Five Wheaton College football players have been criminally charged and suspended for the 2017 season following their alleged involvement in a 2016 hazing incident at the Illinois school.
“The players have been deemed inactive for practice or competition by the college’s administration and coaching staff,” college spokeswoman LaTonya Taylor wrote in an email. As of Thursday, the players are still listed on the team roster.
James Cooksey, Kyler Kregel, Noah Spielman, Benjamin Pettway and Samuel TeBos were charged Monday with aggravated battery, mob action and unlawful restraint after authorities say the men restrained a freshman teammate with duct tape and left him on a baseball field beaten, half-naked and with two torn shoulders, reports the Chicago Tribune. The charge of aggravated battery carries the potential penalty of two to five years in prison.
A DuPage County judge signed arrest warrants and set $5,000 bonds against all five players.
Spielman and Kregel, both 21, turned themselves into police on Tuesday. They were released after posting bail. The other players are expected to turn themselves in to authorities this week.
Statement from the Alleged Hazing Victim
The victim provided a statement recollecting the events of the night of March 19, 2016.
According to the statement, the suspects abducted him from his dorm room and wrapped his arms, legs and chest with duct tape and put a pillowcase over his head. They then put him in a vehicle where he says they beat him, stripped him, threatened to rape him, tried to sodomize him with an unidentified object, and took his phone, wallet and one shoe.
The statement also says the suspects played Middle Eastern music in their car and used fake Middle Eastern accents. The victim’s lawyer, Terry A. Ekl, says his client is not Middle Eastern, but believes the players pretended to be Middle Eastern to scare him, according to the New York Times.
The victim was then carried onto a baseball diamond where he was left. He had just transferred to the college and did not know where he was or how to get back to campus. Temperatures dropped to 45 degrees that night.
“We have all seen situations where young men engage in foolish and immature conduct,” says Ekl. “What was done to our client in this case is far beyond what is acceptable behavior or which can be dismissed as merely harmless hazing.”
After the alleged hazing, the victim met his grandparents at a nearby hospital where emergency room staff called police and conducted a rape test. The test concluded the victim had not been penetrated. Surgeries were required to repair labral tears in both of his shoulders.
Response from Wheaton College Administrators
Administrators were made aware of the incident by football coaching staff and members of the football team, says Taylor. Ekl says the evangelistic Christian school was not transparent regarding its handling of the alleged hazing.
“It appears to me that no meaningful discipline was implemented against any of these boys by the college or the football program,” says Ekl. “The school and the football staff should have to explain that to the public.”
Wheaton College says they hired an outside party to investigate and deemed the incident “entirely unacceptable and inconsistent with the values we share as human beings.”
Following the internal investigation, the players were given a “range of corrective actions”. While the school has not disclosed what those actions were, a source told the Chicago Tribune that several players were required to complete 50 hours of community service and write an 8-page reflective essay on the incident.
The victim now attends another college in Indiana, says Ekl.
