FLORIDA
Tampa Bay Times
Laura C. Morel, Times Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 22, 2014
A wrestling coach arrested Tuesday on charges that he recently hit two students was accused of stripping a Pinellas Park High student naked in 1998 after he caught the boy smoking a cigarette, according to records.
Teachers grew concerned when the student began missing classes around Thanksgiving. When confronted, the student said he felt uncomfortable seeing Scott Stern, a wrestling team volunteer, at school.
According to police records, the boy said that after Stern caught him smoking a cigarette in a car, Stern asked him to come into the wrestling room.
“Coach Stern said he could handle the smoking situation in three ways,” an officer wrote in a report. “One was to call his mother, two was the hard way, and the third was the mental way.”
The boy chose the mental way. Stern forced him to strip naked and balance a ruler on his head, records show.
When confronted by school officials and police, Stern admitted to making the student balance the ruler, but denied making him take off his clothes.
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