Dangerous Minds

At Mepham High School on Long Island, the entire football season was canceled after players admitted to sadistically hazing fellow teammates.

Once rated one of the best academic high schools in the nation, Mepham High is now mired in scandal. Correspondent Peter Van Sant reports.

It would be the adventure of his life – five days of intense football in the woods of Pennsylvania. More than 60 players attended the camp, including the boy's best friend – Patty and Jimmy's son – who was also just 13.

"We went out. We got all new things to bring to pack. He had his little list. We're checking it off. We're going to all the sports stores. And he was very excited," recalls Patty.

But the happy boys these parents sent to camp last summer didn't return that way.

"All of a sudden, you get this child who's been broken. And I can't ever get that back from him," says Patty. "He was robbed of his innocence. And his youth. He really was."

Over the course of five days, their sons were brutally sodomized by their teammates. Broomsticks dipped in mineral ice, a kind of liquid heat, golf balls, pine cones and toothbrushes, were all pushed into the boy's rectums. All the while, older players watched and laughed.

"They had bags of ice and they were bashing it all over his body until the bags broke. They bashed him in his head, over his back, his legs, his arms," recalls Patty, who says her son was assaulted at least 3-4 times a day.

"Something happened in between those practices every single time, to my son. OK? This wasn't just something that happened when the lights went out."

"These boys were like 6 feet 2 inches and 6 feet 4 inches, and roughly 250 lbs. It's, like, they're monsters," says Patty.

A grand jury report later described how they used duct tape to pull off their children's pubic hair, how they forced them and another boy they sodomized to kick each other in the groin, and then threatened to beat and kill all of them if they told anybody.

"He [my son] called several times. And he told us that they were keeping them up. We said, 'Are they hurting you?' He said no," recalls Carol. "I assumed he was homesick, so I said, 'Stick it out. It's a couple of days.' You know, what could be going on? There's coaches. There's supervision, like any other school event."

"He was waiting for them [the coaches] to come in and save him, but no one came," says Carol's husband, Vinny.

Three days after camp ended, Carol and Vinny's son asked for help.

"He came to me and said, 'I'm bleeding. I need to see a doctor,'" says Carol. "The gastroenterologist said, 'What happened? I need to know for medical.' And my son said, 'They inserted a broomstick.'"

When Patty and Jimmy's son came home, he told them he had been sodomized, too.

"I couldn't even process it in my head. It was just too outrageous," says Jimmy.

When the school board canceled the football season and suspended the coaches, the community actually split -- between those who supported the victims' families, and those who wanted to save the coaches and the season.

A football captain begged for the season to be reinstated, and his pleas were met with thunderous applause.

"Standing up and giving a 'rah, rah' when my son and the other boys are hurting in this way is so disrespectful. It was horrible. It devastated us. I cried," says Carol, who asked her friend, Jim Rullo, to make a speech on her behalf.

Rullo, now a community activist for change in his school district, says he received numerous letters and phone calls, including one that said that he and his family would die.

"He made that statement and from that day on, he's been, his family, harassed by letters and threats," says Carol. "He's victimized because I asked him to do a favor in this. So it just goes on and on. Where does it end?"

For Carol's son, it doesn't end. Since returning from camp, he has barely slept.

"He was laying in bed with a big butcher knife in his hand 'cause he was scared. He was just frightened," says his father, Vinny.

"He didn't go to school for a long time. The emotional impact on him is unbelievable," adds Carol. "He missed the whole first, basically, semester."

Patty says her son also hasn't recovered from the ordeal: "About a month ago, I had gotten a call from a neighbor. I said, 'What's the matter?' He said, 'Well, your son was just online and saying he can't take it anymore. And he's looking for something in the house to hurt himself.' I'm grabbing all the medication out of my cabinet and looking for everything that I think he's gonna hurt himself. And you know, I'm panicking."

What's more, the 16-year-old ringleader of the assaults had his own history of disciplinary problems. He even threatened teachers. All that has led these parents to ask the same kind of questions asked after the shootings at Columbine: How much did the school know about their student assailants, and who should be held responsible?

Kevin McElroy, the man in charge of the football camp and Mepham High School's head coach, has remained silent for the last six months. Now, McElroy and Junior Varsity Coach Art Cannestro exclusively tell their story to 48 Hours.

Both coaches still don't understand why they're being blamed for what happened last summer at Mepham High School's football camp.

