ROCKVILLE, Md. — A lawyer claims there is now “first-hand evidence” that an incident inside Wootton High School’s football locker room Tuesday was the "attempted rape with a broom" of a player.
Attorney Timothy Maloney shared that information he said came from a witness' account.
Maloney is currently suing Montgomery County schools over a 2018 sexual assault at Damascus High School after a player was assaulted with a broomstick.
Montgomery County police say they have determined nothing criminal happened during the Wootton incident.
But attorney Maloney said his firm will investigate further after learning of the witness.
“This is something we’ve seen before," he said.
“If it had happened outside the high school, it would be treated as an attempted rape.”
In a written statement, Montgomery County police said “the incident was not a sexual assault.” Investigators determined that after interviewing “several parties to include juveniles and adults”, according to the police statement.
Police said they were called to Wootton at about 4 p.m. on Tuesday after getting a call from school authorities about a possible assault that was “sexual in nature.”
WUSA9 has obtained a copy of an email sent by Wootton’s principal Kim Bolden to football team parents in the wake of the Tuesday incident telling them that if players "recorded the event please ask them to delete it and not to share it”.
School authorities said Boldin later reversed that request in a follow-up email.
School system spokesman Chris Cram called it a clarification.
“The principal explained it would be disruptive to share such material on social media and our central office staff, security staff, and police partners asked for the clarification as any video could help an investigation," Cram wrote in an email to WUSA9.
Attorney Billy Murphy, who is also suing the school system in the wake of the 2018 sexual assault at Damascus High School said the Wootton incident raises serious questions.
“This is potentially relevant evidence in the existing case in Damascus because it could show a pattern and practice of lack of supervision in locker rooms and of the persistence of this kind of activity in Montgomery County Schools," Murphy said. “I would not be at all surprised if we issued subpoenas to discover as much about this allegation as possible.”
Murphy called the initial request to delete photos and video possible obstruction.
Attorney Maloney said there is evidence of a “culture of concealment and minimization” within Montgomery County Schools.
School authorities said, unlike the Damascus attack in 2018, police were called to Wootton immediately.
In a letter to Wootton High parents, principal Bolden pointed out that police have ruled out a sexual assault.
“School administration will now investigate the matter as a disciplinary issue and will also determine if students were properly supervised in accordance with MCPS policies and procedures,” according to the letter.