NCAA Football

Sexual Hazing In High School Throws Small Town Into Turmoil

A sexual hazing controversy has enveloped the small farming town of Blackfoot, Idaho, and a number of the state’s top athletes, including a current member of the Boise State University football team.

Anthony Clarke, a freshman wideout for the Boise State Broncos (the tenth-ranked college football team in the country), Nathan Walker, a tight end for Idaho State University, Logan Chidester, a freshman football player at Carroll College in Montana and Tyson Katseanes of Blackfoot, were all star high school athletes.

But they’re now facing “a raft of sexual crime, battery and false imprisonment charges” that stem from sexual hazing incidents when they played for their high school basketball team.

Police say the five athletes forcibly penetrated fellow members of the high school basketball team and battered and restrained the victims in a locker room and on a school bus during a three-month period that began last December.

The charges have caused the list of former students coming forward “to mushroom,” according to Kurt Asmus, Blackfoot’s police captain.

“Now that everything is out,” said Asmus, “More victims are coming forward because they realize they are not alone and they don’t need to be afraid or embarrassed.”

In Idaho, being convicted of forcible sexual penetration with a foreign object can bring a sentence of life in prison.

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