Ohio School Hazing & Sexual Assault: Your Legal Rights After the Ursuline High School Lawsuit
If you are reading this page, your family has been torn open. Maybe your son came home from a football trip and could not say what happened — not at first, maybe not for days. Maybe you found out because someone showed you a video on a phone, or because a coach finally called you after you called him three times, or because your son stopped eating and stopped sleeping and you took him to a doctor and the doctor said the word “trauma” and your world split in half. Maybe you are the one who drove to the school and sat across from the people you trusted with your child and heard them tell you “boys will be boys” — and in that moment you understood that the institution you trusted was never going to protect your son, and that the people in charge had already chosen the football program over your child.
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm. Our managing partner, Ralph Manginello, has spent 27 years in courtrooms including federal court, and right now he is the lead counsel in an active multi-million-dollar hazing lawsuit against a university and a fraternity. We know this fight. We know the institution’s playbook. We know what the Snapchat video is worth and how fast it can disappear. And we know that “boys will be boys” is not a defense — it is an admission.
This page is for the family of a student who was sexually assaulted during school-sanctioned hazing in Ohio. Everything here is specific to Ohio law, to the institutional defendant in front of you, and to the evidence that is dying right now while you decide what to do. The consultation is free. The call is 1-888-ATTY-911. We do not get paid unless we win your case.
What Happened and What the Law Says About It
A family in Ohio filed a 200-page federal lawsuit in September 2025 alleging that their son — a football player at Ursuline High School in Youngstown — was subjected to severe hazing, including sexual assault, during a nine-day school-sanctioned football trip in June 2024. The lawsuit names Ursuline High School, the Catholic Diocese of Youngstown, the school principal, the assistant principal, the head football coach, and other coaches. According to the complaint, multiple players assaulted the student on the trip, recorded the abuse on video, and shared it through a Snapchat group. When the student’s mother reported the abuse to coaches, she was told “boys will be boys.” Following the filing, the head coach was suspended and two assistant coaches were placed on leave for the rest of the season.
That is what happened. Here is what it means under Ohio law — in plain language, because you need to know exactly where you stand.
Can you sue the school for this? Yes. Ohio law gives you multiple paths. The school and the Diocese owe your son a duty of supervision that they breached when they took a group of minors on a nine-day overnight trip and failed to prevent sexual assault. Ohio’s anti-hazing statute — Collin’s Law — creates civil liability for institutions that fail to prevent or report hazing. If the school receives any form of federal financial assistance (and many private schools do, through lunch programs, technology grants, or Title IX funding), federal Title IX law creates an additional cause of action for deliberate indifference to sexual harassment or assault. And every coach who knew about the abuse and did not report it violated Ohio’s mandated reporter statute, which supports a negligence-per-se argument in civil court — meaning the violation of the reporting statute can itself be treated as evidence of negligence.
Is it too late? Ohio generally gives you two years from the date of the injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. If your son was a minor when it happened, the clock is tolled — it does not start running until he turns 18. But the statute of limitations is not the deadline that should worry you. The evidence is. The Snapchat video, the coaches’ text messages, the trip room assignments — these records are on their own clocks, and some of them die in days, not years. The day you call is the day the preservation letter goes out.
Ohio’s Collin’s Law: The Anti-Hazing Statute That Changed Everything
Ohio’s anti-hazing statute, known as Collin’s Law, was enacted in 2021 and fundamentally changed the legal landscape for hazing cases in this state. Before Collin’s Law, hazing was often treated as a minor offense — a “tradition” that prosecutors and schools were reluctant to pursue. Collin’s Law changed that by significantly elevating hazing to a felony in certain cases and, critically, expanding civil liability for the institutions that allow it to happen.
Under Collin’s Law, the definition of hazing extends well beyond what most people imagine. It is not just making a freshman carry equipment or wear a silly shirt. It includes any act of coercion or intimidation that subjects a student to physical or mental harm, humiliation, or degradation as a condition of joining or maintaining membership in an organization — and it expressly covers sexual misconduct. The law applies to schools, universities, and the adults who run them. It requires institutions to implement anti-hazing policies, to train staff and students, and to report incidents.
For your son’s case, Collin’s Law does something that pre-2021 Ohio law could not: it makes the school’s failure to prevent hazing a standalone civil liability, not just a backdrop to an assault claim. The school cannot defend itself by saying “hazing wasn’t in our policies” — the law requires them to have anti-hazing policies and to enforce them. If the coaches knew or should have known that hazing was happening on a nine-day trip and did nothing — or worse, dismissed a mother’s report with “boys will be boys” — Collin’s Law is the statute that turns their inaction into institutional liability.
