Former Somerville Soccer Player Accused In Sports Camp Rape Fights To Clear Name
CAMBRIDGE (CBS) - A Cambridge man wrongfully accused of a horrific attack is fighting to clear his name. Two years ago, Galileo Mondol was accused of sexually assaulting freshmen boys at a soccer camp.
In April, the charges were dropped, a crucial development that was kept quiet. Mondol says the past two years have been extremely painful for him and his family.
"I'm innocent, I didn't do it," Mondol says. "I just want to play soccer and move on."
Galileo Mondol wants to set the record straight.
"Even one of the victims in the police report specifically said that I was the only one who tried to verbally stop it and do anything," he says.
In 2013, Mondol, who was 17 at the time, was one of three Somerville High school soccer players accused of assaulting a freshman with a broomstick and trying to torture two others at a sports camp in the Berkshires.
"He was facing life in prison for something he didn't do," his mother Ally Hines says.
"In the police reports all three of the victims said that I didn't do anything to them," Mondol says.
Mondol pleaded not guilty. He was kicked off the soccer team and ordered to withdraw from Somerville High.
Last April, three days before jury selection, the Berkshire District Attorney's Office quietly dropped all charges. He has a tattoo on his wrist to remind him he was no longer being accused.
"Definitely relieved," he says. "It was nice that I felt like I could start moving forward, it was over, it was behind me."
But Mondol says his past haunts him.
"It's this thing where people point and say 'that's him' and I know they know who I am," he says.
The family has now filed a $1 million civil suit against the Somerville mayor, superintendent and the soccer coach.
"This was a huge, huge public injustice," Hines says.
Mondol says although he is innocent of the rape charges he wishes he handled the situation differently.
"I should have been a little more confident in myself," he says. "Just because you're in a foreign situation with people you don't know, it doesn't change the perception of what's right and wrong and I should have been a little more vocal."
The Somerville Mayor's office released a statement Monday saying, "The city disputes the facts as alleged in the complaint, and we fully expect that the legal process will reveal that this lawsuit is unfounded."
