St. Patrick-St. Vincent High Fires Coach Who Reported Hazing

By Ted Vollmer and Thomas Gase
Times-Herald
January 26, 2013

http://www.timesheraldonline.com/ci_22456164/st-patrick-st-vincent-high-fires-coach-who?source=most_viewed

Chris Cerbone, former St. Patrick St. Vincent High School football coach.

New St. Patrick-St. Vincent High head football coach Chris Cerbone addresses some members of his team during its first official workout late last summer. Cerbone was fired Friday weeks after reporting that several freshman told him that varsity players had sexually hazed them in a locker room

The head football coach of St. Patrick-St.Vincent High School was fired Friday, only weeks after he reported sexual hazing incidents involving several varsity and freshmen football players.

St. Patrick-St. Vincent Principal Mary Ellen Ryan said in a statement released by the Sacramento Diocese that Coach Chris Cerbone was fired, and that five varsity players were expelled after an investigation. The Diocese indicated there were six hazing victims. It was not immediately known if the expelled students now face criminal charges.

Ryan said in the statement that Cerbone was not involved in the hazing, but nevertheless "had ultimate responsibility for supervising the students during the time the inappropriate behavior took place."

Meanwhile, four assistant coaches, who had been placed on paid leave earlier this month pending the outcome of the investigation, were reinstated.

Only Cerbone lost his job.

Ryan's statement, released by spokesman Kevin Eckery, said that she received information about the hazing shortly before the Christmas break, but did not identify its source.

Cerbone, however, told the Times-Herald that he not only was the one who revealed the assaults to Ryan, on Dec. 19, but also offered to help in any school investigation. He said he filed the hazing report very shortly after several freshmen football players reluctantly disclosed to him what had happened to them in a school locker room.

A former police officer, Cerbone had been hired to coach the

varsity only last July. He said that last month, he overheard some freshmen players complaining that they didn't want to be coached next year by the junior varsity coaches.

When Cerbone asked them why, one student reportedly said, "Coach, you don't want to know."

"I said that I did," Cerbone told Ryan, in a Dec. 19 letter, a copy of which was provided to the Times-Herald.

In that note, Cerbone told Ryan that the freshmen players claimed that earlier in the year a number of varsity players had accosted them, and that another coach had not intervened.

"I asked what he meant," Cerbone wrote Ryan, "and he began to tell me how on certain Thursdays when the coaches were not around that several varsity players would hold down certain freshman (sic) while the varsity player pulled his own pants down and either made the freshman player stick his face into the naked rear of the varsity player or the varsity player would take his genitalia out and slap the freshman player in the face with it."

Cerbone wrote Ryan that several other freshmen players revealed to him that they also were victims of the assaults, but were "afraid if they ratted out the varsity players things would get worse."

Cerbone also reported that one student said when he told another coach about the hazing, that coach said, "It's not my problem."

"If true," Cerbone told Ryan, "these allegations amount to sexual assault, if not worse. I am bringing this to your attention as my supervisor." Asked if he had considered contacting the police about his concerns, Cerbone said he briefly had thought about it, but felt that doing so, "would be a death sentence" for his job. He therefore felt it best to notify his supervisor, in this case Ryan.

Cerbone said despite offering his police experience to aid any investigation, Ryan told him that he was not to be involved. He told the Times-Herald that he felt the safety of the students was uppermost, and he wanted to ensure that those responsible for the hazing were held accountable.

Instead, on Friday morning, Ryan fired him.

In a one-page severance letter that also fired him from his physical education teaching position, Ryan first thanked Cerbone for his cooperation, but added, "based on the facts we gathered during our investigation, we have determined that it was a lack of supervision within the football program that created the opportunities for students to engage in highly inappropriate behavior ... on Thursday afternoons.

"Whether or not you (Cerbone) had direct knowledge of the hazing activities at the time they occurred, the fact that they could have been prevented by proper supervision makes this lapse unacceptable," Ryan wrote.

Eckery, the Diocese spokesman said that Ryan was not available to respond to questions.

The question of whether those students involved in the hazing will not face criminal charges remains.

Eckery said that St. Patrick-St. Vincent High's investigation on the matter is now over.

"The investigation is concluded on the school's standpoint," Eckery told the Times-Herald. "Whether or not the parents of the students or the police continue the investigation is another story. Once the students stop becoming students at the school, there isn't much more we can do. It's not like the kids are being suspended; they're being expelled."

Vallejo police were not immediately available to comment on any possible charges being brought against the students.

Before coaching, Cerbone was a strong safety at the University of Wyoming in the early 1980s before turning to a career in law enforcement in the New York Police Department's narcotics division. Last year, he was vice principal at Vallejo Education Academy.