The complaint alleges that when the mother reported the abuse to coaches, she was told “boys will be boys.” That three-word response is not a defense. In a courtroom, it is an admission — of actual notice, of deliberate indifference, and of a culture that placed team tradition above a child’s safety.
Title IX: When a School’s Deliberate Indifference Becomes a Federal Case
Title IX is the federal civil rights law that prohibits sex-based discrimination — including sexual harassment and sexual assault — in educational institutions that receive federal financial assistance. If Ursuline High School accepts any form of federal funding — and many private and Catholic schools do, through the National School Lunch Program, technology grants, Title I services, or other federal programs — Title IX applies.
Title IX liability turns on “deliberate indifference.” The school is not strictly liable for everything that happens on a trip. But when the school has actual notice of sexual harassment or assault and its response is clearly unreasonable — when a mother reports abuse and is told “boys will be boys,” when coaches who are mandated reporters do not report, when the school allows the accused players to remain on the team and in contact with the victim — that is deliberate indifference. And deliberate indifference under Title IX is a federal cause of action that can be brought alongside the state-law claims.
The federal lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, which covers Youngstown and Mahoning County. This is significant because federal courts apply rigorous discovery standards in civil rights and Title IX-adjacent litigation — meaning the school and the Diocese will be forced to produce internal communications, training records, prior complaint histories, and institutional policies that a state court might not reach as quickly.
The Mandated Reporter Duty Every Coach Broke
Ohio law does not leave child-abuse reporting to discretion. Under Ohio’s mandated reporter statute, school employees — including coaches — are required by law to report known or suspected child abuse. The duty is personal: each individual coach who knew or suspected that a student was being sexually assaulted had an independent legal obligation to report it to authorities. “I told the head coach” is not compliance. “The school is handling it internally” is not compliance. “We’re investigating” is not compliance. The law requires a report to the designated authorities, and it requires it promptly.
Failure to comply with the mandated reporter statute carries two consequences that matter for your case. First, it is a criminal offense — a coach who knowingly fails to report suspected child abuse can be prosecuted. Second, and just as important for the civil case, the violation of the statute supports a negligence-per-se argument. Negligence per se is a legal doctrine that says: when someone violates a statute designed to protect a class of people, and a person in that class is harmed by the violation, the jury can treat the violation itself as evidence of negligence — or in some formulations, as negligence as a matter of law.
This is why the “boys will be boys” response is so devastating to the school’s defense. It proves actual notice — the mother told the coaches. It proves deliberate indifference — the coaches dismissed the report instead of acting. And it proves a statutory violation — the coaches did not report to the authorities as mandated. Three legal violations, all from three words.
Who Is Responsible: The Institutional Defendant Map
A school hazing sexual assault case is never one defendant. It is a stack — each layer with its own liability, its own insurance, and its own incentive to point at the others. Here is the map.
Ursuline High School is the direct operating institution. The school assumed custody of your son for a nine-day trip. That assumption of custody creates a heightened duty of supervision — the school was responsible for his safety around the clock, not just during practice. The school is liable for negligent supervision (failing to monitor students adequately on an overnight trip), failure to implement anti-hazing protocols required by Collin’s Law, and vicarious liability for the acts of its coaching staff. The school sets room assignments, supervision schedules, curfew enforcement, and behavioral expectations. Every one of those decisions is a place where the case proves the breach.
The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown is the ultimate institutional authority. The Diocese oversees Ursuline High School, sets institutional policies, hires and retains administrators, and is responsible for the broader safety culture of the schools under its control. The Diocese has a complex historical profile regarding institutional liability — past litigation involving clergy or staff misconduct has shaped how juries in this region perceive the Diocese’s notice and supervision practices. That history is not a legal weapon you wield directly, but it means a Mahoning County jury may approach the Diocese’s claims of “we didn’t know” with a shorter fuse than the Diocese would prefer. The Diocese is the deep pocket — it carries substantial institutional assets and insurance coverage, and its oversight role makes it reachable on negligent training, negligent retention, and institutional-policy theories.
Head Coach Dan Reardon and the assistant coaches are individually liable for their direct failures: failure to supervise, failure to report (mandated reporter violations), and — if the facts support it — deliberate indifference to known abuse. The head coach agreed to an “indeterminate suspension” following the lawsuit, and two assistant coaches were placed on leave for the season. These personnel actions are not admissions of fault, but they are evidence that the school itself recognized a problem serious enough to remove the coaches from their positions.
