The Mater Dei High School official overseeing the school’s nationally renowned football program ordered Mater Dei’s athletic director not to discuss or ask questions about an alleged February 2021 hazing incident that left a player with serious head injuries, according to documents obtained by the Orange County Register.
Former Mater Dei athletic director Amanda Waters in a sworn deposition last month said then assistant principal Geri Campeau was “very angry” the morning after the altercation that Waters had asked Monarchs head football coach Bruce Rollinson about the incident and that she was never to talk about the event or the alleged victim “ever again anymore.”
Waters’ deposition provides an insider’s insight into the events surrounding the altercation as well as into Mater Dei’s response and Rollinson and the football program’s stature at the largest coed Roman Catholic high school west of the Mississippi.
“Everything from the initial (moment) when (the injured player) walked out of the locker room to the silence after was handled wrong, in my opinion,” Waters said.
Waters said Rollinson made statements in a conversation with her the morning after the altercation that seem to contradict statements the coach later made to a Santa Ana Police Department investigator.
Waters also said Campeau instructed a Mater Dei athletic trainer not to contact the alleged victim’s parents or EMTs in the minutes immediately following the incident.
Waters in the deposition said Rollinson rebuffed 10 requests to monitor the school’s locker room.
“I don’t have time to do that (expletive)” Waters recalled Rollinson saying. “(That) would be the same comment over and over.”
During an incident on Feb. 4, 2021, in two Mater Dei locker rooms, a current Monarchs football player punched a teammate, 50 pounds lighter than him, three times in the face during an alleged hazing ritual called “Bodies” while some Monarchs players who were present shouted racial epithets at the smaller player, according to two videos of the altercation obtained by the Register.
The fight left the smaller player with a traumatic brain injury, two gashes over his right eye, one over his left, and a broken nose that required surgery, according to surgeon’s reports and other medical records. The injuries were the results of a series of blows to the head that would prompt a Santa Ana Police Department investigator to recommend the Orange County District Attorney’s juvenile division file felony battery charges against the other player, according to a police report obtained by the Register
The Orange County District Attorney’s Office declined to file charges in the case.
The morning after the altercation Waters went to Rollinson’s office and asked him about the incident.
“He said if I had a dollar for every time these kids played bodies, I’d be a millionaire,” Waters recalled Rollinson saying. “So he didn’t say a hundred, he said a dollar–if I had a dollar for every time.”
The statements Waters attributed to Rollinson are similar to ones he is alleged to have made to the father of the injured player the same day.
“If I had a hundred dollars for every time these kids played Bodies or Slappies, I’d be a millionaire,” Rollinson told the injured player’s father, according to a court filing.
But Rollinson later denied in an April 2021 interview with the Santa Police Department that hazing took place within the Mater Dei football program or that he had heard of Monarchs players participating in “Bodies” before the police interview.
Waters’ deposition is part of a lawsuit the alleged victim’s family filed against Mater Dei High School and the Roman Catholic Diocese of Orange in Orange County Superior Court last November. The suit alleges negligence, negligence per se-hazing in violation of the California penal code, negligent failure to warn, train or educate and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
The deposition was part of a filing by the injured player’s attorneys in response to a motion by lawyers for Mater Dei and the diocese challenging some of the charges in the lawsuit.
“This Motion is the most recent illustration of Mater Dei’s strategy of avoiding accountability for its longstanding institutional misconduct,” said Brian Williams of Greenberg Gross LLP, the firm representing the injured player. “The motion, which seeks to avoid a trial on the merits, absurdly blames the very children Mater Dei is entrusted to protect.”
Waters is currently the athletic director at St. Andrew’s School, an independent college preparatory school in Savannah, Georgia. She resigned in March of 2021.
Rollinson, Mater Dei and the Diocese did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Waters said she saw the alleged victim shortly after the Feb. 4, 2021 incident.
“I was standing in the quad area when he walked out of the locker room,” Waters said referring to the alleged victim. “He walked down the steps and he had two gashes over his eyes. At the time, we had the athletic trainer’s station set up to my left, which is where Kevin Anderson, who was the trainer on duty, was.”
Waters said she encountered Campeau in the quad.
Waters suggested to Campeau the school call an “ambulance.”
“He’s got a clear head injury as far as gashes over his head. Can we talk to Kevin and see what Kevin says?” Waters said she asked Campeau.
“(Campeau) told me to stop talking about it and get to my office.
“So (Campeau) walked over to Kevin, said something to Kevin that I couldn’t hear. My assumption was, leave him alone because he stopped treating him, and then I went to my office after we had words in the quad about it.”
The following day, Waters in the deposition said, she asked Anderson why he didn’t call the player’s parents or emergency personnel.
“He told me that Geri told him not to call 911,” Waters said.
Campeau recently left Mater Dei to take a job at Apple.
The next morning, Waters, concerned about the injured player went to Rollinson’s office.
“I had a conversation with him the following day after this happened. Walked down to his office and I said, what is — like, what happened? And he made that same exact statement to me,” Waters said referring to the ‘Bodies’ millionaire comment.
“I said, ‘What happened yesterday?’”
Rollinson said he had already spoken to the injured player’s father “and that it shouldn’t be a problem,” Waters said.
“I just asked him, how are the parents okay with it, was my question to him.”
Rollinson recalled his conversation with the player’s father.
“And that he owned his — part of his son’s part in it,” Waters recalled Rollinson saying. “And then I said, are you sure, because he looked a little rough and he — that’s when he got a little defensive and made that statement.
“He said if I had a dollar for every time these kids played bodies, I’d be a millionaire. So he didn’t say a hundred, he said a dollar–if I had a dollar for every time.”
Rollinson, according to a police report, said in an April 2021 interview with a Santa Ana Police investigator, “We have no hazing on our program. Never have, never will. I’ve been head for 32 years. Honestly, I’ve never even heard the word hazing used since 1989.”
The report also stated Rollinson said that this was “the first time he has heard of any of his players participating in the ‘Bodies’ game where participants punch each other until someone quits.”
Rollinson, Waters said, became “agitated that I asked and was inquiring. And at that point, I left his office and then that’s when Geri came to tell me not to talk about it anymore.
“He didn’t like to be challenged, and so when he says he’s done talking about it, he will make it very clear he’s done talking about it.”
Ten minutes later Campeau entered Waters’ office.
Waters said she could tell Campeau was angry as she approached the office.
“And then she got there, she shut the door and started yelling at me about how I need to stop asking questions, this is not — she is over football and that I need to not go down and talk to Bruce about this any more, ever again,” Waters said.
Campeu, Waters recalled, was “Very heated. She told me that I am not to talk about this young man ever at all anymore. They were handling it on their own end and to not touch it.”
Waters said there was frequent property damage in the Mater Dei football locker room including sinks ripped off the wall, broken sinks and mirrors.
She said when Rollinson refused to monitor the locker room she stationed an assistant AD outside the room all day.
Waters took over as Mater Dei’s AD in July 2020 only to be informed by Campeau weeks into her new job that she was not in charge of the football program.
“Because I had to get used to Mater Dei, Mater Dei didn’t have to get used to me,” Waters recalled Campeau saying.
“That I had to drink the Kool-Aid first.”
Source: Orange County Register
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