Re: 6 former Colton High football players allege sexual abuse by former coach's wigger daughter

[Newton]

In article <suicqh$1bs0u$1...@news.freedyn.de>
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>
> All Democrat coach daughters are whores.
>

At first he dismissed the talk as just rumors, the wishful
thinking of high school football players and their raging
hormones and overactive teenage imaginations.

It was fall 2005 and the player had just worked his way into the
starting lineup at Colton High School when he began to hear his
teammates talk about standout players receiving “special
treatment” of a sexual nature from the school’s athletic trainer
Tiffany Gordon, the daughter of the Yellowjackets legendary head
coach Harold Strauss, the architect of what has been described
as Colton’s pipeline to the National Football League.

The players, according to court filings and interviews, even had
a name for the practice: “getting spatted.”

A season later the player, by now one of the area’s top college
prospects, was in the school’s training room waiting for Gordon
to treat a leg injury.

“Are you ready to be a superstar?” Gordon asked as she massaged
his leg, according to court documents.

She then proceeded to fondle his genitals, according to a court
filing.

The player was 16 at the time.

In a series of interviews with the Southern California News
Group and a lawsuit filed against Gordon and the Colton Joint
Unified School District in San Bernardino County Superior Court,
six former Colton players allege Gordon sexually assaulted,
abused and molested them with the knowledge of Strauss and other
Yellowjackets coaches over a six-year period between 2001 and
2007.

The interviews and court filing detail allegations of how Gordon
routinely had sexual intercourse with and performed oral sex on
players who were between the ages of 14 and 17 in the school’s
locker room, training room, bathrooms, weight room and football
trailer as well as at her parents’ house during weekly meetings
between the coaches and top players. One player alleged in an
interview and the lawsuit that Gordon had sex with him at least
50 times during his senior year at Colton High, when he was 17.

UPDATE: 3 more former Colton players come forward allegine
sexual misconduct

“The sheer volume of oral copulation and sexual intercourse
occurring between Gordon and the minor student-athletes was not
insignificant, and Defendants knew or should have known of the
blatant sexual misconduct occurring between Gordon and” the
players, the suit alleges.

A former player, referred to in the lawsuit at John Doe 7044,
recounted in an interview and a court filing how a Colton
assistant coach walked into the school’s locker room while
Gordon was performing oral sex on the player.

“This coach did not stop the assault but rather, immediately
left the room,” the lawsuit alleges.

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Gordon was performing oral sex on a player identified as John
Doe 7046 in the locker room with the lights off on Halloween
2007 when Strauss entered the room, according to interviews and
the lawsuit.

“When Coach Strauss made his way through the locker room, he
confronted the two and asked why the lights were off,” the suit
said. “Gordon made excuses, claiming they were just cleaning up
and leaving.”

During the 2005 season, a photo depicting Gordon performing oral
sex on a man was widely circulated among Colton High varsity
players who believed the other person in the photo was one of
their teammates, according to the lawsuit.

“It was later determined that the photograph actually depicted
Gordon orally copulating another Colton High School coach. This
event made it clear that Gordon’s sexual misconduct was
pervasive and certainly not secretive,” according to the lawsuit.

“What happened at Colton High School is unacceptable,” said
Brian Williams, an attorney for the alleged survivors. “While at
school, students are entitled to feel safe and must be
protected. School officials have an obligation to safeguard kids
from sexual misconduct, and report any suspicious or improper
conduct. None of that occurred in this situation and the time
has come to hold those involved accountable.”

Gordon is now the athletic director at Grand Terrace High School
in the CJUSD. “She went from a place of power to more power,”
John Doe 7042 said. She is currently on a leave of absence, a
school official said. She did not respond to multiple requests
for comment. The CJUSD declined to say when Gordon was placed on
leave or whether she is being paid while on leave.

The CJUSD has hired a Sacramento law firm to conduct an
investigation into the allegations against Gordon. It is the
same law firm that Mater Dei hired last year to investigate
allegations of bullying and other misconduct within the school’s
football and athletic programs.

“From the moment the District was presented with the
allegations, we immediately took decisive action by placing the
party in question on administrative leave, as well as contacting
the Colton Police Department,” CJUSD spokesperson Katie Orlof
said in a statement. “The District has made itself, and will
continue to make itself, completely available to the Colton
Police Department. The District is committed to ensuring that
law enforcement has access to all of the facts and information
for their investigation.

