Interviewer: In light of the recent situations regarding hazing allegations; what’s been going on with the particular football team?
James Abate: The case we’re discussing has to do with the Sayreville High School football team. I happen to have a little bit of a connection to that. The school superintendent, Richard Labbe, happened to have been the school superintendent where my family lived before he went to Sayreville. So we know some of the people involved and the extreme acts of courage it took to make some of the calls they did. At the same time, we also know the legal issues that are going on in this case.
The Members Of The Sayreville High School Football Team Were Sexually Assaulting Newer Members As Part Of Their Initiation
In Sayreville, there was a systematic period of time where members of the football team, as part of instituting whatever order they had, sexually assaulted the younger members of the team. They thought it was a road you have to step along to become an older member of the football team, and that, of course, is considered hazing. It is covered under section 2C:40-3, which is aggravated hazing. It also brings into mind sexual assault, which is covered under 2C:14-2, and those are the two primary crimes that we would be dealing with, but charges of bullying would be involved as well.
The Prosecutors Can Charge These Crimes Either As Felonies Or Juvenile Offenses
This topic deals with so much that we cover as criminal lawyers. One of the reasons is that, with a case like this, there is also the question of what happens to juveniles who’ve been charged with an adult crime such as this. You have to deal with the fact that you have two possibilities. These are both indictable crimes that elsewhere they would call felonies; some of these involve first-degree indictable crimes, which means that you’re looking at 10 to 20 years in jail with no probation. We can get to how they were eventually dealt with; you can also be dealt with as a juvenile, which the county prosecutors handle in the family court. The prosecutors have a decision to make whether to seek leave to charge them with a felony crime and whether to charge them as juveniles, which brings a much different system into play. Whatever the case, you must discuss the circumstances with an experienced bullying and hazing attorney in New Jersey.
Situations Involving Hazing And Bullying Are Common Occurrences
Interviewer: Is this a situation that occurs often? Is this a common occurrence with hazing or different sex crimes involving high school students?
James Abate: I had represented people who are in this situation and I’ve been on the other side and advocated for the victims as well. Even if something like this happens just once, nobody comes out of it in good shape. As you’ve seen, these situations do end up being major news stories. We saw it with the situation that was going on at Penn State University for over a decade and what ends up happening is that there may be more of these situations going on than we know about. The reason we don’t know about them is that the administrators try to keep them under wraps. If a similar situation is going on around you, make sure you contact a New Jersey hazing attorney right away.
The School Authorities Generally Tend To Keep Incidents Of Hazing Under Wraps
One of the things that we found out in the Penn State case was that there were people in the system who knew about it when it happened. Many people blamed the coach, Paterno, for that sickening encounter, but it seems as if he did what he was supposed to do. He told people above him who were supposed to contact the authorities then. What happened from there on out, the reports are out there if anybody really wants to know, but people dropped the ball, and a lot of children were harmed. There probably are more situations like this, but people in the past have tried to keep them under control. However, if they want to bring the matter to see the light of day, they can contact a New Jersey hazing attorney.
The Authorities Should Report These Incidents And Deal With Them Instead Of Trying To Cover Them Up
Dr. Labbe did the opposite; he immediately canceled the season, brought in the police, and started suspending people. What he did was in the interest of the community, certainly in the interest of the kids who may have been victims of this in the past and the future. It is different from the way they handled it at Penn State. This may be the new paradigm for how people are going to handle these situations so that rather than try and hide what’s going on, they’re going to make sure they cover themselves right away because administrators who fail to report this sort of thing look to be in big trouble with the law and hurt their programs.
Contact the New Jersey criminal lawyers of Aiello, Harris, Abate Law Group, PC today.
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