DETROIT _ When word got out that a football player at De La Salle High School was sexually hazed in the locker room, about a dozen athletes clammed up, including the victim, who police said doesn't want charges.
The same thing happened after a brawl broke out in December between students from Birmingham Brother Rice and Catholic Central: The case has gone nowhere because one victim doesn't want charges, police said, and no one else is talking.
Students at U-D Jesuit in Detroit were equally quiet in 2014 after a former teacher was charged with videotaping hockey players changing in a locker room. Students vented privately but refused to speak publicly.
This is the culture of silence that for years has reigned at metro Detroit's all-boys Catholic schools, where scandals involving misbehavior of all sorts put students, alumni and families on high alert as many are all too aware that reputation rules the day _ and sports is king.
When scandals break, especially ones involving sexual assault, many students and alumni don't publicly talk about it. And the victims keep a super low profile if recent controversies are any indication.
As many alumni and students have said: If you want to survive in an all-boys setting, you have to keep quiet when something bad happens.
"They would rather carry it to the grave than to let someone else know about it," said one De La Salle football parent, referring to sexual hazing victims. "You don't want to be the one to upset the brotherhood."
This is the mindset that has prevailed during the De La Salle hazing scandal, which school officials and police have said involves multiple football players being held down, sexually taunted and prodded with broomsticks. A dozen players were instructed by their parents not to talk, police said. And none of the victims have spoken.
As another football parent put it, if the victims outed themselves, the repercussions would be brutal: "There's the kid that talked, the kid who ruined our season, who got the coach fired."
Two days after the hazing allegations surfaced at De La Salle, the school abruptly ended the football season, forfeited the playoffs, suspended three athletes and, most recently, fired the coach, Mike Giannone, who led the team to two state championships in his three years there. The school was also hit with a lawsuit by the three suspended students, who are claiming, among other things, racial discrimination. The accused are minorities at a mostly white school.
Additionally, Warren police have recommended assault and battery charges against the three suspended athletes, though the St. Clair County prosecutor has not yet made a charging decision.
No student wants to carry the brunt of that fallout, said a De La Salle parent, who believes there's a code of silence in the school's football program: His son was one of the intended hazing victims.
"From what I've seen, I would definitely say that there is a code of silence," the parent said. "They don't want to be that kid, the kid who breaks the code of silence. ... That player is going to have to walk the hallway and people are going to know."
The parent, who requested anonymity to protect his son from repercussions, also played football at an all-boys Catholic high school during his youth and said he witnessed minor hazing: wedgies, swirlies in the toilet and pushing around. But nothing like what's being alleged in the current scandal, he said.
"This crossed the line," he said. "There are still those parents out there who still chalk it up to hazing, 'nothing to see here,'" he said. "But there is something to see here."
Only the boys won't talk.
"I believe fear is the main driver of people going silent during controversial situations," De La Salle Principal Nate Maus told the Detroit Free Press. "I wouldn't be able to determine if this is a gender-specific issue, but I think many people regardless of gender, age or other demographics, fear repercussions, whether social or legal, when speaking out."
Maus said the majority of students have cooperated with the school in the hazing investigation, and said the school has "done everything in our power to offer portals through which students can speak freely about this situation."
"De La Salle has always operated on the basis of being as transparent as possible. In serious situations, like the hazing allegations, we have been proactive in communicating our process, decision making and next steps, " Maus said.
It was De La Salle administrators who disclosed the hazing allegations when they abruptly ended the football team's season in October and forfeited the playoffs.
"We made the determination before the current issue came to light to make a concerted effort to foster a more open and transparent conversations with students," Maus said. "There are many instances nationally where you can cite the "culture of silence" issue, but at De La Salle, we have and will continue to do everything in our power to reduce it."
