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Lincoln Park High School basketball scandal: A girl blamed, a team supported and, so far, 6 lawsuits

Surrounded by students holding out iPhones, with news cameras lining the sidewalk, the female student listened as the boys varsity basketball team’s star player made a case for letting the Lincoln Park Lions finish their season. “It’s bigger than basketball, it’s about the future,” he said.

Knowing what she knows now, the girl could not have tolerated being close to him and would not have supported the team at the February 2020 rally, she said during an interview last month.

In hindsight, she said she feels manipulated.

Just over a month had passed since the two 17-year-olds, who are not being named to protect their privacy and because they were minors at the time of the incident, had sex in a Michigan hotel room during a weekend trip for the 2019 Motor City Roundball Classic tournament, according to the girl’s own account and district records. She had trusted him and didn’t know the encounter would be recorded, let alone shared on Snapchat, she said.

After the video circulated, Chicago Public Schools opened multiple investigations into allegations stemming from the trip and its aftermath.

What followed were weeks of controversy at Lincoln Park High School, allegations and counter-allegations, disciplinary measures and, eventually, several lawsuits, most of which still are working their way through the courts.

A June 2020 CPS Office of Student Protections (OSP) investigation found “sufficient evidence to support” that the player “engaged in a voluntary act of sexual penetration” with a female student who was on the trip in a team capacity and that he “recorded the act” without her permission.

The player admitted to recording the sex act, according to the OSP report. The Chicago Police Department has evidence, according to the report, of the recording that depicts the girl asking him, “What’s that light,” referring to the light coming from a cellphone during sex. It also states that there is sufficient evidence to support that the player shared the recording with other members of the boys varsity basketball team.

The player eventually admitted to sharing the 28-second video in an OSP interview, according to the report. But CPD said the allegations were unfounded.

When asked about the determination, a CPD police spokesperson said, “The report states that a 17-year-old male offender, during a consensual sexual activity with a 17-year-old female victim, recorded the act. This has been deemed unfounded during the investigation.” The spokesperson did not elaborate. CPD denied a Freedom of Information Act request for records related to the report, citing the Illinois Juvenile Court Act.

Though an itinerary obtained by OSP noted the hotel was in Southfield, Michigan, a Southfield police spokesperson said no reports about the incident had been received. Detroit’s police department, however, said it was involved in the investigation and considered the case inactive. It said the case needed to be investigated in Chicago, where the minors lived, because of their age, but that it would provide support. “If Chicago is able to provide us with evidence, we will look into it further,” spokesperson Sgt. Nicole Kirkwood said.

The girl’s mother, who is not named to protect her daughter’s privacy, said police never updated the family on the outcome, and that she was outraged and disappointed. CPD calling the report “unfounded” felt like saying nothing had happened to her daughter, she said. “No wonder the same crap continues to go on,” she said.

She pointed out that her daughter can be heard asking about the phone light in the video.

“If you’ve seen that, then what else do you need? That tells you she didn’t know,” the mom said. She said police also failed to follow through after saying they needed to verify details like the age of consent, which is 17 in Illinois and 16 in Michigan.

The female student, now 19, said it took many months to process what happened. Only after therapy and a successful freshman year of college does she feel ready to talk about her experience.

“At that time, I feel like I was still being manipulated. I wasn’t able to be as mad as I feel like I am now, if that makes sense,” she said, referring to her initial show of support for the team after the incident. “I didn’t realize what was unfolding before my eyes.”

She said she doesn’t want any other girl to go through what she did. While she fought suicidal thoughts, contemplated homeschooling and started therapy, she felt public sympathy went to the suspended team. The star player ended up at an elite private school his senior year and recently announced the name of the college basketball program he’s committed to this fall.

“He needs to be on some sort of list. His colleges need to know about it,” she said. “If you were getting away with stuff like this … people need to watch out.”

