Atlanta Journal Constitution
ATLANTA — Attorneys for one of the alleged victims in a reported hazing incident involving Parkview High School baseball players have filed a lawsuit against the South Carolina hotel where the team was staying, claiming the front desk gave the accused upperclassmen players keys to younger teammates’ rooms.
The family is seeking “in excess of $500,000” in damages in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Charleston.
The family of the player is also “fully intending to go forward with the criminal side of this,” their attorney, Kurt Hilbert, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday.
Six members of the Parkview High School baseball team, Georgia’s reigning state champion, have been tied to allegations of “physical and sexual battery.”
Police in North Charleston, S.C., acknowledge that the family has expressed an interest in authorities conducting a criminal investigation. The police department had said recently that none of the alleged victims had come forward asking for such a probe.
Last Friday, Gwinnett County Public Schools suspended all six Parkview upperclassmen implicated in the incident. They were accused of entering the rooms of four younger teammates — three 14-year-olds and one 13-year-old — and physically and sexually assaulting them. Those accused include one 17-year-old, one 16-year-old and four 15-year-olds.
The federal lawsuit names the Hyatt Place Airport/Convention Center and its parent companies as defendants. The suit alleges that the hotel’s front desk improperly gave the accused players keycards to the younger players’ room.
The alleged victim “sustained serious psychological damage and injury” and required medical treatment for his physical injuries, the suit says.
Hilbert, an attorney for the alleged victim named in the suit, said Wednesday that the family intends to travel to South Carolina next week to submit a formal statement and ask for a criminal investigation.
Capt. Scott Perry of the North Charleston Police Department confirmed that Hilbert and his clients have “expressed an interest in going forward with criminal charges.”
”[W]e advised the first step in the investigation is to obtain a written statement from his client and we will go from there,” Perry wrote in an email.