The individual student perpetrators are directly liable for assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. In some cases, the perpetrators’ families’ homeowners’ insurance may provide a layer of coverage, though policies often exclude intentional acts. The student perpetrators are not the primary recovery source — the institution is — but naming them is part of telling the complete story of what happened.
The defense will try to fragment this map. The school will say “the Diocese makes policy, not us.” The Diocese will say “the school runs day-to-day operations, not us.” The coaches will say “we’re just employees, not the decision-makers.” The students will say “it was tradition, not assault.” Every one of those arguments has an answer, and the answer is that a nine-day school trip was authorized, supervised, and staffed by adults who had a duty to protect your son and chose not to.
The Snapchat Evidence Clock: Why Days Matter
This is the section that should change how fast you pick up the phone. The Snapchat video of your son’s assault is the single most powerful piece of evidence in this case. It proves the assault happened. It identifies the perpetrators. It shows the culture that allowed it — young men who felt comfortable enough to record a sexual assault and share it with peers. And it proves the ongoing harm: every view, every share, every screenshot is a new violation of your son’s privacy and dignity.
It is also dying.
Snapchat is designed to disappear. The platform’s retention policies mean that snaps and stories are automatically deleted on a schedule — sometimes within 24 hours of viewing, sometimes longer for unopened snaps, but always on a clock that the platform controls, not you. Snapchat metadata — the timestamps, sender/receiver identifiers, and group-chat membership logs — is available through legal preservation requests and subpoenas, but only if the request is made before the data is purged. Once Snapchat’s retention period expires, the data is gone. Not “hidden” — gone. No forensic tool can recover it.
This is why the first thing a trial team does — the day you call, not the week the lawsuit is filed — is send a formal preservation demand to Snapchat’s legal department. That demand, called a litigation hold or preservation letter, legally requires Snapchat to freeze the relevant data before its retention policy purges it. If the demand goes out in time, the video, the metadata, the group-chat membership records, and the distribution trail are all preserved. If it goes out too late, the most important evidence in your son’s case may exist only in the memories of the people who watched it.
But Snapchat is not the only evidence on a clock. Here is the full preservation map, ranked by urgency:
Snapchat video files and metadata — IMMEDIATE. Platform retention policies delete this data on a schedule we do not control. A preservation letter to Snapchat’s legal department must go out within days, not weeks. This is the fastest-dying evidence in the entire case.
Coaches’ personal phones, text messages, and emails — HIGH URGENCY. The coaches have been suspended or placed on leave. Suspended employees return their devices, wipe them, or “lose” them. Every text between coaches about the trip, every email to administrators, every group-chat message among the coaching staff is evidence of notice, knowledge, and response. A preservation letter to the school and the individual coaches must demand that no devices be wiped, reset, or replaced.
School trip itineraries, room assignments, and supervision schedules — MODERATE URGENCY. These institutional records show the standard of care the school set for itself. Who was in which room? How many coaches were on each floor? Was there a curfew? Was it enforced? These records are relatively stable in institutional archives but can be “curated” — meaning the school may produce the favorable documents and quietly lose the damaging ones. Secure them early.
Internal investigation reports — HIGH URGENCY. The school has announced an investigation. Whatever that investigation produces — witness statements, findings, admissions — will be critical. But the school will likely claim the investigation report is protected by attorney-client privilege or the work-product doctrine. A preservation letter must demand that all investigation materials be preserved, and the privilege fight is a separate battle that should be teed up early.
The accused students’ phones and social media accounts — HIGH URGENCY. The students who recorded and shared the video have their own copies, their own messages, and their own social-media trails. They are minors, which means their parents control their devices — and those parents may delete evidence to protect their children. Preservation letters to the students’ families (through counsel) are essential.
When evidence is destroyed after a preservation letter has been received, the law provides a remedy: an adverse-inference instruction. That means the judge can tell the jury that they are allowed to assume the destroyed evidence was as bad for the destroyer as the plaintiff says it was. The bar for the harshest sanctions is high, but the leverage begins the moment the letter is on file. This is why we send the letters the day you call — not because we are being aggressive, but because the evidence is on a clock that does not wait.
The Medicine: What Sexual Assault Does to a Young Person
The defense will try to minimize the harm. They will say the victim “seemed fine afterward.” They will point to the absence of physical injury — no broken bones, no scars visible on the surface. They will argue that the psychological harm is “subjective” or “pre-existing” or “exaggerated for litigation.”
