtain any information was through her own research. She called information to get a phone number and used MapQuest to get directions to the camp. She then shared the information with other parents.
"When it came time for them to leave [on Friday, Aug. 22 at 4 a.m.], we [parents] were talking among ourselves and saying how little information we had," she said. "And it was not like the coaches were talking to us to put our minds at ease."
After bed checks
When Terry's son returned from the camp, she learned the details of the trip, which concerned her gravely. According to Terry, the coaches did bed checks at 10 p.m., and after that, they were not seen until the next morning.
"This was not like the other camps, where kids have flashlights on their faces," she said. "There were no head counts or bed checks, and after 10 p.m. the kids were free to do anything they wanted. These kids could have been going into town for all we know."
Terry said the five bunk houses that housed the 60 JV and varsity football players were divided into five different gaming areas by the players themselves. The students could go into one bunk and play cards, or go to another bunk and play dice. If the games were not to their liking, they could sneak into the recreation area and play ping-pong.
"One night, my son had decided to go into the recreation room to play ping-pong while one of his friends went into another bunk to play cards," she said. "When my son's friend entered the bunk house, he walked into the middle of the first attack. As soon as he entered the bunk, he was thrown up against a wall, and he had no idea what was happening. He was then told, 'If you say anything, you'll be next, and it won't be pretty.'"
The boy who witnessed the attack told Terry that everyone was scattered around, and that there weren't many people in the cabin when the attack occurred. "He told me that it was very quiet and that everyone was scared," she said.
That's all he said, however. When she would ask for more details, the boy would become embarrassed and stop talking. "You must understand the mindset of all these kids; they will stop talking when pushed," she said. "I always ask my son if he was touched, but he says he wasn't because he hid in the ping-pong room. From what I can piece together, my son never slept in his bunk house; instead, he stayed in the ping-pong room the whole time, where he felt safe."
Since the attacks, Terry has been unable to get her son to open up. As a result, she has been taking him to see a psychiatrist. During the hour-long sessions, she sits outside the doctor's office, but she can hear her son talking non-stop, and she imagines events that he is recalling. The sessions, however, bring her little comfort because she knows that she will never know the true extent of the ordeal her son endured.
Lack of camaraderie
Terry believes that the attacks could have been avoided if parents had been given an opportunity to get involved.
Her son first began playing football with the Bellmore Braves, and she remembers how parents would host meetings with the coaches and players. During the meetings, the coaches would go over video clips and review plays for the next game.
Parents would even host their own games with other parents. Once, the parents got together and held their own Thanksgiving football game.
"This is what Bellmore was about," Terry said. "Everyone was involved in the Braves, and everyone cared about each other. But then ninth-grade came, and the camaraderie was taken away.
"Now, with the Mepham Pirates, parents aren't allowed on the field with the coaches; they have to watch from behind a fence. With the Braves, the fathers would be out on the field with the coaches, and the parents would back the coach up. These kids knew that they could go to anyone -- parents, coach, mother or father."
Terry said that a week before the trip, her husband contacted McElroy and volunteered to help out at the camp. Her husband said that he offered to stay at a nearby hotel and come in the mornings to assist with the equipment. McElroy, however, told Terry's husband the arrangement was impossible because he wasn't a faculty member.
"Who is this coach to tell someone they are not allowed in a private camp?" Terry said. "The camp is not owned by the school district, and they have no jurisdiction. We paid $230 to send our child there, and how can we be denied access to the camp grounds?"
Terry added that barring parents from the football field prevents them from getting to know one another. She has tried to reach out to other parents, but to no avail. "There is no form of unity," she said. "Everyone is out for themselves."
Terry: District root of the problem
Terry believes that any blame for the attacks lays with the principal, the coaches and the three players who perpetrated them. "It has been public knowledge that the principal, John Didden, received a warning that one of his players had threatened a ninth-grader," Terry said. "Yet he allowed this player to go to the football camp, and it turned out that this same player sexually assaulted one of the ninth-graders at the camp."
Dr. Thomas Caramore, the Bellmore-Merrick Central District superintendent, said there was no way to have predicted that any of the students might commit a crime at the camp. "The concern raised by a parent was related to a dispute that occurred during football practice -- not a specific threat involving her son and another member of the football team," he said. "This would not be considered particularly unusual in any high school.
"Mepham's principal, Mr. Didden," Caramore contined, "immediately addressed the issue by meeting with the student and the coach prior to their departure on the trip. Clear expectations of behavior were defined, and the student assured the principal that he would comply. Based on the facts presented to him, the principal did not feel that this boy or any other students were in danger. No one could have anticipated alleged criminal behavior on the part of this or any student."
Terry isn't satisfied with Caramore's statements, and she believes that allowing the player who made the threat to attend the camp was a mistake that was overlooked.
She added that the district's second mistake was barring the coaches from sleeping in the same bunk house as the players. "There are five coaches and five bunk houses," she said. "Why weren't the coaches allowed to sleep with the kids? If there is a rule saying that the coaches aren't allowed in the same cabin with kids because they are adults, then why are they coaching? If a kid goes to another camp, they are watched by counselors. The bottom line is that the coaches didn't want to be bothered."
Were coaches aware of hazing?
One thing that bothered Terry the most was that the coaching staff was adamant about having football players sign an anti-hazing form. "They gave us these forms for our children to sign," she said. "If you didn't sign this form, you were not allowed to go on the trip. Why were these forms more important than giving us the address and phone number of the camp?"
The demand made Terry suspect that the coaches were familiar with the problem of hazing. "The coaches were aware of hazing, but did nothing to prevent it," she said. "They didn't separate the 12th-graders from the ninth-graders, and they didn't sleep in the same bunk houses with the children to make sure nothing happened."
Terry believes that the coaches were not concerned so much about preventing hazing, but getting the signatures to cover themselves legally. "When this incident blew up in their faces, they threw these signatures back at us," she said. "They said that it was our fault and our kids' fault, but how am I going to teach my son about hazing? I know nothing about it. The only people who knew about hazing were the coaches, and they did nothing to prevent it."
