A district judge ruled Monday that four former Cheltenham High School football coaches presided over a “cone of silence” last year by failing to report that one of their players had been beaten by his teammates in two locker room assaults.
District Judge Christopher Cerski told head coach Terence Tolbert, 55; associate head coach Darian McFadden, 42; assistant coach Benjamin Johnson III, 45; and volunteer coach Ralph Burnley, 60, that they had failed in their duties to protect the then-15-year-old by encouraging him not to tell his mother about the assaults, and insisting on handling the matter themselves.
During the lengthy proceedings, the victim testified about the assaults and how it affected him.
After a marathon preliminary hearing in Jenkintown, Cerski held all four men over for trial on two counts of endangering the welfare of a child and one count of conspiracy, but dismissed another count of conspiracy that they faced.
Their lawyers argued against the merits of the case, saying the coaches were never told the full scope of abuse the teen suffered. He had deliberately downplayed the assault to them, according to testimony Monday, because he was embarrassed that his teammates had used a broomstick to poke at his buttocks.
The group only found out the full details months later, when video of an earlier assault surfaced during Cheltenham School District’s internal investigation.
Tolbert’s attorney, Thomas Egan III, called the prosecution’s “grand conspiracy to stomp on this teen’s voice” completely false.
“[Tolbert] could only act in the scope of what he knew,” Egan said. “He had a player who didn’t have major injuries and intended to still play football and not tell his mother.”
But Assistant District Attorney Samantha Cauffman balked at that theory of the case, saying adults who should have known better were improperly foisting their responsibility onto a teenager.
“This case boils down to the fact that a 15-year-old was beaten up, and you tell him not to tell his mother,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if he didn’t want to tell her. You are the adults in the room.”
Two players charged alongside the former coaches, Isaiah Simpson and Josiah Peeler, both 18, waived their hearings and will also face a Montgomery County judge: Simpson for conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment, and related crimes for his role in the September assault, and Peeler for false swearing for being untruthful to police.
Locker room assault victim takes the stand
The victim of the assault, whom The Inquirer is not naming, testified Monday that Simpson and a group of other players pulled him into the team’s locker room after practice in September 2025 and “jumped him.” The group stomped on his head while wearing cleats, kicked him in the groin, and assaulted him with the broom.
They were acting out a reference to a Meek Mill song, he said, that included the lyrics “broomstick all in his butt, tell him take that.”
In a quiet voice, as he faced his former coaches, the teen said the group attacked him because he had taken Peeler’s shoulder pads after his had been stolen out of his locker. Peeler reported the theft to the coaching staff, who made the entire team run extra laps as a punishment.
After the assault, the teen said he walked outside, asking Burnley for a ride home. He was crying, he said, and icing his groin to ease the pain he felt.
When he explained to Burnley what happened he omitted the detail about the broomstick, feeling embarrassed.
Burnley told him to call his mother. He declined, he said, because he was afraid she’d force him to stop playing football.
As he drove the teen home, Burnley called the other coaches to tell them about the assault. Later, Johnson, Tolbert, and McFadden spoke to him over the phone and told him not to tell anyone about the incident, and that they would handle it internally.
Privately, the coaches sent incriminating text messages to one another, prosecutors said, expressing concern that the incident “has to be handled and kept quiet.”
McFadden wrote “if this gets out we are [expletive]. They will cancel the whole season,” according to messages displayed in court.
However, the teen’s mother learned of the assault a week later from someone in the community, and Cheltenham began investigating the case.
During that probe, the district received video of a similar, earlier assault of the teen, which had taken place in August 2025. The video, played in court, showed a group of players ganging up on the teen to beat and mock him as he cries out for them to stop.
The teen testified that he didn’t disclose that assault to the coaches because he considered it more minor and was closer to “horseplay.”
The four coaches are expected to be arraigned in county court next month.
