Two Alleged Sexual Assaults Happened Months Ago. So Why Doesn’t The Community Know About It?
*Trigger warning: this post contains descriptions of alleged sexual assault and vulgar language that is offensive and may be upsetting to some readers.
On June 9, 2021, 12 athletes and five adult coaches from the Wenatchee High School wrestling team traveled to Sunnyside, Washington for a competition. On that trip two alleged sexual assaults occurred, according to Wenatchee Police Department reports. The first happened on the bus on the way to Sunnyside and the second in the gym in Sunnyside.
According to a report filed by Wenatchee High School Resource Officer Jared Reinfeld, he was contacted by Wenatchee High School Athletic Director Jim Beason about the incident the next day. Because the incident involves minors all the references to individuals involved have been redacted.
This is a quote from the first part of Reinfeld’s report filed on June 11:
I responded to the Athletic Department at Wenatchee High School and contacted Beason and (redacted), the parent of the victim (redacted). Beason told me the WHS wrestling team traveled to Sunnyside, WA on 06–09–21 via Wenatchee Valley Shuttle. He asked (redacted) to describe what (redacted) reported to her after returning late on 06–09–21. (Redacted) said (redacted) returned from the trip and told her that (redacted) tried ‘shoving’ a phone charger or device ‘up his butt’ during the bus ride to Sunnyside.”
According to the report, the perpetrator got underneath the bus seats and maneuvered himself into position under the victim in order to do this. Over the course of the investigation, a WPD detective inspected the bus and took measurements that show how a young, thin person could fit under those seats and get in position to do that. Here’s a photo from the report that shows that.
Once that first assault occurred the victim slapped the device away and tried to kick the perp to stop what he was doing. Also according to the report, this was a part of a pattern of “harassment/bullying” that started earlier in the season. Again here’s Reinfeld in his initial report:
“(Redacted) told me there has been a pattern with bullying since wrestling started a few weeks ago. (Redacted) described incidents of harassment/bullying involving (redacted) and others. She said (redacted) has described teammates telling him they will ‘Buttfuck’ him when he is down on the wrestling mats. (Redacted) said they have also talked about or threatened to take photos of (redacted) when he was showering in the locker room after practice. (Redacted) was unsure if they were actually taken.”
The harassment didn’t end there though. Once they got to Sunnyside the wrestlers lined up in the gym for skin checks, which referees do before matches to ensure all the athletes are free of communicable diseases that could be spread by contact. It’s in this line the second assault allegedly occurred. From Reinfeld’s report again:
“She said (redacted) was waiting in line for a skin check and (redacted) was standing behind him. (Redacted) said (redacted) told her (redacted) shoved his thumb up his butt. (Redacted) responded by turning and hitting (redacted) (redacted) told (redacted) (redacted) said if he told anyone he would rape (redacted).”
It can get a bit confusing with all the redactions. To simplify: the perp threatened to rape the victim if he talked.
After that interview Reinfeld spoke with WHS principal Eric Anderson, Assistant Principals Donna Moser, Molly Butler and Athletic Director Jim Beason. According to the report, Reinfeld advised them that he would be starting an investigation into the alleged assault. Reinfeld writes that Anderson advised him the perp would be emergency expelled and suspended from wrestling for the time being so the school could investigate as well.
Near the end of that initial report Reinfeld records that WHS wrestling coach Ed Valdez told AD Beason the perp had run-ins with other students and staff members:
“…there had been issues with (redacted) with the treatment of fellow teammates and disrespect toward coaches.”
From there, SRO Reinfeld handed the case off to Detective Drolet with WPD. From here Drolet picks up the narrative and begins his report:
“On 10 June 2021 I was the on-call detective for the Wenatchee Police Department. At about 1208 hours, I had a conversation with SRO J. Reinfeld. SRO Reinfeld asked who would be getting tasked with going to Plain to interview a victim. I asked what he had and was told that one student at the Wenatchee High School stuck his thumb up the butt of another student. The victim student was in the Plain area, and then his phone rang. We agreed that he would come talk to me in the Detectives Office.”
So far this has all been a pretty normal course of events after something like this happens. The victim‘s mother came forward, AD Beason calls the SRO, who takes a statement and consults with administrators. The admin team emergency expel the perp and suspend him from the wrestling team while an investigation is conducted. Meanwhile SRO Reinfeld forwards the case to WPD detective Drolet who gets started on a police investigation. It’s reassuringly swift and effective beginning of a protocol that should bring order and justice to what has to be a traumatic and chaotic experience for the victim and his family.
It’s here where things start to go sideways.
Again, Drolet in his supplement report filed on June 15:
“I spoke with the other detectives in the office. We identified quickly that we all knew at least one family involved in this case and discussed the potential for conflict of interest issues.”
