High School Hockey Team Accused of Brutally Racist, Homophobic Hazing
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Officials at Danvers High School in Massachusetts have tried to bury allegations of racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic hazing by their varsity boys hockey team, according to a Boston Globe report. One player told to the Globe that the team had rituals like “Hard R Fridays”—referring to the last letter of the N-word—and “Gay Tuesdays,” where teammates pressured each other to shout racial slurs. The player said he was stripped naked and sexually assaulted when he refused to utter the slurs. At least half of the team allegedly sent offensive texts in a group chat about the Holocaust, and joked about the deaths of Black people, including a Black Danvers student, the Globe reports.
The player reported the allegations to a team official in mid-2020 but the school didn’t disclose it for more than 16 months and only released a heavily redacted copy of a special investigator’s report to the Globe when state authorities forced them to. The redacted report said police were notified but they appeared to take the side of players who described the conduct as “harmless locker room hijinks” and “boys being boys.” The hazing allegations only came to light when the school began an unrelated probe after three players allegedly shouted racial slurs at Black workers while waving a “Trump 2020” flag.