The science demolishes every one of those arguments.
Post-traumatic stress disorder is not a mood or a label. It is a formal medical diagnosis with eight separate criteria in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), and a patient must meet every one of them: the traumatic event itself, the intrusive symptoms (nightmares, flashbacks, physical reactivity to reminders), the avoidance behaviors (refusing to go near the school, the field, the locker room), the negative changes in cognition and mood (self-blame, detachment, inability to feel positive emotion), the alterations in arousal and reactivity (hypervigilance, exaggerated startle, concentration problems, sleep disruption), the duration requirement (more than one month), the functional impairment (the harm to the person’s ability to work, learn, and maintain relationships), and the exclusion of other causes. This is not a checklist a lawyer picks — it is a clinical diagnosis a psychiatrist builds.
And here is the fact the defense does not want a jury to hear: in the largest epidemiological study of its kind, rape was the single most PTSD-generating event researchers measured — more likely to produce lasting post-traumatic stress disorder than combat, than a car wreck, than a natural disaster. The conditional probability of developing PTSD after rape was the highest of any trauma type studied, for both men and women. When a school allows a student to be sexually assaulted on its trip and dismisses the report with “boys will be boys,” the lifelong harm that follows is not a surprise. It is the most predictable outcome in trauma medicine.
There is another fact the defense will exploit and the science answers. Some people — including, possibly, your son — did not fight back during the assault. They froze. The defense will whisper that “not fighting back” means it was not really assault. The science says the opposite. Tonic immobility — an involuntary, brainstem-mediated paralysis — is a documented, common response to sexual assault. In clinical studies of rape survivors, approximately 70 percent reported at least significant tonic immobility and nearly half reported extreme tonic immobility during the assault. The body’s brakes slammed on. The muscles locked. The voice would not come. This is not consent. It is a survival reflex — and the survivors who experienced it go on to suffer PTSD at significantly higher rates.
For a male victim of sexual assault during hazing, the cultural barriers compound the medical harm. Male victims face a specific stigma: the expectation that a young man should be able to defend himself, that “real men” do not get assaulted, that reporting is weakness. These expectations are lies, but they are powerful — and they are why delayed disclosure is the norm for male sexual assault survivors, not the exception. If your son did not tell you immediately, that is not evidence the assault did not happen. It is evidence the assault did happen, and the culture around him made it unsafe to say so. The DSM-5 expressly recognizes a “delayed expression” specifier for PTSD — full criteria can first appear six months or more after the event. Delay is in the diagnostic manual itself.
The lifetime cost of this harm is real and measurable. Federal public-health researchers have estimated the lifetime economic burden of a single rape at more than $122,000 per survivor — and that figure, from a 2017 CDC-authored study using 2014 dollars, only counts the things you can put on an invoice: therapy, doctor visits, lost productivity. It does not begin to measure the nightmares, the relationships that strained, the front door your son cannot walk through without checking it three times, the sport he loved that is now a trigger. Adjusted for inflation, the figure is higher today — and it is a floor, not a ceiling, because every survivor’s trajectory is different.
What This Case Is Worth
The damages in a school hazing sexual assault case fall into three categories. Understanding all three is how you prevent the defense from settling your son’s future for a fraction of what it is worth.
Economic damages are the costs you can document. Past and future psychological counseling — trauma-focused therapy, EMDR, cognitive behavioral therapy, and for many survivors, years of treatment. Tuition for transfer to a safe educational environment, if your son can no longer attend the school where this happened. Potential loss of future earning capacity if the trauma derails his academic trajectory or career path. The cost of psychiatric medication. The cost of a forensic psychological evaluation. Every one of these has a receipt, a bill, or a life-care planner’s projection behind it.
Non-economic damages are the human losses no receipt can capture. Physical pain. Severe emotional distress. Humiliation — amplified here by the Snapchat distribution, because every person who saw the video is a person who witnessed your son’s degradation. Loss of enjoyment of life. The loss of the young man your son was before the trip and the different young man he is now. These damages are real, they are compensable, and in a case with video evidence of sexual assault distributed to peers, they are substantial.
Ohio caps non-economic damages in most personal injury cases — the cap is set at $250,000 or three times the economic damages, with a maximum of $350,000 per person. But this cap does not apply in all cases. Ohio’s cap statute includes an exception for cases involving permanent and substantial physical deformity or catastrophic injury — and a strong argument exists that sexual assault, particularly when recorded and distributed, qualifies as a catastrophic injury that pierces the cap. This is a legal fight that should be joined early and framed deliberately.
