Peoria Liberty High School wrestling coach is on leave over allegations of sexual abuse in program

WARNING: This conversation includes descriptions of sexual assault.

LAUREN GILGER: The head wrestling coach at Liberty High School in the Peoria Unified School District is under investigation, based on allegations of hazing and sexual assault within his program.

The Arizona Republic broke the story, and the follow-ups to it, including that head coach Eric Brenton was recently placed on leave.

Investigative reporter Hannah Dreyfus inherited the story from a former colleague who was the first reporter a family with two sons on the wrestling team went to with these allegations. They included that school officials — including the coach — knew what was going on, but didn’t address the actions.

SAM DINGMAN: The Show spoke with Dreyfus more about her stories; they were joined by 17-year-old high school junior Rex Fortenberry — one of the wrestlers who says he was a victim of the abuse. Fortenberry and his brother were homeschooled, and both wrestled for Liberty High as an extra-curricular activity.

They talked about his experience there. And a warning that the following conversation does involve descriptions of sexual assault. We start with reporter Hannah Dreyfus.

Full conversation

HANNAH DREYFUS: At the point when the Fortenberrys first got in touch with my colleague, they had already taken the issue to police, but police had sort of closed the case as just an incident of horseplay and not taken further steps to investigate what was going on.

That's when I entered the picture and realized there was a lot more investigation that was necessary here, both in terms of what happened to the wrestlers and what the school did to handle the situation.

MARK BRODIE: Rex, I know this is not the easiest or most pleasant thing to discuss, but to the extent you're comfortable, can you sort of give us a sense of what kinds of things you experienced, what kinds of things you had to deal with while you were there?

REX FORTENBERRY: Yeah, it was, it was pretty much day-to-day hazing, I don't know like how much detail I can go into, but sure, yeah, they they use a broomstick called the penetration pole. They use that on wrestlers, they would physically assault them, all all sorts of things, and that happened like almost daily.

BRODIE: Did it happen to different wrestlers at each time, or like were certain students sort of targeted or picked on?

FORTENBERRY: It happened to almost everybody, but there were a couple students that that were targeted more than others.

BRODIE: And when this was going on, like what were the coaches, what were their grown-ups doing?

FORTENBERRY: Coaches were in the room, they saw it happen. They, they didn't do anything about it. My brother and I even went up to the coaches and talked to him about it. And they said that it's normal, you know, that's that's red dot culture, that's Liberty culture, like, you can either, you know, stay around and accept that or you can leave.

BRODIE: And Hannah, you had a chance to reach out to the coach and you spoke with a number of people at the school. It sounds like this, the response you got was, "well, boys will be boys, right? This is, this is something that happens." Kind of like what Rex heard.

DREYFUS: Well, that's not the response I got. That's actually the response that I found in internal school records from school officials’ investigation of what went on. The school has been really reticent in talking to me about what's going on. And the head coach, although he did respond to me over text, declined to be directly interviewed with me, so I wasn't able to get his explanation for the situation.

The sentence "boys will be boys" appeared in the school's internal records from their investigation into what happened, so that seems to be what the coach said when they brought this situation to his attention.

BRODIE: Rex, what did it feel like for you when that was the response that you and your brother got from the coach? You've been through all this stuff and the coach was like shrugging it off.

FORTENBERRY: Yeah, it was really a letdown 'cause I honestly thought he was a good coach, and to see him just like pushed off as something that just like happens, like boys will be boys. You know, like a rite of passage like, how was, how was that a good thing?

One of my teammates, he, we literally got like a text from the head coach saying, you know, it's a rite of passage. One of my teammates said, head coach, this is getting out of hand, like this needs to stop. And the head coach told him, he said, it's, it's just a rite of passage, and that should never, you know, be in wrestling. I came there to wrestle, not to get, you know, the penetration poles on me, like it, I'm there to wrestle and that's the only thing I'm there for.

BRODIE: Hannah, what kinds of things did you hear from the school, from the district, from police? Because it seems like this is something, as we've talked about, has been going on for a little while, kind of like opening cases, closing cases, opening cases, closing cases on this.