Thirty-nine Lincoln Park students were suspended a combined total of 58 times and one student was expelled during the 2019-2020 school year, according to district data. The majority of the suspensions — 43 — occurred during the first semester, while the only expulsion came during the second semester. Citing the inability to share confidential student information, the district has not said what discipline, if any, the students involved in this case received. CPS spokesperson Emily Bolton said, however, the district “can confirm this matter was investigated and handled in accordance with CPS policies and procedures.”

The video came to light after another basketball player reported an unsubstantiated version of events to a parent, claiming that two other players also had sex with the female student that night without her knowledge.

The OSP found “insufficient evidence” to support that player’s allegation. “Witnesses were uncooperative or gave what appeared to be a rehearsed version of events,” according to its report. “Therefore, this office was unable to ascertain what, if any, participation (the two other players) had in relation to the allegations other than their presence in the hotel room during the sexual misconduct.” The female student thought she was in the room alone with the star player, she said.

In April, the Chicago Board of Education approved a $205,000 payout to settle a lawsuit filed by the father of the player who made the report “to seek redress for retaliation for reporting an incident prohibited by Title IX of the Education Amendments Act … and the laws of Illinois.”

While investigators worked the case, the basketball team’s season was suspended on the cusp of Chicago Public League playoffs. The head coach and several school administrators were removed from their positions, and vague communication from the district left both the school community and local media clamoring for information.

Local School Council members staged news conferences and attempted their own investigation. Dozens of the Lincoln Park school’s 2,000 students participated in walkouts, sit-ins and protests.

The primary concerns expressed at public events and on social media were not for the female student who had been humiliated to tears, but for the players who worked hard only to have their season cut short and the staff they believed had been blamed.

“As time goes on, more stuff was revealed, and the biggest thing that really got to me was the reason he requested the lights to be off was he secretly hid his two roommates inside of the room,” the female student said.

She still didn’t know what to believe on Feb. 3, 2020, when dozens of students waving handmade signs walked out in protest and marched through Oz Park, ending their route back at the school’s gates on Fullerton Avenue. News outlets had set up microphones, and some of the players and other students gave statements.

The walkout was in protest of the abrupt firings of interim, first-year Principal John Thuet and Assistant Principal Michelle Brumfield, the removal of Dean John Johnson and the suspension of the basketball team. In a matter of months, Thuet and Brumfield had gained a loyal following. Students liked the way Brumfield greeted them: “Hi, queen. Hi, king.” They felt like Thuet, young and approachable, really cared about them. Then in a matter of days, the administrators were ousted with little explanation.

The female student said she received messages and saw social media posts by people she didn’t know calling her names and blaming her for the basketball team’s plight. She just wanted to finish her senior year and get out of the city, she said.

In the past year, six fired or disciplined employees have filed lawsuits over the district’s handling of the situation. Thuet and Brumfield were the first, jointly filing in federal court alleging wrongful termination. Individual lawsuits were filed this year by boys varsity head coach Pat Gordon; assistant coach Donovan Robinson, who briefly took over the boys varsity team when Gordon was removed until he was temporarily suspended himself; Johnson, who was also suspended and later reinstated; and girls head coach Larry Washington, who was removed after an unrelated investigation into a basketball-related text message he sent a female player. Washington was reinstated to work anywhere except Lincoln Park. The latter four are represented by the same lawyer, William Choslovsky, who also is a parent of a Lincoln Park student. Their lawsuits refer to the group as the “Lincoln Park Six.”

Their lawsuits share many details and allege defamation; portrayal in a false light; and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Gordon and Washington’s lawsuits also claim deprivation of due process. Collectively, their lawsuits against the Chicago Board of Education and several members of the Chicago Public Schools leadership team seek millions of dollars in damages. None of the lawsuits filed were on behalf of the female student.

Last winter, the girl said she was focused on getting to a point where she wasn’t crying every day. She said she took a few days off school and started to go back for a couple of classes at a time. It became difficult to see the star player in school, she said.