Punitive damages are designed to punish and deter. They are available in Ohio when the defendant acted with actual malice or conscious disregard — and “boys will be boys” is the textbook definition of conscious disregard. A coach who receives a report of sexual assault and dismisses it is not making an innocent mistake. He is choosing, with knowledge of the danger, to do nothing. That choice — that conscious disregard for your son’s safety — is what puts punitive damages on the table. Punitive damages are what change institutional behavior, and in this case, they are what tell every school in Ohio that “boys will be boys” will cost them millions.
Based on the facts alleged in the complaint — the sexual assault, the Snapchat distribution, the “boys will be boys” dismissal, the nine-day institutional trip — cases of this nature in the Northern District of Ohio and comparable jurisdictions have value ranges that extend from approximately $750,000 on the low end to $5,000,000 or more on the high end, depending on the severity of the harm, the strength of the institutional-knowledge evidence, and whether punitive damages are awarded. The Snapchat video evidence — if preserved — is the single factor that most reliably moves a case toward the high end of that range, because it eliminates the “he said / they said” problem entirely. The video is the assault. The distribution is the amplification of harm. The “boys will be boys” is the institutional complicity. Together, they are the case.
The Defense Playbook: What They’ll Try and How We Counter It
The defense in a school hazing sexual assault case follows a predictable script. Here are the plays they will run — named before they happen, because naming the play is how you stop it.
Play 1: “The student participated willingly in a team tradition.” This is the first line of defense in every hazing case. The school will try to frame the sexual assault as “initiation” or “tradition” and argue your son “went along with it.” The counter is absolute: sexual assault is never consensual. Hazing statutes exist precisely because “tradition” is not a defense. And the power dynamics of a team environment — older, stronger players against a younger teammate on an overnight trip — make “willing participation” a legal fiction. The law does not recognize consent obtained under coercion, and a nine-day football trip creates exactly the kind of isolation and pressure that strips consent of its meaning.
Play 2: “We didn’t know — the coaches never reported it up the chain.” The school and the Diocese will try to isolate the liability at the coach level, arguing the institution itself was never put on notice. The counter is twofold. First, the mother’s report to the coaches IS notice to the school — coaches are agents of the institution, and what they know, the school knows. Second, the mandated reporter statute creates a per se violation: the coaches had a legal duty to report, and their failure to do so does not shield the school — it incriminates it. The school cannot benefit from its own employees’ lawbreaking.
Play 3: “The internal investigation is privileged.” The school will claim attorney-client privilege or the work-product doctrine over its internal investigation to keep the findings — and any admissions — out of your hands. The counter is aggressive motion practice: demand the investigation materials early, challenge the privilege assertion, and argue that an investigation conducted in the ordinary course of business (not in anticipation of litigation) is not automatically privileged. Even if the report itself is shielded, the underlying witness statements and factual findings may be discoverable.
Play 4: “Quick settlement before the family knows the full extent.” The school or its insurer may offer a fast settlement — sometimes within weeks of the report — designed to resolve the case before the family understands the full scope of the harm and the full value of the evidence. A settlement offer that arrives before the medical evaluation is complete, before the Snapchat evidence is preserved, and before the life-care plan is built is an offer designed to underpay. The counter is patience and proof: complete the medical picture, freeze the evidence, build the damages model, and then negotiate from strength — or try the case.
Play 5: “Blame the victim’s pre-existing condition.” If your son had anxiety, depression, or any psychological history before the trip, the defense will argue the PTSD was pre-existing, not caused by the assault. The counter is the eggshell-plaintiff doctrine — a legal principle recognized across U.S. jurisdictions that says a defendant takes the victim as found. If your son was more vulnerable to trauma, the defendant does not get to pay less. The defendant’s conduct was the trigger, and the law holds the defendant responsible for the full harm that followed.
Play 6: “The coaches are independent contractors, not employees.” In some school-athletic contexts, coaches are classified as contractors rather than employees to insulate the institution from vicarious liability. In a Catholic school context, the Diocese may argue the school is separately incorporated. The counter is the control test: the school controlled the coaches’ schedules, the trip itinerary, the supervision plan, and the response to the mother’s report. Under any reasonable application of agency principles, the coaches were acting within the scope of their employment. And the school’s own suspension of the coaches is an admission that the school has disciplinary authority over them — which is evidence of an employment relationship, not a contractor relationship.