DREYFUS: Yeah, when I put in requests for comment with the school and the police department, I only really received comments towards the end of my investigation when I came to them with a pretty robust list of findings. One thing that was really interesting from the school is that they had a 78-page amalgam of documents of their internal investigation.

And I requested those from the schools a public record. At first they said they didn't know if it existed. Since then they have acknowledged that it exists, but they still have not released it to me. The way that I was able to get my hands on that was by putting in a public records request with the police department. As part of the school's cooperation with the police department, they handed over these 78 pages to them. So that's the way I was able to see that school officials knew this was going on and yet still misrepresented to parents and to students what the investigation was about.

The other interesting thing that I discovered while speaking to police is that police failed to interview key witnesses in this investigation, and that includes Rex. Rex and his brother Ryder were the first whistleblowers to come forward. They brought recorded video evidence of these hazing practices to police and despite them being essential witnesses and whistleblowers in what went on, police did not interview them and have only set up forensic interviews with them now after the investigation has come out.

BRODIE: Do you have a sense as to why that is?

DREYFUS: I asked police. I didn't get a very clear answer. The main answer they said is that they didn't think that Rex and Ryder were victims in the beginning. Even so, failure to even speak to them about their experiences when at the very least they were in firsthand proximity to students who were victims seems like a questionable practice to me.

BRODIE: Rex, are you still wrestling?

FORTENBERRY: No, I'm not.

BRODIE: Did you stop because of this experience?

FORTENBERRY: Sadly, sadly, yes. It was too much. It, it honestly like destroyed my love for wrestling. If there's like, I don't know anything I could have done to keep my, you know, passion for wrestling alive, I would have, but honestly, I just didn't want to go through what I went through anymore. I couldn't take it anymore, nothing was being done, so I thought at that time that was the best idea to do.

BRODIE: And Hannah, we should mention that since your initial story came out, the head coach has been placed on leave. Can you sort of walk us through what led to that?

DREYFUS: Yeah, sure. So it was actually the day that the investigation came out, we found out that later that evening, the school principal sent an email only to the wrestling team, letting them know that the coach would be put on another paid administrative leave while they investigated the allegations that had come forward.

One thing I just wanted to add about the experience of the Fortenberry family, this is not a direct answer to your question, but the amount of bravery it took for them to speak out about their experiences and the high degree of retaliation that they faced personally and as a family because of their decision to do so.

BRODIE: Yeah, Rex, what is big for you in terms of coming forward? I mean, coming forward with anything, I would imagine would be difficult, but especially something that's so personal like this.

FORTENBERRY: Yeah, it definitely wasn't easy. My brother and I, we honestly didn't know what to do at first, but we knew something had to be done. So, yeah, we told our parents, we went to the police and, like Hannah said earlier, she already touched on that.

They didn't really do much. I think they closed the investigation pretty, pretty quick without interviewing my brother and I, but it's not something that's like super comfortable to do.

BRODIE: Rex, what do you hope comes out of all of this?

FORTENBERRY: I really hope that you know, the people that let this happen are, are held accountable. ‘Cause this should like, this shouldn't have ever happened. I think the best scenario is a clean house, like you have like new coaches. If you have like good coaches, I feel like you can have a new culture there, like entirely new coaches that are held accountable, hold the wrestlers accountable, and everything is monitored, you know, I, I think that could potentially become a good program again.

DINGMAN: That was former Liberty High School wrestler Rex Fortenberry, and Arizona Republic investigative reporter Hannah Dreyfus.

GILGER: We also reached out to the Peoria Unified School District for comment on this story. In a statement, a district spokesperson says:

“The Peoria Unified School District has fully cooperated with the Peoria Police Department’s investigation into Liberty High School wrestling and will continue to work with Police as they have recently reopened this case. We encourage those with information related to this case to reach out directly to the Peoria Police Department. Based on new allegations shared directly with the media, Peoria Unified has reopened its investigation and has placed varsity wrestling coach and history teacher, Eric Brenton, on paid administrative leave. This is standard procedure in situations like this.”