Baseball players at Chicago school suspended for alleged assault

Twelve students at St. Francis de Sales High School in Chicago have been suspended amid reports that an 18-year-old baseball player was sexually assaulted in a locker room by his teammates.

School officials are describing the incident as “bullying,” but police are investigating something more serious, according to a report from the Chicago Tribune. Nobody is in custody and charges have not been filed, but five students have been suspended for participating in the incident, while another seven were suspended for two days for witnessing and not reporting it.

A father of one of the suspended kids spoke to the Chicago Tribune:

… he was told by his son that the 18-year-old was held down in the locker room while other baseball players grabbed him and touched him inappropriately with a baseball bat.

“From what I was told, kids were being kids, and they were grabbing and pushing and doing things that they apparently typically do on an ongoing basis,” Stewart said.

When his son, a 10th-grader, saw what was going on, he grabbed his bag from the locker room and left because he wanted to have nothing to do with it, Stewart said. He believed that his son should not have been suspended for two days for telling school officials the truth.

A few different articles quoted parents who said kids were just “goofing around,” which is the type of ignorant statement that typically surfaces at least once or twice in situations like this.

There was no mention of the coach, which likely means he was not present when the incident took place.