At first he dismissed the talk as just rumors, the wishful thinking of high school football players and their raging hormones and overactive teenage imaginations.
It was fall 2005 and the player had just worked his way into the starting lineup at Colton High School when he began to hear his teammates talk about standout players receiving “special treatment” of a sexual nature from the school’s athletic trainer Tiffany Gordon, the daughter of the Yellowjackets legendary head coach Harold Strauss, the architect of what has been described as Colton’s pipeline to the National Football League.
The players, according to court filings and interviews, even had a name for the practice: “getting spatted.”
A season later the player, by now one of the area’s top college prospects, was in the school’s training room waiting for Gordon to treat a leg injury.
“Are you ready to be a superstar?” Gordon asked as she massaged his leg, according to court documents.
She then proceeded to fondle his genitals, according to a court filing.
The player was 16 at the time.
In a series of interviews with the Southern California News Group and a lawsuit filed against Gordon and the Colton Joint Unified School District in San Bernardino County Superior Court, six former Colton players allege Gordon sexually assaulted, abused and molested them with the knowledge of Strauss and other Yellowjackets coaches over a six-year period between 2001 and 2007.
The interviews and court filing detail allegations of how Gordon routinely had sexual intercourse with and performed oral sex on players who were between the ages of 14 and 17 in the school’s locker room, training room, bathrooms, weight room and football trailer as well as at her parents’ house during weekly meetings between the coaches and top players. One player alleged in an interview and the lawsuit that Gordon had sex with him at least 50 times during his senior year at Colton High, when he was 17.
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Players and coaches talked openly on an almost daily basis about Gordon having sex with players, the former players alleged in interviews and in the lawsuit.
The “CJUSD, through its coaching staff, knew, tolerated, encouraged, and sanctioned Gordon’s conduct,” the suit alleges.
Coaches, like players, even joked about Gordon’s sex abuse, the players said in interviews and court filings.
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Some players have been resistant to having relationships with women. Others said their views on sex and their trust issues have undermined marriages and long term relationships. One former player said most of his intimate relationships have been with older women. Another former player said he was so distrusting of authority figures in secluded settings that he never once visited a professor in college during office hours.
“It really changed how we looked at sex,” said John Doe 7044. “To us, this is just like a sport, we’re not connecting, just trying to find this type of feeling.”