Choir class became one of her only safe spaces at school, she said. She said some adults did support her, including Johnson before he was suspended.

In one message to her mom, Johnson asked if she was currently in school. “I feel bad that she’s going through this,” he said. Her mother said, not yet, adding that her daughter couldn’t sleep the night before.

When the pandemic shut down schools last March, it was a relief, the girl said.

Nonconsensual sexting

A 2018 article published in the Journal of American Pediatrics found that about 12% of teens said they had forwarded a sext without the other person’s consent, and 8.4% had their own sext forwarded without consent. There’s less information on recordings taken without consent.

“The nonconsensual forwarding of sexts can lead to harassment by peers, cyberbullying, or blackmailing,” the researchers noted. “In extreme cases, the deleterious effects of the nonconsensual forwarding of explicit photographs have been implicated in youth suicide. Moreover, nonconsensual sexting may be a prelude to or a marker of in-person sexual assault.”

Researchers have largely advocated for the decriminalization of consensual sexting. A 2019 American Academy of Pediatrics report highlighted states that have passed laws specific to juvenile sexting or created leniency for teens under child pornography statutes. In other states, teens can still be prosecuted for sexting, potentially facing prison sentences and sex offender registries.

Under Illinois law, minors “shall not distribute or disseminate an indecent visual depiction of another minor through the use of a computer or electronic communication device.” Violations could warrant court supervision along with mandated counseling or community service.

The female student and her mom said they feel the star player must face consequences for his actions and wish the district would tell them if he was disciplined. They said the district had not communicated the outcome of its investigation to them.

Under a federal Title IX revision that took effect in August 2020, all parties to a school sexual harassment case must be provided with a written determination that discloses findings and discipline. The rule does not apply retroactively.

Though she spoke with district investigators, the girl’s mom said she wanted to respect the wishes of her daughter, who didn’t want any more attention. The mom said she still prays about how to proceed.

“What else am I to do when your kid begs you crying … ‘don’t talk to me about it; I don’t want to think about it’?” she asked. “Because you don’t want to rehash it.”

Firing administrators and suspending the basketball season did nothing to support her daughter, she said.

“She wasn’t done right, and this speaks volumes for every girl at that school,” she said, adding, “What happened on the trip was swept under the rug.”

‘Unauthorized’ Detroit trip

The Lincoln Park Lions’ 2019-20 season started with a post-Thanksgiving loss to the Millennium Tigers from Goodyear, Arizona, who finished the season first place in their league.

The Lions won their next six games, but the streak ended Dec. 13, 2019, with their only Chicago Public League loss to local powerhouse Whitney Young. The Lions quickly rebounded, winning their game the next day by nearly 80 points. Their next loss was Dec. 28 in the Motor City tournament to Grand Blanc, another team that finished first in its league. The Lions won all their games after that, defeating Galesburg by one point Jan. 25. That was the last game before the team’s season was suspended Jan. 31.

Detroit was not the original plan. Coach Gordon had planned to take the varsity team to a tournament in Florida, but was running out of time to get the paperwork together, according to emails included in the OSP investigation.

Four days before the deadline, Assistant Principal Brumfield emailed him a reminder with copies of the required documents.

Gordon replied that the team may not make the trip, as they were running behind and he hadn’t been able to get necessary information. He thanked Brumfield and said with her help, the team would plan better next year.

Later that week, he sent a travel request for the Roundball Classic, just over two weeks away in Detroit, according to a copy of an email he sent to Brumfield. Gordon had started texting parents the night before, apologizing to those who had already booked flights to Florida, according to screenshots of the messages included in the OSP report.

“Instead we’re looking at getting a spot in one of the largest holiday events around,” he said. Gordon continued to provide updates about the trip. Though it was never formally approved, no one replied to his email indicating otherwise, according to documents obtained through a public records request.

