John Barr reports on the lawsuit Shareece Wright and other former Colton High School football players have filed against the school and a former athletic trainer for inappropriate sexual conduct. Former NFL player Shareece Wright has identified himself publicly as one of 12 anonymous plaintiffs who accused a former high school athletic trainer of sexually assaulting them while they were minors attending a Southern California high school, according to court documents and interviews.
Wright recently told ESPN's "Outside the Lines" that he hopes speaking out will "stop it from happening to other kids. The number of plaintiffs has since grown to Strauss-Gordon, suspended by the district since , has denied allegations raised in the lawsuit and has not been criminally charged.
She is the daughter of former Colton football coach Harold Strauss, who died in Strauss won more than games over three decades as a high school coach. Under his tenure, the Colton team became a football powerhouse and a pipeline to the NFL. In , three Colton players, including Wright, were selected in the NFL draft, the most that year from any high school in the country. Wright was drafted by the Chargers and played in the NFL from to for six teams.
Wright told ESPN, and alleged in the lawsuit, that he first got to know Tiffany Strauss, as she was then known, in , during his freshman season at Colton. At the time, he was 15 and she was He alleged that she became increasingly flirtatious, displaying favoritism toward him and giving him a pet nickname, behavior he now recognizes as grooming. Over the next three years, Wright alleged, Strauss-Gordon touched him inappropriately during treatment sessions and performed oral sex on him in the training room.
During his junior year, when Wright was 17, he had multiple sexual encounters with Strauss in the training room, locker room and weight room, he told ESPN.
