Four Cheltenham Township High School football coaches and six players have been charged in connection with two assaults in the school’s locker room that injured a 15-year-old player and led to the cancellation of the 2026-2027 football season, Montgomery County prosecutors said Wednesday.
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Head coach Terence Tolbert, 55; associate head coach Darian McFadden, 42; assistant coach Benjamin Johnson III, 45; and volunteer coach Ralph Burney, 60; have been charged with endangering the welfare of a child and conspiracy.
Two football players, Isaiah Simpson, and Josiah Peeler, both 18, have been charged as adults — Simpson with conspiracy to aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment, and related crimes for participating in the assaults, and Peeler with false swearing for being untruthful to police.
The four other players who authorities say were involved in the assaults have been charged as juveniles, and prosecutors declined to provide additional information.
District Attorney Kevin Steele said the charges followed a grand jury investigation in which witnesses said multiple football players were present when a 15-year-old sophomore on the team was assaulted by teammates who at one point used a broomstick to poke at his buttocks. The assaults happened in August and September of 2025, authorities said.
The coaches are criminally liable for the assaults, Steele said, because, while they were not present, they learned of the incidents and encouraged the victim not to tell his parents.
The charges come nearly a year after the victim was assaulted — twice — in the Cheltenham High School football locker room, according to his lawyers, Alan Yatvin and Gabrielle Turley. At least one of the incidents, they said, was captured on video.
The incidents led the district to cancel last year’s football season in October, citing hazing allegations. In May, it announced the upcoming season would be canceled as well.
Lawyers for the victim said he was assaulted in mid-August and again on Sept. 3. Both times, they said, teammates attacked him and tried to sexually assault him with a broomstick.
The second assault was broken up by teammates, and afterward, an assistant coach drove the teen home, his lawyers said. They said three football coaches called him that night and told him not to tell his parents what happened.
The incident came to light four days later, when the teen’s mother said he told her he had been jumped by teammates and had pain in his genitals. She said she took her son to urgent care and texted the high school’s assistant principal, who called her that day.
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The victim, who was 15 at the time, didn’t tell his mom that his teammates used a broomstick in the attack. He was embarrassed and reluctant to share that detail, she said in an interview with The Inquirer.
He had told her, the mother said, that teammates had tried “to mess with his manhood.”
She learned about the broomstick later in September when Cheltenham Township police called to tell her that someone had called Pennsylvania’s Safe2Say hotline to anonymously report that students had used a broomstick during the attack, the teen’s lawyers said.
Sometime in October, the district obtained a video that had been circulating in the community and depicted an attempted sexual assault of the student with a broomstick, according to his lawyers.
Investigators initially believed that footage was from the Sept. 3 assault, the lawyers said. But this spring, they said, detectives determined that it was taken in August. The teen, who wasn’t shown the video until this spring, also identified it as being from August, revealing for the first time that he had been assaulted more than once, according to the lawyers.
Before that development, the school district said in January that an outside investigator had confirmed that a “student-on-student assault” had taken place in the locker room on Sept. 3. The assault was witnessed by nearly 20 students, according to the district, which did not provide details of the attack.
The district faulted inadequate supervision in the locker room, “a failure to prioritize student safety” by coaches and volunteers, and “a toxic and negative culture” within the football program.
The district’s superintendent, Brian Scriven, said last week that a Title IX investigation, required by law when sexual assault or harassment is alleged, is ongoing. “Unfortunately, the district received extremely limited cooperation from students,” he said.
In April, the district approved separation agreements with two coaches, including former head coach Terence Tolbert. Officials say none of the coaches from last season is still affiliated with the district.
The victim, who switched to virtual school after being harassed by peers after the attacks, has continued to struggle, according to his mother. She said he avoids going outside because he fears being taunted about what happened.
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This is a developing story and will be updated.