Now, this isn’t uncommon. Law enforcement officers have friends and acquaintances just like the rest of us, and when they find themselves taking part of an investigation where there is a potential conflict of interest they recuse themselves from it. But in this case, they all realized they might all have conflict of interest issues. It extends beyond WPD though.
Drolet contacted a lawyer at the Chelan County Prosecutors Office and asked if she could observe the interview with the victim or give him some guidance.
Here’s what he writes about that:
“I told her more about the case and who the involved families were. She had a conflict of interest issue and declined to view the interview, adding that as far as we knew at the moment, the incident occurred outside Chelan County.”
This is true. According to the reports the first incident occurred near Mattawa, which is in Grant County, and the second occurred in Sunnyside, in Yakima County. We’ll get back to the jurisdiction issue in a minute, but I want to stay on track with the conflicts of interest. Here’s Drolet in the next graph after the attorney from the prosector’s office declined to get involved due to a conflict of interest.
“At about 1323 hours, I had a phone conversation with Det. Sgt. R. Weatherman. He had been in phone contact with Capt. Chance and SRO Reinfeld. We talked about the case and the conflict of interest, as nearly everyone at the Wenatchee Police Department knows the (redacted) family or has worked with them. Several people in the department have seen or have family members seeing (redacted). We talked about who would be called in if we were tasked with interviewing the suspect that might not have a conflict of interest.”
At this point they’re having difficulty finding anyone who can work this case who doesn’t have a relationship with the perp’s family. In that case, you call in investigators from another agency or even county to avoid any conflicts of interest. Why wasn’t that done? Let’s put a pin in that for now.
Drolet then goes to inspect the Wenatchee Valley Shuttle bus that the first alleged assault occurred. The photo above is one of about 30 I received from WPD in response to my public records request. Here’s another that shows what appears to be a space where one could easily shove a phone or a phone charger through.
This photo below shows that there are no partitions separating the seats from one another. It’s reasonable to assume that a young, athletic and thin person could conceivably shimmy under seats with about 12' to 13' of clearance.
Drolet conducted a thorough search of the bus and interviewed the man who drove that route. In his report Drolet writes that the man said he wasn’t “really sure what happened but something happened.”
About the photos he took on the bus, he wrote:
“It is plausible that a person could unbuckle their seatbelt, and move themselves under another seat to poke in a manner that irritated the person there. I attempted to photograph my measurements to document my findings. I also attempted to photograph the underside construction of a seat on the bus.”
There’s also video of the alleged assault that happened in the gym at Sunnyside High School. Drolet mentions that in the next graph:
“On 11 June 2021 at the start of shift, I had a conversation with SRO J. Reinfeld. I learned that there was video from Sunnyside High School forwarded to the Athletic Director. It was reported to not show the full incident, but it did show that (redacted) quickly turned and struck (redacted) while they were in line. There was some concern as members of this department had contact with the (redacted) family since this incident was reported.”
That seems very important to me. Even if the WPD officers who had contact with the perp’s family didn’t discuss the case, it seems odd that any WPD officers would have contact with that family at all if there’s an open investigation involving one of its members.
To his credit, Drolet writes this next:
“I explained that my investigation was proceeding and I was going to continue as I had planned. I have not had contact with the (redacted) family since being made aware of the incident.”
Going off of the documents I received from WPD regarding this case, it’s my opinion that both Reinfeld and Drolet did what they could to collect evidence in a timely and effective manner. That evidence is what investigators and prosecutors in Yakima and Grant county needed to move forward with holding the perpetrator accountable.
But now add to the mix that the victim’s family changed their minds and declined to pursue a criminal case and this is where things fall apart.
Here’s Drolet again, from the end of his report on this case:
“With (redacted) clearly indicating he did not want to pursue a criminal case, I stopped further actions to prepare the case for prosecution. I completed this report.”
The last thing he writes is that if the victim responds that they would like to pursue a criminal action later the case could be reopened.
One thing to address before moving forward: my sources.
It wasn’t the victim (or anyone in the victim’s family) who came to me with this. It was someone else who who gave me the info I needed to request these records.
I also have a records request submitted to the Wenatchee School District regarding this case. I’m told someone in the perp’s family reached out to WSD administrators to in an attempt to intercede in the case. I’ll know more when I get those documents. I will also get the video from the Sunnyside High School gym from WPD soon, which will of course be heavily redacted, but I want to see it with my own eyes. I’m told that the perp was not the in the correct position in line. The process for skin checks in wrestling has the athletes line up from smallest to biggest. The victim is small and the perp is very large. More than one source told me he’s the size of a full grown man and that he should have been in the back of the line. So why was the perp close enough to touch the victim in the first place?
