Former NFL cornerback Shareece Wright has publicly recognized himself as one of many 12 individuals coming ahead accusing a highschool coach who sexually assaulted them as minors at a Southern California highschool.

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Wright, together with six former classmates initially sued the Colton Joint Unified College District and former coach Tiffany Strauss-Gordon in September of 2022. The variety of former college students listed as plaintiffs has since doubled.

“The less it’s kept a secret, the harder it is for it to continue to happen,” Wright, now 36, stated on an episode of ESPN’s Outside the Lines.

The ex-NFL participant, who attended Colton Excessive College (Colton, Calif.) from 2001-05, informed ESPN he hopes that talking out will in the end “stop it from happening to other kids.”

Wright informed ESPN, and in addition alleged within the lawsuit, that he first acquired to know Strauss — the daughter of his soccer coach Harold Strauss — throughout his freshman soccer season. Wright was 15 on the time, and Strauss-Gordon was 21. He alleges that the college’s lone athletic coach was more and more flirtatious with him, favored him, and gave him a pet nickname. Over the remainder of his highschool profession, he alleges that Strauss-Gordon would contact him inappropriately within the coaching room, carry out oral intercourse on him — one thing he alleges gamers and coaches jokingly known as “getting the Tiffany treatment” — and that that they had intercourse a number of occasions at her residence after staff dinners.

“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 lawyer Morgan Stewart, who additionally represents eight different plaintiffs within the case, informed ESPN.

Former trainer Vladimira Chavez filed a police report in 2011. She informed Colton PD that she heard the scholars speaking in regards to the alleged sexual conduct — Wright and that she reported it to the superintendent, in accordance with a 2022 interview.

Strauss-Gordon was suspended with pay, however was employed at a special college within the district the subsequent day, in accordance with OTL. In 2022, when Wright and his teammates filed the go well with, she was suspended with out pay from her job — and stays suspended — as an athletic director from one other highschool, per OTL.

“Fundamentally, you have to remember that allegations are just allegations,” Strauss-Gordon’s lawyer, Daniel Kolodziej, informed ESPN. “I would urge the public to recognize that just because there’s smoke doesn’t mean there’s fire.”

“Why do you file a lawsuit? For money,” Strauss-Gordon informed police in an August 2022 video when requested by a detective why a number of allegations had been made.