How We Build the Case
A case like this is built in stages, and every stage depends on the one before it. Here is how it actually works — not the summary, but the walk.
Week one: preservation. The day you call, preservation letters go out. To Snapchat, demanding the video and metadata be frozen before the platform’s retention policy purges them. To the school, demanding that no devices be wiped, no records be destroyed, and no investigation files be altered. To the Diocese, demanding institutional policies, training records, and prior complaint histories. To the individual coaches, demanding their personal phones and communications be preserved. Every letter is a legal demand that creates consequences for destruction.
Weeks one through four: evidence lockdown. While the preservation letters are working, we begin the records demands. School trip itineraries and room assignments. Coach employment files and training records. OHSAA and school district hazing-policy filings. Prior complaints against these specific coaches — because if other families complained before yours, the school had notice long before your son’s trip, and that prior-notice evidence is the foundation of a punitive damages argument.
Months one through three: the medical picture. Your son needs a complete trauma evaluation by a qualified psychiatrist or psychologist — not just his regular therapist, but a clinician trained in forensic psychological assessment. Validated instruments like the CAPS-5 (Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale) and the PCL-5 (PTSD Checklist) create an objective record of the diagnosis. The evaluation establishes the baseline: what your son’s mental health was before, what it is now, and what the trajectory looks like across his lifetime. This evaluation is the medical spine of the damages case.
Months two through six: discovery. The lawsuit is filed and discovery begins. We depose the coaches — under oath, on the record, with their prior statements and the school’s policies in front of them. We depose the school administrators who set the trip supervision plan. We demand the internal investigation file and fight the privilege claims. We subpoena Snapchat for the preserved data. We identify the student perpetrators and, through their depositions and their parents’ testimony, establish the pattern of hazing that the school allowed.
Months six through twelve: expert preparation. A trauma psychiatrist prepares to testify about the PTSD diagnosis, the mechanism of harm, and the lifetime prognosis. A school-administration expert prepares to testify about the proper standard of care for overnight school trips — room assignments, coach-to-player ratios, curfew enforcement, and the specific protocols that should have prevented this. A forensic digital expert prepares to trace the Snapchat distribution — how many people saw the video, how many times it was shared, and the permanent digital footprint of your son’s trauma.
Trial: the narrative. The trial narrative is built around betrayal of trust. Parents entrust their children to a Catholic institution expecting a higher moral standard — and what your son received was “boys will be boys.” Every piece of evidence — the Snapchat video, the coaches’ text messages, the room-assignment sheets showing inadequate supervision, the mother’s report and the response it received — builds toward one conclusion: the institution that was supposed to protect your son chose not to, and the harm that followed was foreseeable, preventable, and devastating.
Voir dire — jury selection — is its own battle in a football town. Youngstown and Mahoning County have a deeply ingrained high school football culture where athletic programs carry significant community influence. We must carefully screen jurors for “sports-hero bias” — the tendency to side with the coach and the program against the accuser. A juror who thinks “kids will be kids” is a juror who will normalize the assault. Identifying and striking those jurors is one of the most important moments in the case.
The First 72 Hours: What to Do Right Now
If your son has been sexually assaulted during a school hazing incident, here is what to do — and what not to do — in the first days.
Get your son to a qualified clinician. Not a general therapist — a psychiatrist or psychologist trained in trauma and sexual assault. The evaluation should happen as soon as your son is emotionally able. If he is in crisis, take him to an emergency room. The clinical record created in the first days is the earliest, most powerful proof that the harm is real and that it began with the assault. If your son is not ready to talk about what happened, that is normal — delayed disclosure is the rule, not the exception. But get the clinical relationship established so the evaluation can happen when he is ready.
Do not speak to the school, the Diocese, or the coaches without a lawyer. Anything you say to school officials can and will be used against your son’s case. The school’s “investigation” is not your friend — it is the school building its defense. If the school calls you for a meeting, if a coach wants to “talk it through,” if the Diocese offers to “make this right” — do not go alone, do not agree to anything, and do not sign anything. Every conversation is evidence.
Do not post on social media. Not about the assault, not about the school, not about the coaches, not about the lawsuit. The defense will mine your social media for anything that can be twisted to minimize the harm — a family vacation photo captioned “great trip” becomes “the family is fine, see?” A post about your son “having a good day” becomes “the trauma is exaggerated.” Silence is protection.
Do not let your son delete anything from his phone. His text messages, his Snapchat history, his photos, his call logs — all of it is evidence. If he wants to delete the app or throw the phone away because it reminds him of what happened, do not let him. Secure the phone, back it up, and bring it to us. The digital trail on his own device is one of the strongest pieces of proof that the assault happened and that he was harmed by it.