In an interview with the Tribune, Gordon later said he was surprised to hear the trip called into question after doing everything he would normally do and making no attempt to hide it. “It was all over social media, you know, we were excited to have the opportunity,” he said. In his experience, it was common for trips to get approved retrospectively, he said.

“Three players end up getting good scholarship offers on the trip,” Gordon said. “As the trip rounded up, and we’re back at Lincoln Park, you know, it was a big success for us … it allowed our guys to get recruited and get seen by other coaches, you know, from a different region.”

On Christmas Eve, Gordon sent team families an itinerary and said they would have four cars going to Detroit. Three days later, they headed to Victory Inn & Suites on Northwestern Highway in Southfield, just outside Detroit. They played Ferndale at 8:30 p.m. and won, 74-56. But they had little time to celebrate. By 11:30 p.m., they were supposed to have lights out. Female students affiliated with the team were assigned to the opposite wing of the hotel from the boys, according to Gordon’s lawsuit. Assistant coaches conducted curfew checks, and Gordon had chaperones, including four team moms, stationed in the lobby until 1 a.m., according to his lawsuit.

Saturday, the team toured the Detroit Pistons facilities, lost their game at 6:30 p.m. to Grand Blanc and went back to the hotel, according to the OSP investigation. That’s the night the Snapchat video was taken.

The same night, while conducting room checks, an assistant coach found one athlete playing video games and two others in a different room talking after curfew, according to Gordon’s lawsuit.

Sunday morning, while the team practiced at a local college, Gordon told the three students they were suspended from the starting lineup, according to his lawsuit.

After practice, the gamer got a ride to lunch from a teammate’s dad, who overheard the gamer on the phone with his own father, according to the OSP investigation.

“On the way to the restaurant is when I hear (the gamer) tell his father on the phone, that it’s not fair he’s suspended for playing video games while his teammates were having sex with the (female student) and she didn’t even know about two of them,” the teammate’s dad later told school officials.

The dad said an assistant coach mentioned students having sex, according to the OSP records. On the way from lunch to the game, the dad asked the boys in his car what they knew. They named three players and shared the video, according to the OSP investigation.

Lincoln Park narrowly beat Detroit Pershing, 56-51. After the game, the team headed back to Chicago.

Over the next two days, the gamer’s father left a message with OSP and the dad who took the boys to lunch emailed Principal Thuet asking for a meeting about something that happened in Detroit, according to the OSP report.

It was New Year’s Eve, but Thuet saw the email and texted Brumfield and Johnson: “Sorry to bother you on the holiday, but I’m getting word about a fairly major incident that allegedly happened on the basketball trip.”

Brumfield responded first: “OK. There wasn’t an approved trip for basketball.”

“Copy that,” Johnson added.

“That’s what I thought,” Thuet said, promising to follow up once he had more details.

The next day, Thuet sent an update after checking in with Gordon: “Pat said he had no knowledge of an incident during the trip. I’m meeting with 2 parents with info on the incident at 9:30 off campus. Their kids are worried about retaliation. I will have more info then. Let’s plan to connect when I return to figure out a plan to get to the bottom of this.”

At a Starbucks, both fathers told Thuet what they believed had happened in Detroit, according to OSP records.

“Thuet tells us he had reached out to Pat Gordon regarding the incident and Gordon said he was not aware such an incident occurred,” one of the dads recalled. “Also, at this meeting Thuet informed us that the trip was not a CPS authorized trip.”

The day after their meeting, Thuet submitted a report to OSP.

Within a week, CPS officials said they uncovered “additional serious policy violations and failures to follow proper protocols by adults to ensure student safety” and removed multiple adults from their positions, according to documents provided by the district.

Later the night of the student walkout, CPS officials hosted a community meeting in the high school’s auditorium and outlined wide-ranging investigations into allegations including sexual misconduct, failure to follow sexual misconduct reporting procedures, improper student discipline, dishonesty to families, failure to create safety plans for students and interference with investigations.

