The mother knew something was wrong the night her son came home from football practice last September and quietly went to his room.
Four days later, she took him to the doctor after he told her his teammates had jumped him inside the Cheltenham High School locker room after that practice, injuring his genitals.
It was not until she got a call from police later that month that the mother learned that teammates had used a broomstick in the alleged attack, an act his lawyers described as attempted sexual assault.
Her son, who was 15 at the time, told her teammates had tried “to mess with his manhood,” the mother said.
He told her that the school’s football coaches, who knew that his teammates had jumped him, had called him that night and told him not to tell his parents.
“He didn’t want to talk about it,” said the mother, who spoke to The Inquirer on the condition of anonymity to protect her son’s identity. Her son, she said, “was trying to put it in the back of his head. He was traumatized.”
Cheltenham abruptly canceled its football season last October, citing hazing allegations. In January, the district said it had confirmed that a “student-on-student assault” took place in its football locker room on Sept. 3, and that nearly 20 students had watched without trying to stop it.
A video of a locker room attack that investigators thought matched the student’s description of the alleged attack in September surfaced in the fall and was obtained by the district. The teammates who assaulted the student are identifiable in the video, said Gabrielle Turley, a lawyer representing the student. She said the student provided their names to Cheltenham police.
But this spring, detectives determined the footage actually had been taken in August, according to the student’s lawyers — prompting the student to reveal he had been assaulted more than once.
Eleven months later, no charges have been filed. A spokesperson for the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office said it is still investigating but declined to comment further.
The incidents have reverberated throughout the suburban community, even as the school district has provided few specifics about what happened in the locker room.
The district announced in May it was canceling the forthcoming football season for the Panthers, but has not disciplined any students.
A Title IX investigation — which schools are required by federal law to conduct into sexual misconduct allegations — is ongoing. “Unfortunately, the district received extremely limited cooperation from students,” Superintendent Brian Scriven said in a statement in response to questions from The Inquirer about the assaults. Any discipline for students will be imposed once the investigation is done, Scriven said.
The district in April approved a separation agreement with the team’s head coach, Terence Tolbert, who had been Cheltenham’s top football coach since June 2025.
Scriven noted that the district also in April approved a separation agreement with another football coach, Darian McFadden. None of the coaches from the 2025-26 season are still affiliated with the district, the superintendent said.
Scriven declined to address specific questions about the alleged assaults, saying the district attorney’s office had asked school officials not to comment.
As the new school year approaches, some football players and their families have criticized the district’s cancellation of another season as unfair punishment for a situation they had no part in.
But students who participated in or witnessed the alleged assaults have been able to move on with their lives, graduating from the 1,450-student Wyncote school or transferring to other schools, the mother of the victim said. Her son has not.
He was taunted by peers after the September assault and switched to virtual school in the district, where he struggled and was isolated, his mother said. After getting harassed by kids at his local basketball court, he avoids going outside, she said.
“He can’t escape the situation,” she said.
Inside the locker room
Video footage from the August incident after a football training camp at Cheltenham High School shows the student being dragged by his shirt on the floor of the locker room, according to his lawyers.
About “seven or eight students are making physical contact” with him, while other students are standing by lockers, some with their phones out, said Alan Yatvin, one of the lawyers.
The video shows one young man holding a broomstick, which is being “poked or thrust at [the student’s] genitals and backside,” Yatvin said.
Turley, the other lawyer representing the student, said the video shows teammates trying to pick the student up by his shirt, which is ripped, while the student tries to remain seated on the floor.
“There’s no other reason to be in that area, unless you’re trying to sexually assault somebody,” Turley said of the broomstick she saw in the video of the alleged attack.
The student did not tell anyone about the August incident because he was embarrassed, his lawyers said.
But then on Sept. 3, he was assaulted again. The student had taken someone’s shoulder pads because his were missing. Coaches made players run as a punishment, and they blamed the student, the lawyers said.
Yatvin said that as the student tried to leave the locker room, he was thrown on the floor and punched and kicked in the head and testicles. He said the student reported there were “three main people hitting him.”
The altercation lasted about five minutes, and the student heard someone say, “‘Get the broomstick,’” Yatvin said. He said the student tried to ball up on the ground and “sat in such a way to avoid the broomstick being stuck in him.”
A couple of teammates intervened, and the fight broke up, Yatvin said. He said one player went to get a trainer, while another got the student ice.
A volunteer coach drove the student home. That same night, three coaches, including then-head coach Tolbert, called the student, according to Yatvin.
“They told him that he shouldn’t tell his mom, because they would handle it. He believed that,” Yatvin said.
Reached by phone earlier this month, Tolbert declined to comment.
A mother pushes for answers
The student’s mother recalls taking her son to an urgent care center four days after the Sept. 3 incident because he was “complaining his pee was burning a little bit,” she said.
She texted the vice principal, Mark Hoff, to let him know what had happened. “I was very upset,” the mother said. Hoff called her; the school opened an investigation the next day, Yatvin said.
It was about 12 days later when Cheltenham police called her about a tip that had been submitted through the state’s anonymous Safe2Say line, about a broomstick being used during an assault.
“I know that’s like a sexual assault — trying to sodomize somebody,” the mother said, noting she works at a prison. “What was going through my mind was, ‘Where did these kids get this from?’”
At the end of September, lawyers said, the district contacted the mother to ask if she wanted to open a Title IX investigation, given the sexual nature of the allegations. She said yes.
At the time, the mother did not know her son had been attacked more than once.
No one had shown her and her son the video of the alleged assault that the district obtained — which had circulated through the school community, Yatvin said — until the spring. Had they seen it earlier, he said, they would have known it was from August, based on the student’s hairstyle at the time.
The mother said her son was “scared to come forward.”
“He didn’t want to go through none of this,” she said. “But I kind of pushed the issue.”
Waiting for accountability
On Oct. 17, a Friday, Cheltenham announced that it was postponing that night’s football game.
“Today, the district received anonymous information regarding allegations of hazing in the football program,” Scriven said in a statement. The season was temporarily suspended, he said, and the district had “engaged an external investigator.”
By that Sunday, Scriven had announced that the season was canceled. The district had received a report “approximately three weeks ago” of a locker room assault, he said in the announcement, and that Friday, it “received additional information, including reports indicating multiple team members engaged in hazing through physical contact.”
Asked why it took until Oct. 17 for the district to suspend the season when the mother had reported the assault Sept. 7, Scriven drew a distinction between hazing and a “singular incident of assault.”
The district’s external investigation, which was completed in January, determined there was insufficient supervision in the locker room and “a failure to prioritize student safety by the coaching staff and/or adult volunteers,” as well as a “a toxic and negative culture within the current football program.”
Scriven said he expected the Title IX investigation to be completed “in the near future.”
Yatvin believes more students know what happened to his client than have come forward.
“If all the necessary information was available, there probably would have been something happening with the school’s investigation, and something happening with the district attorney’s investigation,” he said.
The student’s mother, who is considering filing a lawsuit, said she wants people held accountable for what happened to her son. No one from his school has called and checked on his well-being, she said.
“You’ve got parents on the news, worrying about their football team, but not necessarily worried about what happened,” she said. “Nobody is focused on what happened to him.”
