Danvers Hockey Team Engaged In Racist, Homophobic Hazing: Report

DANVERS, MA — Danvers school and police officials have concealed for over a year evidence of a pair of weekly hazing rituals on the varsity boys hockey team, the Boston Globe reported Saturday.

The 2019-2020 team had regular sessions called "Hard R Fridays," where players were struck in the face with plastic sex toys until they shouted the n-word, according to a student who spoke to a special investigator commissioned by the School Committee following a separate incident, the Globe reported.

The alleged victim spoke to the Globe on the condition of anonymity, the newspaper reported.

>>Read the full story from the Boston Globe.

The student also described "Gay Tuesdays" to the investigator, where players were told to strip naked then were touched inappropriately with the lights off.

The alleged hazing first came to light following an incident at the school's 2020 "rolling graduation parade," the Globe reported. Spectators told police they saw three senior members of the team shout racial slurs at a Black sanitation crew on the route.

School officials learned of the alleged hazing while interviewing players about the parade. Over the course of two investigative reports, the Globe said, officials also learned of a "disturbing group text chat laced with deeply offensive words and images."

The alleged behavior took place while a Danvers police sergeant, Stephen Baldassare, was the team's head coach. Baldassare stopped coaching the team in January and resigned in over the summer.

Baldassare denied any knowledge of the alleged misconduct to investigators, the Globe reported. But the alleged victim who spoke to the paper said it was "hard to fathom" that the coaching staff wouldn't have learned about the rituals, in particular when students were "screaming the n-word."

The Globe's story Saturday came after the paper won two appeals to state records officials to get the district's report. A redacted report was provided to the paper Monday.

District officials cited the privacy of minors, employees and third-party witnesses as a reason to not publish the report.

In its own report, the Danvers Police Department said there was no criminal behavior, and the Essex district attorney did not file charges, the Globe reported.

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