School officials told the standing-room-only crowd that allegations involved both students and adults, and both the boys and girls basketball teams. They said school leaders failed to properly report “student-on-student retaliation” against those who spoke to investigators. They said the Detroit trip was “unauthorized.”

Heated exchanges between community members and district officials punctuated the meeting, and after it concluded, a group confronted CPS safety and security chief Jadine Chou, prompting security to escort her out.

Two days later, the girl and her parents met with OSP investigators. Retaliation toward her had escalated, her mom said. In a February 2020 interview with a Tribune reporter, the star player said people were hating on him because he already had offers to play in college. He circulated an online petition to get the team’s season back.

On Feb. 5, 2020, the star player’s mom accompanied him to an interview with OSP investigators. He denied being retaliated against and said, “I don’t want to be here. Y’all took our season away from us. Nothing is happening with me,” according to the investigator’s notes. The player and his mother left the building and returned about 20 minutes later, this time with his brother. He apologized for his behavior, saying he wanted to tell the truth, according to the records.

“I want to tell you guys about everything,” he said.

The player insisted nothing happened on the Detroit trip, then asked his mom to leave the room.

After she left, he first said the video didn’t involve him but that he found it on the female student’s phone and sent it to himself.

The investigator kept asking questions. Eventually, he confessed, according to the records. “The video was me,” he said. “It’s hard to tell you guys at first ’cause I thought police would be involved. It’s child porn.”

Other players were hiding because they couldn’t leave the room, he told the investigator. The investigator’s notes don’t reflect if he specified the hiding place. He admitted to sharing the video but said he didn’t intend to expose the girl.

“We are teammates. We share everything,” he said.

The OSP report stated that many students “were not candid in their interviews” and adults’ actions “severely hampered” the investigation.

OSP investigators concluded that Thuet and Brumfield failed to properly supervise the basketball program, enabling unapproved overnight trips and “poor supervision” in Detroit. At least one assistant coach learned of the video the day it happened but did not report it, according to OSP.

“The coaches thereafter began a series of actions to interfere with the investigation by contacting the involved parties and potential witness and warning the involved students of consequences of the sexual misconduct,” according to OSP. The principal was informed of the retaliation against a player whose father reported the video, including threats and texts from the star player’s older brother, but “withheld that information” for nearly a week before sharing it with the OSP, according to the report. The principal did not take any steps to address the retaliation but asked Johnson to talk to both the player accused of retaliation and his accuser, the report states.

Johnson, who was reinstated in March 2020, learned three months later that “CPS had found him guilty of conducting two improper peace circles without an evidentiary hearing,” according to his lawsuit.

Gordon continued to send scout reports to other coaches after he was removed, according to OSP.

The administrators’ and coaches’ lawsuits dispute the district’s allegations against them.

On WGN Radio’s “John Williams Show,” assistant coach Marcus Spencer said CPS had only heard one side of the story and the parent of one player who reported the video had been consistently making threats to Gordon since late November.

“Someone presented a story and they didn’t interview everyone because threats were made by that parent of that kid to our program a number of times,” Spencer said on air.

Also on the show were Charles Jackson, a senior on the team, and Rich Lenkov, a lawyer and frequent WGN analyst whose daughter was a freshman at Lincoln Park that year.

Jackson described waking up at 4 a.m. to make it to early practices for months on end, only to find out the season was done. “It was a really tough pill to swallow,” he said.

At that point in the season, players were starting to field scholarship offers, and since the trip, coaches had been getting even more calls about specific players, Jackson said: “We have a lot of scholarships on the line, I mean a lot of scholarships.”

Jackson took his message to the Chicago Board of Education’s February meeting. Lincoln Park supporters, mostly parents and LSC members, took up a large portion of the speaking slots.

“Two minutes is not even close to enough to explain how you have destroyed four years of hard work based on false rumors, innuendos and one-sided allegations,” Jackson said, referencing the time limit for public comment.

