A Catholic high school in Ohio has benched its powerhouse football team for the rest of the season after a player’s mother filed a federal lawsuit claiming her son and others were physically and sexually abused by their teammates during a nine-day football camp over the summer and the coaches did nothing to stop the brutal hazing.
Top administrators and team coaches at Ursuline High School in Youngstown also “failed to take the appropriate actions to address the misconduct” and were acting “solely for the glory of its football team alone,” according to the civil rights lawsuit, filed Sept. 2 in the Northern District of Ohio, Eastern Division.
“It’s just boys being boys,” assistant football coach Timothy McGlynn told the mom when she reported the abuse allegations to him, the lawsuit alleges.
The lawsuit, filed under Title IX, a federal law that requires schools that receive federal funds to put safeguards in place to protect students from sexual predators, was filed anonymously by the mother of the incoming freshman player. It names the school, its principal, the assistant principal, the head football coach, two assistant football coaches and the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, as well as 11 unnamed players and their parents. The players are all minors.
The school’s president, the Rev. Richard Murphy, announced in a letter to parents Friday that “the season could not continue” and that he had suspended head coach Daniel Reardon and placed McGlynn and another assistant coach, Christian Syrianoudis, on administrative leave. Murphy also said the school is cooperating with the investigation into the hazing allegations.
In a different letter sent to the school’s parents and students the day before, Murphy said, “The situations described in these lawsuits are extremely upsetting. No students or their parents should have to deal with such challenges,” according to a copy of the letter posted to the website of the Youngstown news site Mahoning Matters.
But Murphy expressed support for the school’s leadership, including Principal Matthew Sammartino and Assistant Principal Margaret Damore. He said leadership acted as soon as it was made aware of the allegations, opened an investigation and alerted the Youngstown Police Department and the Children Services departments in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
In addition to the cancellation of the team’s season, the Ohio High School Athletic Association announced Tuesday it has barred Ursuline football players from playing for other schools this season.
The mom’s lawyer, Subodh Chandra, was dismayed by the school’s response, saying in a statement on his law firm’s website that Murphy did not remove the coaches until “a lawsuit was filed and public outrage mounted in September.”
“Ursuline High School president Father Richard Murphy and the Board’s statement continuing to support administrators facing serious allegations only reinforces the victims’ conclusion that accountability at the Diocese and the school is needed,” Chandra wrote.
A request for comment made to Ursuline High School administrators was directed to a spokesperson for the Diocese of Youngstown. The spokesperson confirmed Sammartino and Damore were still at their jobs and would not comment further.
In an email, Reardon said that he was preparing a response to the allegations, but none was provided at the time of publication. Neither McGlynn nor Syrianoudis responded to calls and emails for comment.
On Monday, the bishop of Youngstown, David Bonnar, weighed in with his first public statements on the swirling scandal, saying, “We are deeply saddened by the allegations that have emerged regarding Ursuline High School.”
Bonnar declined to discuss the allegations in the lawsuit or a second federal lawsuit Chandra filed on Sept. 10 that alleges a “star Ursuline High School football player” tormented a female classmate for two years and accuses the school of failing to discipline him.
“We’re the church,” Bonnar said at a news conference. “We don’t use the media to try cases, and we’re certainly not going to do that here.”
In both lawsuits, Ursuline High School is being sued under Title IX.
The Ursuline Fighting Irish is a venerable high school football program with a hall of fame that includes longtime football broadcaster and former NFL player Paul Maguire and Emmy-nominated actor Ed O’Neill, best known to viewers for his roles in “Married... with Children” and “Modern Family.”
Long a football power in northern Ohio, the team has won at least 10 games in each of the past four seasons, and it trounced the first two rivals it faced in September before the season was called off.
But the football program also has, according to the lawsuit, a long-standing “culture of hazing.”
The freshman, identified in the court papers under the pseudonym Son King, said he was repeatedly assaulted on a multistate football camp bus trip from June 12 to June 20 that traveled to Alabama, Florida and Tennessee. Reardon, McGlynn and Syrianoudis chaperoned 41 players on the trip.
