Local hockey related ….not good..not good at all.
Tonights Globe:
Danvers fights efforts to expose high school hockey team’s alleged misconduct - The Boston Globe
DANVERS — Public officials in this North Shore community have concealed for more than 16 months a disturbing secret.
In June 2020, a varsity boys hockey player reported to school officials and police that two teammates physically restrained him the previous season while another repeatedly struck him in the face with a plastic sex toy because he refused to shout a racial slur in one of the all-white team’s regular locker room rituals.
The sessions were known on the team as “Hard R Fridays,” the “R” referring to the final letter of the n-word, according to the player and other individuals who separately learned about the team’s alleged tradition.
The player later reported the incident to a special investigator commissioned by the Danvers School Committee. He also told school officials, police, and the special investigator that a player touched him inappropriately after the team stripped naked in another locker room ritual known as “Gay Tuesdays,” according to the player and three other people who were with him when he made his statements to investigators.
What’s more, more than half of the 2019-20 hockey team allegedly participated in a disturbing group text chat laced with deeply offensive words and images. In a transcript obtained by the Globe, one text made a crass joke about how Jews were murdered during the Holocaust, while numerous others included videos making light of the violent deaths of Black people, and one mocked an image of a Black Danvers High student, suggesting he was being lynched.
Town officials have compiled two investigative reports and commissioned a third on the matter, but school officials and police have yet to inform the community about the alleged violent racist and homophobic locker room behavior or details of the virulent group text messages.
The response by town officials has in effect shielded from public scrutiny allegations that could reflect poorly on a prominent Danvers police sergeant, Stephen Baldassare, who was the hockey team’s head coach at the time of the reported incidents and for many years worked as a resource officer in the high school. He has since resigned as the hockey coach.
Baldassare did not respond to interview requests from the Globe but has denied to investigators knowing anything about the alleged misconduct, according to town officials.
For the last six months, Danvers officials have fought the Globe’s efforts to obtain details of the investigative reports. Indeed, the school district refused to produce even a redacted copy of the special investigator’s report until it was ordered to do so in August by state public records authorities, responding to appeals by the Globe.
Even then, the district released a copy in which the investigator’s findings and conclusions were almost entirely blacked out, as were specifics of the alleged locker room abuses and text chat. On Monday, after a further Globe appeal and resultant state order, the school department produced another, somewhat less redacted, copy of the report.
The Danvers School Committee also has declined to shed light on details of the alleged abuse.
“This is not because we are trying to sweep things under the rug or because there is some kind of coverup,” then-chairman David Thomson read from a statement at the committee’s March meeting. “It is simply because when employees, minors, and third-party witnesses are involved, there is a certain level of privacy that individuals are legally entitled to.”
Closing ranks is a common and misguided response when community leaders confront explosive allegations, one expert said.
“A lot of times people close ranks when they realize they’ve made major mistakes and they don’t want them to typify them or their whole community,” said Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Northeastern University.