“Although the current administrative team members were not in
leadership roles with the District 20 years ago, the district
leadership team is extremely concerned about the allegations
being made. Our commitment is always to the safety and well-
being of our students, families and staff, and we will work with
local law enforcement to protect our community and lend our
support to any victims in this case.”

Under California law charges for misdemeanor statutory rape must
be filed within one year, three-years for felony statutory rape.

SCNG does not name the survivors of sexual abuse.

The lawsuit was filed in the three-year window created by
Assembly Bill 218, which was signed into law by Gov. Gavin
Newsom in 2019 and went into effect January 1, 2020.

Under the new law, alleged survivors have a three-year period to
file past claims that had expired under the state’s statute of
limitations.

Alleged survivors must file civil suits within eight years of
becoming an adult or three years from the date an adult survivor
“discovers” or should have discovered they were sexually abused,
under current California law.

Two sets of rules
Interviews conducted earlier this month with the former Colton
players and court filings portray a football-obsessed school and
a community more concerned about success on the gridiron and a
national reputation as a launch pad to the NFL than the safety
and mental health of some of the same players who put Colton on
the radar of college coaches and pro scouts.

“They wanted our team to win titles and (expletive) and not make
waves,” a former player, referred to in the lawsuit as John Doe
7042, said in an interview.

At Colton High, the players said, there seemed to be two sets of
rules: one for Strauss, Gordon and the Yellowjackets football
program and another, far more strict, set for everyone else at
the school.

“It was like the football program was bigger than the school,”
John Doe 7044 said in an interview.

Players and coaches talked openly on an almost daily basis about
Gordon having sex with players, the former players alleged in
interviews and in the lawsuit.

The “CJUSD, through its coaching staff, knew, tolerated,
encouraged, and sanctioned Gordon’s conduct,” the suit alleges.

Coaches, like players, even joked about Gordon’s sex abuse, the
players said in interviews and court filings.

The term “spatted,” referring to the practice of taping a
player’s ankle over his shoes either for support or style, took
on a new meaning at Colton. As players and coaches lined up to
get into the training room or locker room they wisecracked that
they were waiting to get “spatted,” their word for receiving
sexual favors from Gordon, according to interviews and the
lawsuit.

John Doe 7046 recalled standing in line with an assistant coach
who cracked that the player was “getting spatted” before him,
according to the lawsuit.

“It became like a running joke,” John Doe 7044 said. “We were
not only victimized but we became the butt of a joke.”

The former players in interviews and the lawsuit also shine
light on the still pervasive, if somewhat dwindling, cultural
double standard of how the sexual abuse of underage males by
females in positions of authority is viewed differently than men
sexually abusing girls or boys.

“This is a very important story,” said David Finkelhor, director
of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University
of New Hampshire.

Two decades after they first encountered Gordon, the former
players said their lives continued to be impacted by what
allegedly took place in the Colton High locker and training
rooms. They have been hounded by issues with authority, trust,
sex, and intimacy. They have suffered from depression.

Some players have been resistant to having relationships with
women. Others said their views on sex and their trust issues
have undermined marriages and long term relationships. One
former player said most of his intimate relationships have been
with older women. Another former player said he was so
distrusting of authority figures in secluded settings that he
never once visited a professor in college during office hours.

“It really changed how we looked at sex,” said John Doe 7044.
“To us, this is just like a sport, we’re not connecting, just
trying to find this type of feeling.”

Most of the players said they are currently in therapy to deal
with issues related to their interactions with Gordon.

As they try to navigate their past they are frustrated by the
reactions of many of their former Colton teammates as well as
former coaches, friends and other persons close to the
Yellowjackets program. Teammates who were envious and joked
about Gordon and the players 20 years ago still continue to
fail to see the harm in a female authority figure allegedly
providing standout players sexual favors, the former players
said.

“My biggest frustration,” said John Doe 7045. “I’m tired of the
narrative of ‘Oh, you were boys, you knew what you were doing.
It’s OK.’

“It’s not OK. It’s wrong. If I’m the (athletic director) is it
OK if I do this to some girl at the school?” Doe 7045, who like
five of the players is Black, continued. “No, they would put me
under the jail.

“But because I was a boy and she was a woman it’s, ‘Oh, no big
deal.’ No, it is a big deal. It’s not OK for kids to have to go
through it.”

It is a mindset not limited to Colton, experts said.

“It is accepted by many people,” said Charol Shakeshaft, a
Virginia Commonwealth University researcher and professor, who
in 2004 published Educator Sexual Misconduct: A Synthesis of
Existing Literature for the U.S. Department of Education.