Call us. The call is free. The consultation is free. We will tell you — honestly — whether we are the right firm for your case, and if we are not, we will help you find one that is. We take cases on contingency: we do not get paid unless we win your case. The fee is 33.33 percent before trial and 40 percent if the case goes to trial. You do not write us a check. We write the letters, build the case, and carry the fight.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sue a Catholic school for hazing in Ohio?
Yes. A private Catholic school in Ohio is subject to the same anti-hazing laws, negligent-supervision duties, and mandated-reporting requirements as any other educational institution. The Catholic Diocese that oversees the school is an additional defendant with institutional oversight responsibilities. If the school receives any federal funding — through lunch programs, technology grants, or other federal assistance — Title IX also applies. The religious character of the school does not create immunity from civil liability for sexual assault on a school trip.
What is Collin’s Law and how does it protect my child?
Collin’s Law is Ohio’s anti-hazing statute, enacted in 2021. It significantly elevated hazing to a felony in certain cases and expanded civil liability for institutions that fail to prevent or report hazing. The law requires schools to implement anti-hazing policies, train staff and students, and report incidents. For your child’s case, Collin’s Law means the school cannot defend itself by saying “we did not have a hazing policy” — the law requires them to have one. And if the coaches knew about the hazing and did not report it, the school’s failure to act is a standalone civil liability under the statute, not just a backdrop to the assault claim.
How long do I have to file a hazing lawsuit in Ohio?
Ohio generally gives you two years from the date of the injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. If your child was a minor when the assault happened, the statute of limitations is tolled — meaning the clock does not start running until your child turns 18. But the deadline to file is not the deadline that should worry you. The evidence — Snapchat video, coaches’ text messages, trip records — is on its own clock, and some of it disappears in days. The day you call a lawyer is the day the preservation letters go out. Do not wait until the legal deadline is near; wait until the evidence is gone and the case may be unwinnable.
What if the school says my son “agreed” to the hazing?
This is the oldest defense in hazing litigation, and it fails every time it is tested. Sexual assault is never consensual. Hazing statutes exist precisely because “tradition” and “willing participation” are not defenses when the conduct involves sexual misconduct, coercion, or physical harm. The power dynamics of a team environment — older, stronger players against a younger teammate on a nine-day overnight trip — make “willing participation” a legal fiction. The law does not recognize consent obtained under coercion, and the isolation of an extended trip strips consent of any real meaning. If the school argues your son “agreed,” they are arguing that a child can consent to his own sexual assault — and no jury in Ohio will accept that.
The coaches said “boys will be boys” — does that hurt the school’s case?
It destroys the school’s case. Those three words are an admission of three things: actual notice (the coaches knew about the abuse), deliberate indifference (they chose not to act), and a culture that normalized sexual violence as “boys being boys.” In a Title IX claim, deliberate indifference is the element that triggers federal liability. In a punitive damages analysis, conscious disregard is the standard — and “boys will be boys” is the textbook definition of conscious disregard. The defense will try to walk it back at trial — “it was taken out of context,” “it was a figure of speech” — but a jury will hear what was actually said, and they will understand what it meant.
Can I get the Snapchat video as evidence?
Yes — if you move fast enough. Snapchat data is preserved through a formal legal preservation request (a litigation hold letter) sent to the platform’s legal department. If the letter goes out before Snapchat’s retention policy purges the data, the video, the metadata, the group-chat membership records, and the distribution trail can all be recovered. If the letter goes out too late, the data may be permanently gone. This is why the Snapchat preservation letter is the first thing we send — sometimes within hours of the first call. The video is not just proof of the assault; it is proof of the culture that allowed it, the brazenness of the perpetrators, and the ongoing harm from distribution.
How much is a school hazing sexual assault case worth?
Every case depends on its facts, and past results do not guarantee future outcomes. Based on the facts alleged in the Ursuline complaint — sexual assault during a school-sanctioned trip, video recording and distribution via Snapchat, and the “boys will be boys” dismissal — cases of this nature in the Northern District of Ohio and comparable jurisdictions have value ranges extending from approximately $750,000 to $5,000,000 or more. The factors that move a case toward the high end include: the severity of the assault, the presence of video evidence, the extent of distribution, the institutional knowledge and response (the “boys will be boys” comment is devastating here), the quality of the medical documentation, and whether punitive damages are awarded. A Snapchat video that is preserved and admitted at trial can be the single factor that most reliably moves the value up, because it eliminates any factual dispute about what happened.