To build camaraderie, Reardon had the players room with different players each night, the lawsuit says. But it says Reardon’s son, who is also a freshman, shared a room with his father most nights instead of bunking with the other players.
Son King alleged in the court papers that the upperclassmen, in the presence of the coaching staff on the bus, openly discussed hazing and “initiations” that included having the new players fight one another, with the loser “getting his butt taken.”
“Don’t say that stuff to me, I don’t want to hear it,” Syrianoudis was heard saying on the bus on the first day of the trip while students were making comments about the hazing initiations, according to the court papers.
The freshman said that, fearing he would be attacked, he hid in a closet when they got to Alabama on the first day of the trip. But he alleges that his older teammates rousted him from his hiding place and tried to pull his pants off. Eventually giving up, one player “humped” his buttocks over his clothes while another recorded and posted video of the incident on the team’s group Snapchat account, according to the lawsuit.
On day four of the trip, Son King alleges, he was attacked again. Videos of those assaults were also shared online, and one of his attackers took a pair of his underwear as a “trophy,” the lawsuit says.
Despite Son King’s being openly ridiculed, the coaches did not intercede to help him, the papers say.
On the fifth day of the trip, he texted his mother to tell her what was happening.
Fearing retaliation, Son King pleaded with his mother not to tell the coaches, the papers say. But when she could not reach him over the next few days, the worried mom called McGlynn and told him about her son’s being attacked, they say.
“McGlynn expressed neither surprise nor dismay that hazing was happening,” the court papers say. “And he expressed no sympathy or remorse.”
According to the lawsuit, the coaches were aware of the videos and did nothing to ensure that the players deleted them. The suit alleges that McGlynn at one point told them to delete the videos but did not follow up to make sure that had happened.
“The players did not delete the videos or the team’s group Snapchat at the time,” the lawsuit says. The lawsuit refers to the videos as “child pornography” and says the players continued to share them, “even across state lines.”
And the freshman continued to be targeted by his teammates.
When he got home, Son King told his mother everything and she immediately saved all the incriminating videos and demanded to see Sammartino and Damore, according to the lawsuit.
In a meeting with Sammartino, the lawsuit says, he told her that he would notify the diocese and law enforcement about the allegations. He later notified Children Services, which notified Youngstown police, according to the lawsuit.
The mother also reported the hazing to the police department, which launched a criminal investigation, the papers say.
A second federal lawsuit involving a member of the football team was filed against the school on Sept. 10. It accuses school officials of failing to discipline a top player who it alleges beat and sexually harassed a female student in June 2023.
In it, the mother of a female student identified as Daughter Chef alleges that the girl was subjected to “bullying and harassment [that] escalated into a physical attack at school” after she rebuffed a football player’s demand for sex and nude photos.
The bullying started in 2023, when the girl was a freshman “still playing with baby dolls,” and the football player, also a freshman, was already 6 feet tall, the papers say.
The mother said that when she told Damore and Athletic Director John DeSantis about the alleged attack and harassment, both advised her not to report the incident to police “and falsely assured Mother the school would handle the matter,” the lawsuit says.
DeSantis, who is also an assistant football coach, was unsympathetic, the suit says. “It’s time to get over it,” he said, according to court papers.
For two years, the football player “continued to harass, stalk, menace, ogle, and intimidate” the girl, but school administrators took no action to protect her, the court papers say.
“Their failures continued even after Daughter’s elder brother — an Ursuline graduate once close to DeSantis — voiced frustration and disappointment about Ursuline officials’ persistent failures to protect his little sister, and pressed DeSantis to act,” they say.
In the end, according to the lawsuit, the girl’s mother “had to sell her home and move so she could transfer Daughter to another school and protect her child.”
DeSantis, Damore, the high school, the Diocese of Youngstown and a minor identified as Ursuline Player-6 and his parents are named as defendants in the female student’s lawsuit.
The diocese spokesperson said DeSantis, like Damore and the principal, remains at his job.
