by
IDAHO – A high school footballer player who kicked a coat hanger into the rectum of a mentally disabled teammate has avoided prison.
John R. K. Howard, 18, was originally charged with ‘forcible sexual penetration by use of a foreign object’ after he and two other white football players kicked a coat hanger into the rectum of their black, mentally disabled teammate.
This could have landed him with a life sentence if he were convicted at trial. However, he was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge in a deal with prosecutors, avoiding a trial and a prison sentence.
At a court appearance on Friday Howard, who goes to Dietrich High School in Dietrich, Idaho, agreed to plead guilty to one count of felony injury to a child, the Twin Falls Times-News reported. For this, he will be sentenced to 300 hours of community service with two to three years of probation.
That case claims the attack was the culmination of months of ‘severe and pervasive harassment, racial discrimination, mental and physical assault and battery’.
It goes on to accuse Howard of taunting and humping the victim during sports practices, forcing him to learn a Ku Klux Klan song while waving a Confederate flag, knocking him unconscious during football camp as coaches and players cheered in a circle, and calling him racist names like ‘Kool-Aid, chicken-eater, watermelon and n****r’.
In response to news of the plea deal, the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence released a lengthy statement condemning the decision not to treat it as a sex crime.
‘In our culture there is an acceptance of toxic masculine energy, which is defined by domination, aggression, and domestic and sexual violence,’ it said.
‘The young man who was brutally penetrated was viewed as less than our dominant culture “ideal” of masculinity. This was a sex crime.’
Be the first to comment