“The assumption is based on the stereotype that all boys care
about is sex and that any kind of sex is fine and then what’s
the harm? It’s what they wanted anyway and it’s based on the
stereotype of boys of hormones in overdrive and what’s the big
deal here? And the big deal is that this isn’t about sex at all.
This is about betrayal and power. And it’s about the betrayal of
a person, in this case students, by a person who has power over
them and for them, to help them. And they’re supposed to be able
to feel safe around the adults in schools and athletics and to
have these adults looking out for their best interests and this
is a betrayal of the trust they have in adults.”

The former players and their attorneys maintain in interviews
and the lawsuit the cultural acceptance at Colton High School,
especially within the football program, enabled Gordon’s alleged
predatory behavior.

“Historically, it has been easy for society to downplay the
power of a female sex assault perpetrator over boys. In reality,
we know the power of a female predator is particularly insidious
and dangerous to children,” said Mike Reck, an attorney for the
alleged survivors. “The alleged perpetrator here leveraged her
position of power over these boys to choreograph her own
depraved desires upon them. Not only did she count on the
cultural pressure on teenage boys to never turn down sex, Ms.
Strauss-Gorden was instilled with the institutional authority of
Colton High School’s athletic department and its revered
football coach, her father. She gained intimate physical access
to the boys through her position as athletic trainer and played
their innocence, their hormones, and their love of football
against them. Point blank, these boys never stood a chance and
the one adult who was most supposed to protect these athletes
most was the father of the offender.”

Harold Strauss, a massive man with an even bigger grin, was a
larger-than-life figure at Colton.

“He ran it,” John Doe 7042 said. “He ran the show. He had say
over anything and everything.”

Strauss coached high school football in Oregon and Washington
before returning to Bloomington, an unincorporated section of
San Bernardino County where he grew up. He coached 18 seasons at
Bloomington Christian winning a pair of CIF Southern Section
titles

But it was at Colton where he literally put his program on the
national map.

Season after season the Yellowjackets won running Strauss’
gimmick single wing and double wing offenses gleaned from the
decades old playbooks and Rose Bowl tapes he found online, and
with a steady stream of talent headed to Power 5 conference
schools and the NFL.

Strauss kept a map of the U.S. behind his office desk. Pins on
the map represented the places his athletes had played.

Often those pins landed in places like New York, Baltimore,
Kansas City and the NFL. Six players from Colton, a school with
less than 2,000 students, were on NFL rosters during both the
2014 and 2015 seasons. A year later, 10 former Colton players
were invited to NFL training camps. Colton’s 2005 roster
included six future NFL players.

Strauss, who died at age 60 in December 2019, once told the
Inland Empire Community News he viewed his players as family.

“Coaches are like psychologists,” he said. “You get into your
player’s lives like a parent. When they hurt, I hurt.”

But Strauss wasn’t there for the players when they needed him
most, the former players and their attorneys said.

“If the genders were reversed, the response would be undoubtedly
different,” said Jemma Dunn, an attorney for the alleged
survivors. “This is not only unfair, but fails to recognize the
damages caused and silences male survivors. These men were in
their most formative adolescent years and should have been able
to trust those in authority; both their trainer who, as an
adult, took advantage of their adolescence, and the coaches and
staff around them, who encouraged it. The law does not
distinguish between genders and neither should we. They deserved
better.”

Tiffany Gordon joined her father at Colton shortly after he took
over as head coach in 2000.

Gordon had a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology from Cal State San
Bernardino and a master’s in education and a teaching credential
from the University of Phoenix, according to the CJUSD.

But Gordon’s primary credential, the former players said, was
that she was Harold Strauss’ daughter.

“Tiffany really had carte blanche over the program,” John Doe
7042 said. “She had a lot of authority.”

While each child sex abuse case is unique, researchers have been
able to develop profiles of certain types of child predators.

“Some abusers we don’t know why or how are kind of hardwired to
sexual interest in children or 8-year-olds or in blondes or in
whatever and so we call those people pedophiles even though
that’s not an accurate name,” said Shakeshaft, speaking in
general. She declined to speak on the specifics of the Colton
case. “But it has to do with what their focus is.

“An opportunistic abuser is someone who takes advantage of a
situation. They may not be particularly interested one way or
another in high school boys per se but takes advantage of a
situation where they have access to kids and they are able to
through charm, persuasion, whatever get them involved in a
sexual act.

