5 Tennessee High School Football Players Charged With Attempted Rape Of Teammate

COALMONT, TN — Five Grundy County High School football players are charged with attempted aggravated rape of a freshman teammate, the county's sheriff announced Thursday, shaking the secluded county tucked into the heights of the southern Cumberland Plateau.

Sheriff Clint Shrum refused to call the alleged attack "hazing" in a press conference Thursday.

“We’re not investigating any hazing. We’re not classifying it as hazing. We’re classifying it as attempted aggravated rape," he said. “The perspective that people take in on hazing, a lot of people looked at it as an initiation. This goes far beyond what an initiation would be."

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According to Shrum, eight players— the five suspects, the victim and two others — for the Yellow Jackets entered a workout facility around 6 a.m. Wednesday. The suspects then wrestled the 15-year-old victim to the ground. One player began tapping the victim on the leg with the metal handle of a dust mop and the victim was held down — one suspect allegedly put his knee on the victim's neck — and his shorts pulled off. The suspects then allegedly attempted to insert the mop handle into the victim. The other two players who entered the fieldhouse were in a separate room and were not involved, according to Shrum.

One of the suspects filmed the attack with his phone, Shrum said, and in the recording, the victim can be heard yelling "Stop! Stop!". The phone was turned over to the sheriff's department and it is now being analyzed by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

An assistant football coach heard about the attack later Wednesday morning and reported it to the school's student resource officer. The players were interviewed by the school principal and sheriff's deputies with parents present, Shrum said. He said there were "some tears," but he's not sure the players were remorseful.

“What I think was, and what I feel like, and I’ve had 25 years law enforcement experience, was, ‘we’re caught’,” he said.

The team's head coach, Casey Tate has been suspended from coaching duties by the county's director of schools Jessie Kinsey.

"GCHS head football coach Casey Tate is suspended from coaching pending further investigation into new information provided today," Kinsey said in a statement. "Assistant coach Greg Brewer will assume the role of head coach during this suspension."

Shrum said he's been contacted by people throughout the county of 13,000 people, urging him to do the "right thing."

“We’re doing the right thing, and we’ll continue this,” he said. “We’ll make sure that justice is done.”

The Department of Children's Services is investigating, in addition to law enforcement and the school system. The five suspects are under house arrest.

Once a center of saltpeter and coal mining — Coalmont itself was a company town for the Sewanee Coal, Coke and Land Company and Tennessee Consolidated Coal had other company towns during the height of the state's coal mining industry — Grundy County is now mostly known for its natural beauty, home of South Cumberland State Park with its more than 25,000 acres of wilderness, and for the town of Tracy City electing a dead man as mayor in 2010. But the county also has a dark side. Tracy City was notorious as a nexus of chop shops and the entire county earned a reputation for arson that ravaged business, schools, newspapers and historic buildings throughout the 20th century.

Image via Grundy County Board of Education