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John R.K. Howard

Tarrant County

A former Idaho high school football player who faced charges of raping a mentally disabled teammate with a coat hanger has been permitted to plead guilty to lesser felony charge that will allow him to avoid prison time.

John R.K. Howard, 18, was originally charged with “forcible sexual penetration by use of a foreign object” after he and two other white football players assaulted black teammate Antwon McDaniel, 18, inside the Dietrich High School locker room on Oct. 22, 2015. Howard was facing the possibility of life in prison if convicted at trial.

At a court appearance on Friday, Howard agreed to a deal with prosecutors where he pleaded guilty to one count of felony injury to a child, the Twin Falls Times-News reported. He will be sentenced to two to three years of probation, plus 300 hours of community service, which he’ll be allowed to complete in Texas where he now lives. He could have his conviction dismissed altogether if he completes his sentence without violating probation or committing any other crimes.

As part of the agreement, Howard submitted an Alford plea, which allows him to maintain that he believes he is innocent but admits that if he went to trial he would be found guilty.

At the hearing, Deputy State Attorney General Casey Hemmer called the attack “egregious,” causing the victim a lot of suffering, the Times News reported.

However, Hemmer told the court that based on the evidence it was the prosecution’s belief that McDaniel was not “at any time pinned down, raped, or pinned down and subjected to any sort of forcible penetration.”

“We don’t believe it’s appropriate for Mr. Howard to suffer the consequences of a sex offender,” Hemmer said. “But he still needs to be held accountable.”

Dietrich High School football

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Howard was charged in May 2016 after McDaniel told investigators and testified that after practice he was lured into the locker room by his teammates who said they wanted to give him a hug. Inside the locker room, another white football player, Tanner Ward, shoved a coat hanger into McDaniel’s anus. Howard then kicked the hanger “five or six times,” McDaniel testified.

Ward, 17 at the time of the attack, was also originally charged as an adult but later had his case moved to juvenile court, where he has pleaded guilty. Another unidentified white member of the Dietrich High School football team involved in the attack is also facing charges in juvenile court.

“There was stuff going on in the locker room, there wasn’t really any supervision in there at the time,” Hemmer said at Howard’s hearing last week. “The other party in this case that has pled guilty in juvenile court took a coat hanger and either inserted or swung or in some way caused it to become lodged in the victim’s buttocks … It’s the state’s contention that at some point, Mr. Howard purposely kicked that hanger.”

On whether the state thought the attack was racially motivated, Hemmer told the judge, “Your honor, based on what we’ve had, no. I will say that there are things that we found going around that school and that locker room involving a lot of the parties here that had racial undertones. But it’s not our belief that this was a racially motivated crime. This was more of a vulnerable-victim-motivated crime. I think it probably would have happened to anybody that was in the same kind of circumstances and mental state as the victim here.”

Howard is scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 24, 2017.

Dietrich High School

KMVT

After Howard entered his plea, the Idaho Coalition Against Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence expressed outrage, calling for Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden to make a public statement and take immediate action against his deputy.

In a statement posted on Facebook, the local activists group said the plea deal reinforced “an acceptance of toxic masculine energy [in American culture], which is defined by domination, aggression, and domestic and sexual violence. The young man who was brutally penetrated was viewed as less than our dominant culture 'ideal' of masculinity. This was a sex crime.”

“The actions by the football players and Dietrich High School were racist, a climate where hate and ugliness were tolerated. This was racism,” the statement said.

“Deputy Attorney General Hemmer’s actions and statements dehumanizes the young man who was heinously penetrated and fuels and sanctions our culture of sexism, racism, able-ism, domination, aggression, and violence, and in turn, the Office of the Idaho Attorney General is complicit in state-sanctioned sexism, racism, able-ism and violence. Nothing short of a complete retraction by the Attorney General of Hemmer’s outrageous actions and statements and immediate action against Hemmer will be acceptable.”

The developments in Howard’s criminal case come as a $10 million civil lawsuit brought by the McDaniel family is pending against the school district and several administrators and coaches at Dietrich High School. The players are not named as defendants in the civil case.

In the civil case, the family claims that the defendants “were all on notice and well aware that [McDaniel] had learning disabilities and cognitive deficits that rendered him defenseless and helpless in coping with bullying, racial taunting, beating and rape.”

The family claims that in the months leading up to the assault, McDaniel was harassed and bullied — and no adult in power did anything to stop the abuse. The defendants have said that the alleged victim didn’t notify any official about alleged bullying, hazing, or harassment.

According to the lawsuit, in the summer of 2015, the victim was taunted and called racist names by Howard and other teammates including “Kool-Aid,” “chicken eater,” “watermelon,” and “nigger.” Howard also taught the victim a Ku Klux Klan song, “Notorious KKK,” and demanded that he recite the lyrics.

The defendants in the case deny all wrongdoing. According to court filings, the school and district officials don’t deny any of McDaniel’s claims about his mental health, but they “assert that a disability does not necessarily indicate vulnerability or helplessness.” In this case, the defendants said they were “not aware” of a vulnerability or helplessness.

In an affidavit filed by the family, McDaniel’s child psychiatrist said that since the legal proceedings in these cases began last summer, McDaniel has been in and out of hospitals for treatment for “increased paranoia and agitation.”

Dr. Samuel Pullen, who has been his doctor since 2011, said in his affidavit that he has treated McDaniel since the attack for “various episodes of increased agitation, anxiety and increased thoughts of suicide and aggression.” Pullen said McDaniel is “experiencing flashbacks of the dramatic incident that occurred October 22, 2015 at Dietrich High School.” On one occasion, Pullen said McDaniel told his parents he drank “toxic fluid” in an attempt at suicide.

“It is more likely than not that [McDaniel] will require housing in a facility…with continued medication for the remainder of his life, unless he can adapt to living with his parents,” Pullen said.

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