Maryland High School Football Players Face Felony Charges For Allegedly Raping Teammates With Broom.
After spending their entire Thanksgiving break behind bars, all four of the 15-year-old suspects associated with the ongoing rape scandal at a Maryland high school have been released back to their parents on a $20k bond.
The four suspects, Jean Claude Abedi, Kristian Lee, Will Smith and Caleb Thorpe, now face multiple rape and attempted rape charges after they were charged as adults.
"There is a lot of information here,” said Will Smith’s defense attorney David Felsen. “We are hoping that there will be a proper vetting of that information at the appropriate time."
However, a lot of that information has already been made public by way of court documents.
According to those documents, the four boys, who go to Damascus High School, entered the football JV locker room before practice on October 31 and attacked several of their 14-year-old teammates.
"I would caution anyone to refer to this as hazing,” said State’s Attorney for Montgomery County John McCarthy. “These boys were victims of criminal acts. They were not victims of hazing. They were victims of first-degree rapes and attempted rapes. These were crimes."
The documents go on to state that the victims were allegedly held down and penetrated repeatedly by a broom handle as they were also beaten, punched and stomped on by the older players.
"This was an event where many people talked about things being traditions,” said Felsen. “I think that those sort of give a different gloss to it and we will have to see how the facts pan out."
Moving forward, defense attorneys for the suspects could move to file waivers in an attempt to get the cases moved from adult down to juvenile court.
Witnesses in the locker room at the time of the alleged attack said that at least one of the victims had suffered previous acts of abuse and was singled out as the smallest player on the team.
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