What if the school offers us a quick settlement?
Be very careful. A settlement offer that arrives before the medical evaluation is complete, before the Snapchat evidence is preserved, and before the life-care plan is built is an offer designed to underpay. The school and its insurer want to resolve the case before you understand the full scope of the harm and the full strength of the evidence. The right move is to have a lawyer evaluate any offer against the true value of the case — which requires completing the investigation, preserving the evidence, and building the damages model first. A settlement can be the right outcome, but only when it is negotiated from strength, not accepted from ignorance.
Can we sue the Catholic Diocese or just the school?
You can sue both, and you should. Ursuline High School is the direct operating institution with custody of your son during the trip. The Catholic Diocese of Youngstown is the ultimate institutional authority that oversees the school, sets policies, hires administrators, and controls the safety culture. The Diocese is the deeper pocket with substantial institutional assets and insurance. Suing only the school may leave the most resourced defendant out of the case. The Diocese’s oversight role makes it reachable on negligent training, negligent retention of administrators and coaches, and institutional-policy-failure theories. The Diocese of Youngstown has a documented historical profile of institutional-liability litigation, which means a local jury may approach its “we did not know” defense with skepticism.
Does Title IX apply to a private Catholic school?
It can. Title IX applies to any educational institution that receives federal financial assistance — and many private and Catholic schools participate in federal programs. The National School Lunch Program, Title I services, technology grants, and other federal funding streams can trigger Title IX coverage. Whether Ursuline High School receives federal assistance is a factual question that must be investigated early in the case. If it does, the federal cause of action for deliberate indifference to known sexual harassment or assault is available alongside the state-law claims — and the “boys will be boys” response is the deliberate indifference that triggers it.
Why Our Firm
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC. We are a trial firm, not a settlement mill. We take cases on contingency because the families who need us most are the ones who cannot afford to pay by the hour, and we do not get paid unless we win.
Ralph Manginello is our managing partner. He has been licensed since November 6, 1998 — 27 years of trial practice including federal court. He is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Before he was a lawyer, Ralph was a journalist, and he brings a reporter’s instinct for the fact that breaks a case open. Right now, Ralph is the lead counsel in an active multi-million-dollar hazing lawsuit against a major university and a fraternity — the same kind of institutional fight, the same kind of culture that protects the team over the victim, the same kind of evidence on a clock. That experience transfers directly to an Ohio school hazing case. The medicine does not change because the state line does. The corporate-accountability fight does not change. The catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death work does not change.
Lupe Peña is our associate attorney. Before he joined our side of the table, Lupe spent years inside a national insurance-defense firm — the rooms where adjusters and their lawyers decided how to deny, delay, and devalue claims exactly like yours. He knows how the other side prices a case, how they pick their expert witnesses, how they use surveillance and social-media mining, and how they engineer recorded statements to trap the unwary. Now he uses that knowledge for injured people. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. If your family prays in Spanish, we speak your language.
We take Ohio cases. Our firm is based in Houston, Texas, and we work with local counsel in Ohio and appear pro hac vice where required. What does not change across the state line is the quality of the work, the depth of the investigation, and the ferocity of the fight. Ralph’s hazing litigation experience, Lupe’s insurance-defense insider knowledge, and our evidence-preservation protocol — same standard, same urgency, same result.
Our fee is contingency. 33.33 percent before trial, 40 percent if the case goes to trial. You do not pay us anything unless we recover for your son. The consultation is free, and it is confidential. The call goes to a live person, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — not an answering service.
We have recovered more than $50 million for our clients across our years of practice. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. But the experience behind those numbers — the trial work, the institutional fights, the hazing litigation — is what walks into your case the day you call.
If your son was sexually assaulted during a school hazing incident in Ohio, the evidence is dying and the institution is already building its defense. The preservation letter that freezes the Snapchat video before it disappears — that letter goes out the day you call. The demand that the coaches’ phones be preserved before they are wiped — that demand goes out the day you call. The medical evaluation, the life-care plan, the damages model, the trial narrative — all of it starts with one call.
Call 1-888-ATTY-911. The consultation is free. No fee unless we win your case. Contact us. We speak your language. Hablamos Español.
Learn more about Ralph Manginello. Learn more about our practice areas. Read our parent’s guide to child injury lawsuits. See our hazing litigation page.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, you can call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-4673. That resource is independent and neutral — it is not run by any party to this case.