Three football players at a high school in Pennsylvania pled guilty to charges related to accusations by a teammate that they penetrated him with a broom handle in a locker room in 2015.
The verdict excuses the 17-year-old students of the much more severe charges they faced, including assault, conspiracy, unlawful restraint and terroristic threats, according to CBS News.
Instead the three seniors pled guilty to summary harassment, which is a citation, although their exact punishment was not disclosed.
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“The victim did not suffer any physical injury, and reported the incident to his father months later, after the victim was charged with a juvenile offense,” Chester County District Attorney Thomas Hogan said in a joint statement with the defendants’ attorneys.
The case surrounded an incident between the defendants and a freshman student in the football locker room of Conestoga High School in suburban Philadelphia.
Hogan initially claimed the defendants had penetrated the victim with a broom handle when the charges were brought in March. The attack allegedly occurred after upperclassmen instructed freshman to strip down to their underwear and clean the team locker room.
But on Thursday, Hogan said the defendants “briefly poked the victim with a broom stick in the leg…to scare the victim and coerce him to cooperate with other team members in the joint cleanup of the locker room.”
Hogan also said no sexual assault charges were brought because the alleged penetration wasn’t done for sexual gratification.
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