FORT WORTH, Texas _ A teenager from Fort Worth accused of sexually assaulting a mentally disabled classmate with a coat hanger while living in Idaho will not go to prison.
John R.K. Howard, 19, reached a plea agreement last week with the Idaho attorney general's office, KTVB-TV reported. He pleaded guilty to injury to a child, a lesser charge, and will receive two to three years of probation, according to the Twin Falls Times-News. The sentence will be finalized in February.
KTVB reported that Howard admitted to the assault, which happened last year and included details that Howard kicked a coat hanger into the victim's rectum.
The incident "is not, in our view, a sex crime, which is why the state has amended this charge," Deputy Attorney General Case Hemmer said in court.
The victim's family has sued the Dietrich School District, alleging that Howard and other football players also taunted the teen, who is black, with racist nicknames like "chicken eater" and "watermelon" during the incident and that no school staffer intervened.
They taught the victim a Ku Klux Klan song and shouted racial epithets as one player knocked him out with bare fists, the lawsuit said.
Howard joined the Dietrich High School football team before last season after moving from the Fort Worth area. He was sent to live with family in Idaho because he couldn't stay out of trouble in Texas, the victim's lawsuit said.
The coat hanger incident happened Oct. 23, 2015, in the team's locker room.
One player "physically forced a coat hanger into the (victim's) rectum," the lawsuit said. Howard then kicked the hanger several times, "forcing it further into (victim's) rectum."
The victim "screamed and cried out but no staff member came to his assistance or even attempted to investigate the clamor from within the locker room."
The victim was hospitalized for rectal injuries.
The lawsuit, which seeks $10 million in damages, described the assault as the culmination of weeks of "humiliating mental abuse" and "brutal physical violence" by Howard and other players.
At some point after the incident, Howard came back to Texas. He was arrested by the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department and returned to Idaho on March 22, according to court records. He posted $75,000 bail two days later.
Howard reportedly finished the school year in the Fort Worth area. His Tarrant County address is listed within the Keller Independent School District, though a district spokeswoman could not confirm whether he was a student there, citing student confidentiality rules.
