Multiple people with direct knowledge of Damascus’ football program have stated “brooming” was an annual event. Suspect Will Smith, for instance, reportedly told police, “’the broom’ started generations ago.”

During a press conference Monday, Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy acknowledged he too has heard similar claims about a violent, twisted ritual.

… So far no civil lawsuits have been filed against Montgomery County Public Schools regarding the Damascus incident. However, a source has confirmed to ABC7 that two of the four victims have retained a prominent local attorney.

“I think the victims in this case may have some civil causes of action against the school system,” McCarthy concluded.

… are public, parents and students should be hopping mad. How is it that a dangerous gang of rapists was admitted to the school? Some of them apparently already had serious police records.

In this instance, they raped children. Fourteen year olds. Classmates. Teammates.

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Admitted, hell; these are football heroes. Students are instructed to go to their games and cheer.

Pschaw, say their lawyers. It was just hazing.

And hazing is totally legal and American as apple pie!

Pschaw further, say their lawyers. It’s the fault of administrators who didn’t keep an eye on the lads.

UD‘s pretty sure administrators not only didn’t keep an eye. UD‘s pretty sure administrators ran very fast in the opposite direction when they saw the gang coming.

So why were these guys sitting next to unsuspecting children in the classrooms of Damascus High School?

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Whoops. Every one of them turns out to be a stellar human being.

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New Zealand coverage. You can’t buy this kind of international publicity.

Ah, the public school system. Maybe your university will be lucky enough to have some of these young talented football players/alleged rapists on your team someday.

This blog’s focus on universities means that it has mainly looked at the way admitting violent whack-jobs to your school because they whack people on football fields can have unfortunate consequences. The situation is really grotesque in public junior high and high schools, where a toxic brew of incompetence, indifference, and ideology seats hardened criminals next to schoolchildren in classrooms. We’ve already seen it in my coverage of a local high school’s gang rapes on the football team; now there’s another local school – Clarksburg – where we’ve got a twofer: A fifteen year old tyke brings a handgun to school (that part’s like so fucking what… they’re in every other locker.), shows it off to his gang in the school bathroom, and a member of the gang steals it. LOL.

So … let’s see…

Despite having an “extensive criminal history,” one of the five suspects in Monday’s handgun robbery at Clarksburg High School was allowed to remain enrolled, raising questions about the school system’s top-down disciplinary policy.

According to court documents obtained by ABC7, Tyson Brown, 16, of Clarksburg, is well known by law enforcement, with prior criminal charges including armed robbery, robbery, and second-degree assault.

• March 11, 2019: Police arrested Brown for possession of stolen property linked to an armed robbery in Germantown.
• September 2019: Police implicated Brown in a series of “pizza robberies.”
• September 5, 2019: Police served a search warrant on Brown’s Clarksburg home, confiscating a Glock pistol magazine from his bedroom.
• January 2, 2020: Grand jury indicted Brown as an adult on six criminal counts including armed robbery, conspiracy to commit armed robbery, robbery, conspiracy to commit robbery and two counts of participation in a criminal gang. The case, filed in Montgomery County Circuit Court, is scheduled for a three-day trial in late April.

This case also gives us an opportunity to get up close and personal with the guy who instigated the Damascus rape:

[T]he ringleader in the Damascus High School rape case was expelled from Clarksburg High School during the 2017-2018 academic year after he targeted and robbed an LGBTQ student.

The 6-foot-1, 240-pound ringleader managed to enroll at Damascus the following school year, where he joined the storied football program. Initially placed on the varsity squad, the ringleader was quickly demoted to the JV team for bad behavior, court testimony in the criminal case would later reveal.

According to a civil lawsuit filed last week, during his less than three months at Damascus, the ringleader “physically assaulted” a special needs student. He also “intentionally physically struck” a female educator, injuring her. The lawsuit argues that repeated slaps on the wrist kept the troubled 15-year-old athlete among good, hardworking students, in turn, allowing him to perpetuate the Halloween Day 2018, locker room rapes.

Oooh, a lawsuit!

Your education taxes at work.

I wonder if it will occur to Damascus High School, located a few miles from UD‘s house, to remove the sign – a proud reference to the school’s football mascot, a hornet – that greets you as you drive through the school’s front gates. I wonder if they know the smutty jokes people are making about the stinger that dangles between the hornet’s legs in the image that accompanies the sign; if the school is on to the lord of the flies allusions that occur to people when they see the word swarm. When your school has managed to spawn a gang of broomstick-up-the-ass rapists on the football team, everything takes on new meaning.

It’s all national and international news now, and the story of the boys who trapped other boys in the locker room and shoved a broom up them will get bigger as details of the depravity (and its almost-certain recording/photographing by someone) emerge.

