Attorney Tony Romanucci held a news conference Wednesday to announce three additional plantiffs in the complaint against Maine West High School in Chicago's northwest suburbs for allowing acts of hazing.
More allegations have surfaced involving hazing by student athletes at Maine West High School in what an attorney for parents of the alleged victims has called a “culture” of hazing at the school.
Lawyers announced Wednesday that three new plaintiffs have been added to a lawsuit filed against Maine Township High School District 207 and coaches on the Des Plaines school’s soccer and baseball teams, alleging that school officials allowed the hazing. The suit alleges that the hazing involved physical and sexual assaults on players.
District officials have asserted that they took immediate action – including alerting police and child welfare agency officials and reassigning coaches who are also classroom teachers – when recent allegations of a hazing incident on the boys soccer team came to light.
But Tony Romanucci, an attorney for the plaintiffs, claims the district “raised a blind eye” to multiple incidents of hazing, one in 2007.
“What they did was wrong and continues to be wrong,” Romanucci said in a press conference at his law office.
In one alleged incident from 2008, members of the baseball team allegedly tore off a freshman player’s pants and underwear and exposed his genitals multiple times, according to the complaint.
The alleged victim’s mother, who declined to give her identity and appeared at a press conference at which she wore a baseball hat and large sunglasses, said she notified the school’s principal shortly after the incident took place and requested that her son be transferred to a different school in the district.
That transfer was immediately granted, the mother said.
District officials said earlier this week that they learned of the alleged 2008 incident on Nov. 16. They said the case was handled at the school level but that state authorities were notified about it when it came to the attention of district officials.
In the original lawsuit filed earlier this month, parents of a 14-year-old Maine West freshman soccer player contend their son was beaten and sodomized by a group of teammates during soccer practice Sept. 27. The suit claims the teammates tore the boy’s pants and underwear while holding him down on the ground and beating him.
Two other soccer players were similarly hazed, one in 2007 and another this year, the lawsuit claims.
Five coaches from the soccer team were removed by the district pending the conclusion of the district's investigation. Two of them — Michael DiVincenzo, head boys and girls varsity coach, and freshman boys coach Emilio Rodriguez — were placed on paid leave and "temporarily reassigned" from their teaching duties while the investigation continues, according to district spokesman David Beery said.
DiVincenzo was also the freshman baseball coach at the time of the alleged 2008 incident, school officials said.
District spokesman Dave Beery said an internal investigation intends to determine how the school handled the 2008 incident. He said he did not think any outside agencies were notified at that time.
Superintendent Ken Wallace encouraged anyone with knowledge of similar incidents to contact him. Beery said Tuesday that he was unaware of any further reports of hazing coming to the district.
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More plaintiffs join Maine West hazing lawsuit
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More plaintiffs join Maine West hazing lawsuit
