Sexual assault scandal uncovered with high school wrestling team

An investigation by Arizona Republic reporter Hannah Dreyfus uncovered an alleged sexual assault scandal at Liberty High School involving the wrestling team. Multiple former Liberty High School wrestlers said they were subjected to sexual hazing and that the head coach, Eric Brenton, was aware but took no action. Parents reported the hazing to Brenton and later to the police.

Peoria police initially dismissed the incidents as “horseplay.” Brenton was placed on a one-year paid administrative leave for recruitment violations, but has since been reinstated.

Hannah Dreyfus, Investigative Reporter at The Arizona Republic, who helped uncover the story, and Brody Cobb, a Liberty High School Graduate, joined “Arizona Horizon” to provide more information surrounding the case itself.

In the Fall of 2023, students started to come forward about the alleged sexual hazing, and which parents brought to the attention of the team’s head coach. However, after no action was being taken to resolve the issue, parents took it directly to the police. After six days of investigation, the case was closed and deemed the incidents as “horseplay.” Now, after a course of 18 months, Peoria Police has reopened the case three times.

According to Dreyfus’ reports, police had watched video evidence of the alleged sexual hazing incidents, however, due to recorded laughter of some of the boys in the video, police said that, “therefore it shouldn’t be taken seriously.”

Throughout his sophomore and junior years, Brody Cobb says that he endured the peak of his hazing. He says that the incidents would happen every day in the wrestling team’s locker room, as the coaches stood there and watched.

“The main guys that would do it, they would have a list of people that they wanted to get for that specific day, and they would hold them down and sexually haze them,” Cobb said.

In her interview, Dreyfus says that it is still unclear as to why the situation was misrepresented to parents in terms of what was truly being investigated. Currently, Head Coach Brenton continues to be on paid administrative leave while police reopen the investigation into these incidents.