Ex-NFL CB Shareece Wright alleges sexual assault by trainer

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Ex-NFL CB Shareece Wright alleges sexual assault by trainer​

Former NFL player Shareece Wright has identified himself publicly as one of 12 anonymous plaintiffs who accused a former high school athletic trainer of sexually assaulting them while they were minors attending a Southern California high school, according to court documents and interviews. Wright recently told ESPN's "Outside the Lines" that he hopes speaking out will "stop it from happening to other kids." Wright, 36, was one of six former Colton High School football players who originally sued the Colton Joint Unified School District and former athletic trainer Tiffany Strauss-Gordon in September 2022. The number of plaintiffs has since grown to 12.

Wright told ESPN, and alleged in the lawsuit, that he first got to know Tiffany Strauss, as she was then known, in 2002, during his freshman season at Colton. At the time, he was 15 and she was 21. He alleged that she became increasingly flirtatious, displaying favoritism toward him and giving him a pet nickname, behavior he now recognizes as grooming. Over the next three years, Wright alleged, Strauss-Gordon touched him inappropriately during treatment sessions and performed oral sex on him in the training room. During his junior year, when Wright was 17, he had multiple sexual encounters with Strauss in the training room, locker room and weight room, he told ESPN. The lawsuit also says he had sex with Strauss during several weekly team dinners at coach Harold Strauss's home.

In California, the age of consent is 18 and adults who engage in sexual activity with minors can be prosecuted for statutory rape. The San Bernardino County District Attorney's office told ESPN it did not file charges against Strauss-Gordon because of a lack of sufficient evidence. The Colton Police Department did not respond to requests for comment. After the lawsuits were filed in 2022, the district placed Strauss-Gordon on administrative leave from her job as athletic director at another high school. She remains suspended without pay. In a 2022 police interview, Strauss-Gordon said she was placed on temporary leave in 2011 during an internal investigation but was allowed to return to work after a meeting with school officials

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Ex-NFL CB Shareece Wright suing former HS trainer for sexual assault​

Former NFL cornerback Shareece Wright has publicly identified himself as one of the 12 people coming forward accusing a high school trainer who sexually assaulted them as minors at a Southern California high school. Wright, along with six former classmates originally sued the Colton Joint Unified School District and former trainer Tiffany Strauss-Gordon in September of 2022. The number of former students listed as plaintiffs has since doubled.

“You’ve got football, you’ve got the coach’s daughter, you’ve got a permissive school environment where it’s allowed to happen. I mean, you’ve got sort of a perfect storm of sexual abuse that could be covered up easily,” Wright’s attorney Morgan Stewart, who also represents eight other plaintiffs in the case, told ESPN.

Strauss-Gordon was suspended with pay, but was hired at a different school in the district the next day, according to OTL. In 2022, when Wright and his teammates filed the suit, she was suspended without pay from her job — and remains suspended — as an athletic director from another high school, per OTL.

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