“Very often the adults who sexually abuse high school kids are
not preferential abusers. They’re opportunistic abusers. They
just take advantage of whatever situation comes about.“

Gordon not only had opportunity, the former players and their
attorneys allege in interviews and the lawsuit, she also used
her position as trainer and as Strauss’ daughter as leverage in
pursuing sexual acts with the minor-aged boys.

“There is no real difference than if it was a teacher or a
priest or anybody in authority,” said sex therapist Stephen
Braveman, a leading expert on the sexual abuse of boys by adult
women. “When somebody in authority they’re supposed to listen to
them and do what they are told and it’s hard to say no even when
they think something is a little wrong about this.

“She’s a trainer and she’s training them how to be successful
and win and all. If you can be good at sex you can be good (at
sports).

“The power dynamic is definitely there.”

John Doe 7042 was Gordon’s first alleged victim, according to
the lawsuit.

He was first introduced to Gordon as a freshman in 2001 when he
was promoted to the varsity of the CIF playoffs.

“Under the guise of providing medical treatment and physical
therapy, Gordon took advantage of John Doe 7042 during
treatments and sexually assaulted him by repeatedly brushing her
hand against John Doe 7042’s groin and penis,” according to the
lawsuit.

The player was 14 at the time.

“I was taken back by it because it was forward as hell,” the
player said.

Gordon’s abuse escalated to fondling and performing oral sex on
the player until weeks later he returned to the locker room
during practice to retrieve items from his locker. Gordon was in
the locker room and the pair had sex “while his teammates were
practicing,” according to the lawsuit.

“It was like I was put on a freeway in the wrong direction,” the
player said. “Put on the freeway and I didn’t even have a
license.”

Once Doe 7042 was sleeping in a van carrying him and his
teammates to a football camp in Oregon when he awoke to find
Gordon performing oral sex on him, according to the lawsuit.

“I woke up shocked,” he said.

But if his teammates noticed no one said anything.

“It wasn’t out of the ordinary,” Doe 7042 said.

Gordon continued to have sex with the teenager through the
remainder of his high school career.

“At the time I was, ‘It’s cool,’ because you were supposed to
feel like it was cool,” the player said. “But it definitely
didn’t feel like it was supposed to be happening.”

John Doe 7047 was introduced to Gordon by John Doe 7042.

Doe 7047 was promoted to varsity as a sophomore in 2001. It was
during this time that he began receiving regular therapy and
treatment from Gordon “in the unsupervised areas” of the locker
and training rooms, according to the lawsuit.

“As John Doe 7047 excelled in his athletic skills, John Doe
7047’s interactions with Gordon became more frequent,” the
lawsuit said.” Gordon became increasingly flirtatious, displayed
outward favoritism, started inappropriately touching and
fondling John Doe 7047’s genitals on CJUSD property.”

The following year, when Doe 7047 was 16, Gordon began having
intercourse and oral sex with the player in the training room
and at her home, a pattern that continued throughout his time at
Colton High, according to the suit.

“Almost immediately” after transferring to Colton in the fall of
2003, John Doe 7043 began hearing rumors of inappropriate
sexual misconduct between Gordon and other minor student-
athletes, according to the suit.

“On one occasion, John Doe 7043 walked into the training room,
abruptly startling Gordon and John Doe 7047, a star player of
the Yellowjackets, who appeared to be in a compromising
position,” the lawsuit said.

Later that season Gordon took Doe 7043 on a date to a local
drive-in theater. She began kissing the player, who was 17 at
the time, and then performed oral sex on him in the backseat of
her car, according to the lawsuit.

She would later have sexual intercourse with the player at
different locations at the school and her father’s house during
the weekly “Captains’ Dinners” between the team’s captains and
the coaching staff, the lawsuit said.

John Doe 7044 also started hearing rumors about Gordon’s alleged
sexual misconduct shortly after enrolling at Colton High in 2002.

“It was just the environment and all around it that was super
sexually charged.”

During a Captains’ Dinner his senior year he said he witnessed
Gordon “disappear” with another player. Shortly thereafter Doe
7044 sent her a text confronting her about having oral sex with
players, he said.

“I was expecting her to go scorched earth on me,” Doe 7044
recalled. “Instead of shutting it down she said send me a photo
of your penis.”

Gordon responded by texting the player a nude photo of herself
with the message that they needed “to take care of this” the
next day, according to the lawsuit.

