What Sayreville Football Players Say They Saw

Members of the Sayreville War Memorial High School football team recounted the hazing rituals that have resulted in seven players' arrests on sexual assault charges and the suspension of the team's coaching staff.

The players told the New York Times that hazing included freshman being held down while they were punched and kicked by upperclassmen. However, a freshman player who initially told authorities that he had been penetrated during hazing now says he was wearing football pants during the incident.

Accusations of sexual assault by upperclassmen led Sayreville's superintendent to cancel the team's football season last month.

New York Times Reporter Nate Schweber spoke to some of the freshman players who made the initial allegations against their teammates. He told WNYC's Amy Eddings the victims may be changing their story after peers have blamed them for the cancellation of the high school's football season. And he says that's going to make prosecutors' jobs more difficult.

"In talking to kids who were reported to be victims, those young men did not consider themselves to be victims. They thought that what had happened to them was just a part of being on the team," said Schweber. "But we also talked to witnesses who saw some of these alleged assaults so said that there was no doubt in their mind that what they were seeing is an assault....These are going to be some of the challenges that the prosecutor's office is going to have to deal with when they move forward with this case."