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Josiah Kleist is deaf, legally blind and has a neurological disorder that causes involuntary muscle movements. After his parents divorced, Kleist moved with his mom from Wausau to Wisconsin Rapids, where he decided to join Lincoln High School's dynastic, prestigious wrestling program.
A small ninth-grader at 5-feet 1-inch and 115 pounds, Kleist was probably never destined to be a star wrestler. But he had been on wrestling teams since he was in third grade. And it is the purpose of youth athletics to provide a place where all different types of kids can participate.
Kleist did not find a home on the Lincoln High School wrestling team. During the 2010-11 school year, Kleist, now 19, was bullied mercilessly by high school boys who were older, bigger and higher-status than he was. One was the son of the coach, who was himself the son of the longtime coach seen as the architect of Rapids' incredible wrestling dynasty.
Kleist was abused on the team bus. In the shower, his bullies subjected him to awful, quasi-sexual humiliations, regularly urinating on him, and sometimes dancing naked around him and hitting him with their genitals.
When Kleist came forward alleging abuse, four of his teammates were charged with disorderly conduct. Several would plead no contest to the charges. The school's internal investigation would result in policy changes and a new push for anti-bullying messages in school; two of the team's coaches would not be rehired for a new season. And most recently, on June 24, Kleist would receive a $100,000 settlement from the Wisconsin Rapids School District's insurer.
That conclusion marks the end of the civil and criminal proceedings in these cases. Kleist, who transferred from Lincoln following all this, graduated from the Wisconsin School for the Deaf, according to his attorney, and will attend a top university for the deaf on a scholarship.
This case is concluded and, some say, it is time to move on.
Maybe so. But throughout the case, the people in the district who should have been leading — including wrestling head coach Scott Benitz and his deputies; including Lincoln High School administrators; including the Wisconsin Rapids School Board — have been defensive, closed off to the public.
The community cannot and should not move on until the community has rooted out the ugly culture of bullying and intimidation; of athletes who believe they are above the rules; of administrators who use "boys will be boys" to avoid dealing with abuse; and of coaches who value winning above the welfare of their students.
It's not just Wisconsin Rapids. In any community that rightly takes pride in its successful athletic programs, taking a hard look at the values that underlie such a program can be uncomfortable. But these programs don't exist to win. They exist to teach.
Lincoln High School has made changes to supervision policies, and perhaps the anti-bullying initiatives have begun to take hold. We don't know, and outside the school the community would have a hard time knowing. Officials have been understandably reluctant to discuss this case while court cases were pending.
Now those cases are finished. There is no more reason and no more excuse for silence. The community shares in Lincoln High School wrestling's successes; the community has a stake in knowing that its culture is repaired.
There is only one person who can really speak with authority about the culture of the program and how its underlying values may have changed since these allegations became public: Benitz. He has not spoken publicly about this case, about bullying on his team or about why anyone in the community should be confident that changes will ensure that nothing like this abuse will ever, ever happen again.
In the wake of Kleist's case, those changes are what matters. And until they're settled, it won't be time to move on.