The following day Gordon gave Doe 7044 a massage for the first
time and when the locker room was empty performed oral sex on
him.

The player was 17 at the time and had not been sexually active
he said. But shortly after the first encounter, he and Gordon
were having sex “almost daily,” the former player said.

The former player said he thought Gordon would help him by
making sure the coaching staff mentioned him to college coaches.
“She would make sure they sent film out, called those coaches.
Instead, I was getting Jerry Sanduskyed,” the former player
said, referring to the former Penn State assistant coach who was
convicted for molesting boys. Some of Sandusky’s sexual abuse
took place in the Penn State locker room.

“The focus was shifted from working out to trying to find places
to have sex with Tiff,” Doe 7044 continued.

When rumors about Gordon and the player having sex started
spreading during his senior year, Gordon told him to change the
name attached to her telephone number on his cell phone and put
a photo of an African American girl on the contact page, the
former player said.

Gordon began fondling John Doe 7045 during treatment his
freshman season, according to the lawsuit. During his junior
season, Gordon had sex with him 20 times, according to the
lawsuit. Gordon continued to have sex with Doe 7045 during his
senior season including at Captains’ Dinners in which she “would
regularly pull” him aside to have “unprotected sex in her
bedroom” at her parents’ house, the lawsuit alleged.

Doe 7045 said his interactions with Gordon shaped how he viewed
sex and relationships.

“It felt normal to have sex and not have a relationship and
think it’s OK to have sex and not text them or talk to them
until you want it again,” the player said.

Realizing it was not normal
But over time, the former players said they began to realize
that their interactions with Gordon were not normal. Some of
them might have bragged about having sex with Gordon or high-
fived teammates after allegedly getting spatted. But as they
struggled in their relationships, in their marriages, had issues
with their bosses, had trust issues with just about anybody in
authority, they began to see what happened in high school in a
different light.

“At that time it might not seem like a problem,” Braveman said.
“How could it be abuse? If nothing happens they just move on,
they graduate, nobody ever says anything about it. Years later
they may not think anything of it until they have kids and of
the same age and then they go, ‘Oh, that’s how old I was. Oh my
god, I was victimized at that age.’

“If nothing else, society says it’s against the law. So they
were victims. A law was broken and they were victims. And then
you get back to your niece, your nephew, your son, would you
want this to happen to them? They’re a victim, whether they felt
victimized or not.”

Doe 7045 was in a sociology class in college. Sex abuse was part
of the course’s focus.

“That’s when I realized I was molested,” the former player said.
“I was like ‘dang, that feels a lot like what happened to me.’

“That’s when I understood what happened to me wasn’t right. It
kind of dawned on me in college that these things change kids
and how they deal with the world.”

But for the most part, the former players kept their feelings to
themselves.

“It’s one thing for this to be with a Mrs. Robinson next door,”
Finkelhor said. “But when you have a religious authority figure,
a venerated school teacher, this is a coach, a doctor, all those
roles complicate the problem. They make it harder to talk about,
to sort it out.

“And a lot of people don’t want you to talk about it. You are
going to be upset that you’re talking about this respected
person.”

Eventually, they began talking about their high school
experiences in therapy.

“It was a multitude of things,” Doe 7042 said. “Relationships,
my insecurities with how I was interacting with other people in
relationships.

“Part of the reason I had to go to therapy was because this fake
porn (sex) sent me into real life with no real experience.”

Doe 7042, like his teammates, hoped Gordon would acknowledge
that what allegedly took place two decades ago was wrong.

About a year and a half ago, Doe 7042 visited Gordon at Grand
Terrace High School.

“I wanted to see if she had any remorse,” he said. “I went there
under the guise of whether there were any coaching jobs at Grand
Terrace. I talked about it in therapy. I was looking for some
form of closure or something that made me feel less like
(expletive) and I got just the opposite.”
Gordon, the former player said, showed no remorse.

“Be a human being toward another human being,” he said, “and not
just treat them as a piece of meat.”

Ultimately it was Doe 7042’s son who prompted him to step
forward and talk about the case publicly. His son is 10 years
old. In four years he will be a 14-year-old freshman at Grand
Terrace High School, the same age his father was when he
encountered Gordon.

“A large part of this is for it to stop, to change the future,
to change the culture,” he said. “I think about my son. It has
to stop. My adolescence was taken from me. My childhood was
taken. I was a kid.

“I was taken advantage of as a kid. I was broken, had my legs
taken out from underneath me and it’s taken a long time to stand
again.”

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