YUCCA VALLEY, Calif. - High school football once brought this Southern California desert town together.
Now it has divided a community as six Yucca Valley High School football players stand accused of sexually abusing at least three students in a hazing ritual gone awry.
Those who believe the allegations are overblown have faced off against those who say its a long-standing practice that should be exposed in this town of nearly 20,000 that sits some 120 miles east of Los Angeles.
''We don't have the nightclubs for people to go to on the weekends like they do in Los Angeles. On Friday night, we have football or basketball. It's a community thing,'' said Gary Cody, who owns a small business. ''Now, people are yelling about it. It's terrible what this is doing.''
The students - members of the Yucca Valley High School varsity and junior varsity teams - were booked earlier this month on felony counts of false imprisonment, sexual battery and rape with a foreign object. The students, whose identities were not released, have pleaded innocent.
School officials scheduled a hearing next week to determine whether they should be expelled or continue serving suspensions handed down earlier this month.
Authorities said three victims - all male - were allegedly assaulted in August and September in the school's football locker room with a stick that some students say has been part of off-color jokes for years.
The allegations weren't reported until October when a parent filed a complaint with the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department, said Officer Chip Patterson.
Meanwhile, the parents of the football players have accused sheriff's investigators of violating their sons' civil rights by questioning them without parents present and secretly placing video and audio equipment on campus with the consent of school officials.
''After what they went through, those kids would have admitted to shooting JFK,'' said Lou Poist, a father of one the accused and president of the school's booster club.
Another parent, Panda Scott, said her son was a victim of overzealous police and ''runaway news reports.''
''I think it was goofing around like you'd have in any locker room,'' she said.
Students and others say hazing by the football team is a tradition, something that has prompted the Sheriff's Department to broaden its investigation.
''We are looking into allegations that other incidents may have gone back through the different football seasons,'' Patterson said.
Morongo Unified School District Superintendent Patricia Brown-Dempsey said she could not comment on the case or whether similar incidents have happened at the school.
But Boyd Parker said he saw instances of hazing when he tried out for the football team, although not as serious as the ones the players are accused of.
''Getting shoved in lockers or shoved in trash cans, that kind of thing. But I never saw anything like what they're saying happened,'' said Parker, 17, who was forced to quit the team when his grades dropped.
Another student, who didn't want to give his name for fear of being beaten up, said a friend had been stripped and thrown into a cold shower.
Some students say tensions are so high at the school now that they are forbidden from discussing the incidents on campus.
''They'll suspend you if you discuss it, which doesn't make any sense because this is exactly the place we should be talking about it,'' said 16-year-old Courtney Vaughn.
The tension also was apparent during a recent football boosters club meeting when a woman threw a book and a binder at Poist.
It also spilled onto the football field when favored Yucca Valley was recently clobbered by its rival Twentynine Palms in the biggest game of the year for the two communities.
''Nobody's mind was on football,'' said Poist.