"Am I an evil person? Did I do anything to those kids?" asks McElroy. "Did I tell the perpetrators to go and do that to those kids? The answer to all those questions is no."

"There's nothing anyone else could have done differently," adds Cannestro.

The coaches, who supervised the trip, say that they had no idea any of this was happening during the camp.

"The question should not be the coaches should have known. But rather, in my opinion, how could the coaches have known?" says Cannestro. "There were no screams. Kids in the bunks didn't tell us. The victims didn't tell us. How could we have known?"

The coaches say they were staying in another cabin less than 50 yards from the players, and if anyone screamed, they would have heard it.

"What constitutes a scream?" says McElroy. "And if you had a broomstick stuck up your rectum, you'd be screaming and fighting forever to make sure that didn't happen, wouldn't you? ... And would you let it happen a second and third time? OK. There were no screams like that."

But the victims told their parents they were screaming at the top of their lungs.

"He was absolutely screaming. Mineral ice and especially that he now had, from the first time, a cut," says Carol. "He was screaming."

Are they lying? "Yeah," says Cannestro. "They have to be lying."

Did either coach notice anything on these children's faces? The way they walked? Was there anything that indicated they were injured or traumatized?

"I had a personal conversation with one of the victims daily, and not once did he indicate to me that anything was wrong," says Cannestro. "Not once. Not a wink. Not, 'Coach, things aren't good over here.' Nothing."

The coaches also showed 48 Hours a tape never before made public –- one they say was recorded on the last day of camp.

"We have a clip of the JV football scrimmage," says McElroy, who believes it proves that there was nothing obviously wrong. At this point, the victims would have already suffered numerous attacks.

"The kid who just made the tackle," says Cannestro, identifying one of the players on the tape. "He's one of the victims."

"We're not suggesting anything about injuries. What we're saying is, I notice when somebody's limping. I notice when they're injured. Those kids are running at full speed. Full speed," says McElroy.

"They couldn't be further from the truth," says Cannestro. "We're not animals. We care about kids. We love kids. We're in education because we love kids."

But the school district, which canceled the football season last fall, has now, after seeing the grand jury report, relieved the coaches of their teaching positions at Mepham. The coaches are suing to get their jobs back.

"The bottom line is, if we did anything wrong, we wouldn't be sitting here talking to you," says Cannestro.

But critics say their mistakes started early. In the bunks, 17-year-old players were assigned to watch over 13-year-old boys. And one of the leaders selected joined with two other varsity players to sodomize these children. Why wasn't there a coach sleeping in the cabins?

McElroy says district policy discourages it: "To put a coach in the room, you're putting the coach or the adult right now at incredible risk of sexual charges."

But these parents say the risk to their children was greater. Ken Carney, 16, the ringleader of the attacks, was well-known by school administrators as a disciplinary problem.

What's more, before camp, parents Victor and Kristina Reichstein say Carney threatened their 13-year-old son.

"He said to him, 'Don't even think of sleeping at football camp. And don't you dare tell,'" says Kristina, who lobbied to get Carney thrown off the trip. School administrators, however, let him get on the bus anyway.

The coaches, however, say that, in attempt to deal with Carney's threats to another member of the team, they put Reichstein's son in the cabin closest to them, and asked an upperclassman to keep an eye on both boys.

That boy was not hurt at camp, but other kids were. "You didn't monitor him very carefully, obviously," says Patty of what happened to her 13-year-old son. "He was after my son morning, noon, and night."

"Did a parent come and complain to us? No. Did a kid come and tell us? No," says McElroy. "Everybody says we should just know. Tell me why I should just know? I don't have psychic skills. I should just sit there and go, 'Hmm, he's hazing him.' No. no."

They had hoped that the three assailants (Phil Sofia, Ken Carney, and Tom Diasparra) would be tried as adults for the crimes. Instead, they were treated as juveniles.

Diasparra cut a deal and received probation. He's back home on Long Island. Sofia was sent to a boot camp, and Carney was sent to a juvenile detention center. They could be home as early as next month.

In the meantime, experts say violent hazings in high schools are becoming more frequent. These parents are now lobbying for a national hazing law, one with severe penalties.

"My son came forward, did something that he did not want to do. He had to tell people what happened to him," says Carol. "I don't want everything he's gone through to be just a waste. What's gonna come out of this is another parent is gonna say, 'Oh, I'm gonna make sure there's no hazing at my school.'"