Since the case was forwarded to the Yakima Prosecutor’s Office I followed up with them. After an awkward phone call in which I was bounced back and forth from supervisor to supervisor, a group of people who had me on speakerphone gave me the number of the Yakima County Juvenile Justice Center and told me to call them.
So I did.
I left a message with the case number for the WPD reports and asked for any information about where it is now in Yakima County.
A few hours later the Court Administrator, Candi Shute, called me back and we had a conversation about the case. Of course she did not and legally could not tell me the juvenile’s name, but she could tell me some general details about the case.
Here’s what she told me:
A) The Yakima prosecutor’s office found probable cause to press charges, but did not.
B) The perp’s family entered into a diversion program, the terms of which are almost completed.
“Diversion is an offender program,” Shute said.
That’s important to put on the record because from what I’ve been told from multiple sources the perp and his family have attempted to smear the reputation of the victim and cast this as a relationship between rivals. A “he-said he-said situation” as I have heard repeated from multiple sources with information about this case.
You can make up your own mind.
But I would like to add this screenshot of a text between the mother of the victim and one of the WPD officers, in which she says the boy is worried the perp will, “…do worse things to some other kid in the future if he’s not stopped.”
Now you may be thinking: “You’ve been writing about Grace City Church for weeks now, what does this have to do with that? Is there a GCC angle?”
Good question. And yes, there is.
This lead came to me because I started writing about GCC.
Why? Because folks don’t like being bullied, and anyone who has been bullied doesn’t like seeing others get bullied. And that’s all I’ll say about that.
Why did I choose to publish about this now?
Because I have reason to believe the perp moved to a new school in the area and is currently playing sports.
How do I know this?
I had a conversation with a Wenatchee School District admin after I got WPD records and asked if any of the perp’s kin contacted any WHS staff members about the case. That source said someone did reach out to AD Beason about an athletic eligibility hearing for Cashmere High School before school started. I’m told that Beason did not respond to the email or attend the hearing.
I reached out to Cashmere School District Athletic Director Jeff Carlson and have not heard back.
How does this tie back to GCC?
The documents I’m getting from the Wenatchee School District will shed more light on that. I’m told that the individual who reached out to administrators to intercede in this case was on the Grace City Church “security” team, which is a team of armed men tasked with “protecting” the congregation from attack while they worship. More on that later.
Where do we go from here?
Well, like I said this lead came to me because of my recent coverage of Grace City Church and that’s still my main focus.
But this is a story that needs to be told, especially if the perp has the opportunity to act in similar ways in a new school. So I decided to write this post and then hand the documents I have over to a few journalists I respect. They can take it from here, or not.
Please don’t reach out to me on social media or email to ask me about the identity of any of the individuals whose names have been redacted. Even if I knew who they are I won’t tell you. The documents speak for themselves and the focus, in my mind, should be on the fact that there are multiple overlapping systems that have denied this victim justice. Justice for the victim should be our first, middle and last goal when it comes to all of this.
And this boy did not get justice.
If what he says is true he was sexually assaulted twice and then threatened with further sexual assault. Reinfeld and Drolet did their due diligence, but a plethora of conflicts-of-interest within the local law enforcement community may have affected the trajectory of the case. It was punted to Yakima County and there was “probable cause to press charges,” according to Shute at the Yakima County Juvenile Justice Center. Also according to Shute that individual’s family signed a contract to enter into a diversion program, which is a program for offenders. Yet he may be playing sports in another athletic program in the area.
That’s one of the strangest things to me because when I was a high school athlete we had to sign a contact that said we pledge to keep our noses clean or we’d be denied the privilege of playing competitive high school sports. If we were caught drinking at a party or if our GPA dropped below 2.5, those things would disqualify us from playing on a team. So either things have changed since the days when I played high school sports or some folks aren’t being held to certain standards.
The last time this same thing happened on a WHS bus was in 2014. Not only did the media and entire region know about it within the week but I’m told that the WPD officials wanted to “throw the book at that kid.”
In fact, that case was finally resolved just a few months ago.
So why is this case different?
As for the stuff that happened on the bus to Sunnyside, that seems to have completely fallen through the cracks. I have no knowledge of Grant County officials looking into what happened on the bus near Mattawa.
The last thing I’ll say is that I wrestled with the decision to publish what I have here for the better part of a week. If I wouldn’t have learned that the perp might be at a new school, playing sports with a new group of children, I probably would have waited. But if there’s even the slightest chance that me sitting on this information could put anyone else at risk then I cannot, in good conscience, do that. Add to that reports of the perp and his family trying to besmirch the victim’s reputation and I couldn’t sit on this information.
The ironic thing is that the perp’s adult family member who attempted to intercede on behalf of the boy with WHS officials will in all likelihood give me the information I need to connect the dots back to Grace City Church. And for an organization that spends a lot of time promoting masculinity and being good fathers, it’s not a good look.