A month prior, the team ranked first in the conference, he said. “We were on our way to greatness. But you took that away from us, killing our dreams and four years of hard work that our coach Pat Gordon built. But that’s not the worst part. Nobody, no adult has yet to tell us why our season was canceled. We only know what we have read in papers. You talk a good game about transparency and communication, but what have you done here?

“Why did you have to penalize us, the kids?” he asked.

He asked officials to explain their actions.

“We just want to ask,” he added, “if our team was predominantly white instead of predominantly Black, would you have done so? Would the community just sit so quiet and just take it? Once all the facts, not hollow allegations, actually come out, the adults will sue. … But how do you give us our season back, how do you give us our dreams back?”

In her remarks at that meeting, CPS CEO Janice Jackson directed strong words at the Lincoln Park community.

“I have resolved in spirit and practice to make sure it is crystal clear that in any event where the safety of our students is violated, threatened or where trust is breached, to act swiftly and in the best interest of the children who are the real victims,” Janice Jackson said. “You will hear remarks that will try to convince you that the victims are individuals other than the students whose lives have been impacted due to adult failure to act upon the duties that they committed to.”

While many schools in less-resourced areas lack functioning LSCs, Lincoln Park parents were heavily involved. The school is in one of the city’s most affluent neighborhoods, and lawyer parents stepped up. Bill Quinlan, whose recent clients included Jussie Smollett, had a son at the school and helped the LSC pursue its own investigation until CPS sent them a cease-and-desist letter. Quinlan and Choslovsky, along with Johnson, won a seat on the LSC in last fall’s elections.

Whistleblower’s version

On Jan. 29, the gamer’s father sent a letter to CPS CEO Jackson saying that after he reported “possible sexual abuse,” his son had been “threatened and alienated” from the team. “It appears some people value winning more than accountability, structure and discipline,” he wrote, according to a copy of the letter. “This was a teachable moment for young men and we missed it … I MUST raise a man that understands it’s OK to stand against rape culture and the mistreatment of women.”

District actions “drastically and inalterably” affected both the gamer and the other player whose father reported the video, according to a lawsuit filed by the gamer’s father, “incredibly creating a scenario where these two individuals who reported the misconduct became victims of a tired and broken system, forcing both to leave their teams and friends and the school entirely, and one to leave his family and move to another state to try and start over, all at critical stages of their emotional development and wreaking havoc with these critical times in their education and as student athletes.”

As a new student to Lincoln Park in fall 2019, the gamer quickly became “an important part of the success” of the team, playing “significant minutes” each game until Detroit, according to the lawsuit.

The lawsuit alleges the entire coaching staff was aware he reported the video, and afterward, he didn’t play in any games “for which he was available.” Other players called him a snitch, “further exacerbating the hostility towards him and the emotional trauma that he was suffering from this incident,” according to the lawsuit.

The student’s grades slipped into low Ds, classmates stopped talking to him and “pleas for help were ignored,” according to the lawsuit. Father and son “grew increasingly alarmed about the toxic nature of the basketball team,” it states.

On Jan. 29, the gamer’s father withdrew him from Lincoln Park, according to OSP records. The next day, the OSP said it was opening an investigation into allegations of harassment and retaliation against both the gamer and his teammate.

Gordon’s lawsuit denies knowledge of sexual misconduct or retaliation and states that the third player disciplined on the trip was Gordon’s own godson. “Coach Gordon never played favorites and imposed discipline blindly, the same for all, no matter whether it was his godson, the team’s star player, or anyone else,” the lawsuit states.

The gamer’s lawsuit, which ended with the $205,000 settlement, is the only one that has been decided. In September, a federal judge denied the district’s motion to dismiss the core of Thuet and Brumfield’s lawsuit, with the exception of their defamation claim. Their next status hearing is scheduled for August.

Meanwhile, the female student said she has prioritized healing.

“I had to train myself to forgive myself and not necessarily forgive him, but let all my pain go,” she said. “That’s the only way I’m going to become a better person.”