The athletic director at the high school embroiled in a football hazing scandal that has drawn national attention and netted more than a dozen arrests has been suspended..
The Board of Education voted unanimously Tuesday night to suspend Sayreville War Memorial High School Athletic Director John Kohutanycz with pay, months after the alleged locker room behavior at one of the state's top-ranked high school football programs prompted the cancellation of the school's football season and the initiation of criminal prosecution.
Seven players were arrested in connection with the scandal on charges ranging from hazing and conspiracy to sexual contact. They will all be tried in juvenile court and have been suspended from school.
Prosecutors have said the alleged hazing, which they said could have been considered sexual assaults, was "pervasive" at the school.
In October, four assistant football coaches and head coach George Najjar were suspended but the assistant coaches were later reinstated to their jobs by the school board, which approved the superintendent's request to do so without comment. Najjar, head of the program for the last 20 years, remains suspended indefinitely. The length of Kohutanycz's suspension wasn't clear.
He has worked for the Sayreville school district for more than a decade, according to NJ.com, and makes nearly $100,000 a year. Kohutanycz couldn't be reached for comment after the meeting.
Shortly after the coaching staff was suspended with pay, the New York Times reported details of the alleged locker room abuse from players who either saw the alleged attacks or said they were victims of it.
The witnesses, who weren’t identified by name, described a boisterous locker room environment that took a dark turn over a 10-day period in September, when all four alleged hazing cases occurred.
The freshmen who spoke to the Times said that during the attacks, older players would come into the locker room shouting “hootie hoo” before flicking the lights on and off and tripping one of the them over. In one case, two older players held a boy down by his arms while players punched, kicked and groped him, according to the report.
The three victims who spoke to the Times varied slightly on their accounts of the hazing. All three said they were wearing football pants, and accounts of the gropings ranged from poking or grabbing of the buttocks to penetration. Of the three victims, two said the hazing wasn't a big deal -- and that what happened was part of team bonding.
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Several other freshmen who witnessed the attacks told the Times they rushed to change after practice or avoided showering to make it out of the locker room before the varsity team finished practice.
Some said they became the targets of backlash on social media and in school from other students upset that the football season was canceled. One player told the Times the backlash "made me want to shoot myself."
It's not clear if the high school's football program will be allowed to resume next year.
