Tensions rise in Mead hazing trial as defense chides second victim’s family for being ‘emotional’ in courtroom

When the victim of a 2023 Mead hazing assault moves to a small town in Oregon, he now knows it will finally be a far enough distance to take his head off a swivel.

Since his Mead High School football teammates forcibly assaulted him with a massage gun, the victim has become reclusive, isolating himself for fear of running into an assailant or anyone from school, he said.

He told a jury on Tuesday how that anxiety follows him, up until a recent trip to his future home in Oregon.

“The amount of weight lifted off my chest when I could walk into a store and not see someone I knew,” he said.

The trial continued Tuesday in which a jury will decide how much the Mead School District will pay two victims and their families suing the district for up to $50 million.

Spokane County Superior Court Judge Annette Plese already ruled the district is liable for failing to protect its students and report the assaults. It’s up to the jury to determine damages after the expected two-week trial.

The victim, now 18, spoke through sobs on Tuesday as he remembered the assault at a 2023 football camp at Eastern Washington University when he was a sophomore.

The victim, who is white, said he was targeted for standing up for his Black teammates who were also targeted in what their attorney argued was a racially motivated attack.

It was the morning after the group assaulted a Black student in the dorms at EWU when assailants approached the victim, asking him which room another Black athlete was staying in.

The victim knew why they were asking, he said. He heard about what happened the night before; videos of his teammate’s assault were already circulating.

“I told them I’m not going to tell them that, because that was evil,” he said.

He was in his dorm that night when his teammates “kicked down” his door. The assailants tackled him, pinned him down and forced his legs open. They applied a battery-powered massage gun to his privates.

“I screamed hoping somebody would hear,” he said through sobs.

During the assault, one of his teammates told him it was “punishment” for not going along with their planned attack.

He was wearing shorts and underwear during the assault, he said, and was sore for a day and a half afterwards.

Teammates recorded the assault, footage of which spread through his school and community in the following months. During that time, “I was suffering,” the victim said.

“Everybody was sending the vids around, everybody knew about it, everybody was laughing at me,” he said.

Peers called him homophobic slurs and threatened to “do it again,” he said.

Like another victim, he didn’t tell anyone about the attack, even his parents.

“There were multiple times I really wanted to tell them, but I just couldn’t get it out because I didn’t want them to think of me as anything except their son,” he said tearfully.

The victim’s weren’t the only tears to fall during his testimony; family seated behind legal counsel were also audibly crying as they listened to the teen recount what he’d been through.

At times, jurors looked into the gallery at crying family members, including the victim’s parents, sister and girlfriend.

At one point during the victim’s emotional testimony, defense attorney for Mead Francis Floyd asked the judge to dismiss the jury for a moment. He told the judge it was problematic that the victim’s family were so “emotional” in front of them .

That prompted the victim’s father to stand and step toward Floyd, appearing to lunge at him as his son, the victim, physically held him back.

“If they can’t control themselves, they need to leave,” he said of the family.

Floyd went on to say it would be difficult to cross-examine the victim while he’s crying as the gallery mumbled amongst themselves.

It was enough of a break from testimony that the family and victim composed themselves. Plese said if they needed a moment, the family should step out, and the trial resumed after the jury returned.

During cross-examination, the defense pointed to a few contradictions in what victims and their families had testified to during trial compared to depositions given in January.

Some details were different in each case: like how close the victim was with one of the assailants before and after the attack, why the other victim had ended a romantic relationship and how often he had nightmares.

Both victims in the suit received counseling after the attack to treat symptoms of depression and anxiety. Floyd asked why neither had sought a specific therapy recommended by a forensic psychologist meant to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

“If that’s something he wants to go through, then we will,” the mother of one of the victims said.

One victim’s mother said he was “not ready” for such a treatment.

Floyd asked the victim about his time at a football camp in Wenatchee that he attended after transferring to Mt. Spokane High School after the assault. There, the victim was involved in a “brawl,” Floyd said, that the victim called a “1000% bonding experience.”

Though players in that exchange pushed the victim to the ground and stomped on him so much that his helmet broke, the victim said it brought him closer to his “brothers.”

The defense also asked the victim and his family about his repeated comments around suicidal ideation in the months following the assault.

“It’s like a switch kinda flipped; he would get super mad,” the victim’s mother testified. “That was something that wasn’t present before.”

He’d threatened death by suicide on multiple occasions, including during a heated exchange with his mother about missed assignments. During that fight, he told his mom, “You’re the reason I want to kill myself,” she said.

“For the rest of his life, I will never not worry that that’s something he’ll do,” she said.

The victim later told a counselor he was “joshing” and testified that his mother was “absolutely not” the reason he felt suicidal. They have a good relationship, he said.

The victim’s mother said she’s eternally proud of his “resilience” going through all that he has, graduating from Mt. Spokane High School and bound for firefighter training in Oregon.

He had wanted to be a firefighter since elementary school, she said.

“As hard as it’s going to be to let him go, it’s such a happy moment,” she said.