The passing the buck story has already begun: Defense lawyers blame it on the school, as if the rapists (who also beat their victims) didn’t do it. (Though if what one Washington Post commenter alleges – that football powerhouses like Damascus do “special” transfer of talented players to their schools – then of course the Montgomery County system does have much to answer for.) The school has – bizarrely – blamed whatever its principal means by social media. Each participant (given the nature of the charges, they’re being tried as adults) has blamed another participant. I’m sure we’ll hear attacks on the parents, attacks on football, attacks on peer pressure, attacks on hazing culture. I mean, we know how the story goes because of Bixby and Steubenville and all the other high school football gang rapes. The blame lies with the people who are going to go to prison.

This blog focuses on universities… but after all, these are the sports heroes coming to your campus in a year or two.

And after that, it’s off to the Redskins!

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NO meaningful comment, as the story goes viral, from the school’s principal. Her twitter feed stops around Thanksgiving.

Which – if true – is why the principal of Damascus High School, near UD‘s house, was foolish to write in her initial public statement that the rapes were limited to the school’s junior varsity football players.

Background here. As you know if you read this blog, anal rape and high school football go together like a horse and carriage.

Anal rape is all growed up.

Long considered one of the best places to live in America, Damascus, Maryland – a short drive from UD‘s Garrett Park – has big houses and good schools and pretty landscaping. And (yawn) it has teenage anal rapers galore.

Yawn because do you know how many teenage anal raper stories I’ve covered on this blog? So many high school football teams in the country seem fiercely devoted to jamming broomsticks up the asses of new players as a kind of Welcome Wagon gesture… If I wanted, I could blog every week about pool cues, broomsticks, and pretty much anything else being jammed up the anal canals of newbies.

Why? Why? Why?

Oh, who gives a shit. It’s a thing, a major thing, part of the university fraternity hazing continuum, only I guess more intense because of the very small closed absolutely brutal world of the football team.

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TO THE DESPOILERS GO THE SPOILS!

If anally raping junior players is the key to success, why mess with a good thing?

With a victory Friday [this was the Friday just before the rapes were discovered], Damascus will pass Urbana (1998-2001) for Maryland’s longest winning streak of all time and add onto the country’s longest active winning streak.

Yes, with its patented broomstick-up-the-ass technique, Damascus has formed a truly unbeatable team bond!

Scathing Online Schoolmarm notes, however, that the experience of reading the Washington Post’s breathless pre-rape article about the school’s amazing achievement is a little different now, with the eye landing hard on certain words, the mind automatically altering certain words…

‘Over Damascus’s 50-game winning streak, Coach Eric Wallich has searched for new ways [LOL] to motivate his team.

… With a victory Friday, Damascus will pass Urbana (1998-2001) for Maryland’s longest broomstick [haha make that winning streak] of all time…

… Damascus (8-0) has become the premier team in Montgomery County this century — winning six state crowns since 2003 — by relying on a rape-heavy [ahem! run-heavy] system.

… Kids look on and dream of donning the green, gold and white jerseys, even as high school football participation has dropped nationally because of concussion and health concerns, among other reasons. [Like anal rape.]

… The Urbana teams that set the state winning-streak record also featured a savvy run game and deep-threat ability. [Turns out you can go to jail for deep-threat ability.]

… [One of the players] said Damascus players are also viewed highly at school and in the community. Handling that attention has helped them manage the spotlight in crucial games. [Managing the spotlight just got a lot more pesky.]’

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Hey but wait but oh oh oh says the school’s principal: It was the JUNIOR varsity team, not the big boys with the new state record!

A commenter on this article speaks for UD:

In all the media reports the emphasis from Principal Crouse about this not having anything to do with the powerhouse varsity team is a little disturbing and I question her priorities.

Correct. You might have noticed that football everywhere has a (cough) culture problem. You don’t get to break up the team when something like this happens. You don’t get to suddenly chuck all your language about how everyone’s part of the team, we’re all a unit, blah blah. You don’t get to claim in your official statement that the group rape is “unrelated to the varsity football team.” First of all, we don’t know that yet. Second, this is the varsity team in a very short time. And if you’re trying to convince us that the event was a bizarre one-time, Halloween-night grotesquerie etc. etc. good luck with that.

Another thing: UD knows of virtually no group teenage anal rape these days, football or non-football, that doesn’t include someone recording the thing, texting about the thing. If the Bixby Oklahoma case is anything to go by, parents are currently trying to buy the evidence (!) and everyone’s madly erasing tapes and texts. Damascus has a state-wide record to protect… IOW: get ready for the investigation.