Sodomy Hazing Leaves 13-Year-Old Victim Outcast In Colorado Town
Norwood, CO – A sodomy allegation has resulted in the arrest of three teenagers.
During a Norwood High School wrestling championship meet in Denver back in February 2012, Hayden Harris, 14, his older brother Talon Harris, 16, and their friend, Timothy Armintrout, 15, purportedly cornered, bound, and sodomized a 13-year-old classmate with a foreign object.
The assault reportedly occurred on an otherwise empty school bus.
The Norwood community’s children, from preschool through 12th grade, attend classes together in the same building. The Harris brothers’ father, Robert Harris, was the school’s wresting coach and president of the school board at the time the accusations surfaced. The father of the victim was the principal of the K-12 school.
The victim’s father said the school board – again, led by the father of two of the attackers – advised him against reporting the incident to authorities, according to the Daily Mail.
Experts were brought in to talk about hazing and bullying in the wake of an incident in which a 13-year-old boy was sodomized by upperclassmen. Norwood School Superintendent David Crews imposed a one-day, in-school suspension on the three boys accused of the assault.
All three star wrestlers were later indicted on sexual contact without consent and pled guilty to misdemeanor charges.
Since reporting the crime, the victim and his family have been mistreated and alienated by the community.
Instead of condemning the heinous act of duct taping and anally penetrating a classmate with a pencil, the majority of the community rallied around the perpetrators – citing the incident as boys simply being boys.
One mother went as far as making T-shirts supporting the attackers – emblazoning them with their initials.
After the principal reported the incident to police, townspeople forced him to resign. Students protested against the victim at school, putting “Go to Hell” stickers on his locker and wearing the aforementioned shirts, reports the Denver Post.
The victim and his family had to move to another town because of the intense volatility of their neighbors. The boy’s father has taken another job paying half his previous salary in a town 200 miles away.
This isn’t the first incident of people siding with the suspects. Two Connecticut high school football players were charged earlier in the year with sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl, which prompted several students to harass the victim online.
Two teenage girls were arrested after sending death threats to the 16-year-old victim in the Steubenville rape case, after a judge found 17-year-old Trent Mays and 16-year-old Ma’lik Richmond guilty. The case led to questions about a possible cover-up for the benefit of Steubenville’s football team.
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