Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Coach and Wife Sexually Abused Cheerleaders and Wrestlers For Years: Lawsuit

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Starting point is 00:01:34 Now they face criminal charges and a federal lawsuit. Thanks for joining me for Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. The allegations made against Matthew and Paige Huck are absolutely shocking. Not only is the couple accused of sexually abusing high school wrestlers and cheerleaders, but school officials are accused of knowing about the abuse and doing nothing about it for years. Matthew Huck was a wrestling coach and agriculture teacher in Gallia County, Ohio up until the beginning of the current school year. His now ex-wife, Paige Huck, was a

Starting point is 00:02:05 substitute teacher and cheerleading coach at River Valley High School. That was until she was permanently banned from school grounds in 2019. More on that in a bit. The Hucks also now face criminal charges. Matt Huck faces three felony counts of complicity to allow unlawful sexual conduct with a minor and one count of rape. Pagehug was just indicted last month on five counts of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. Here's special prosecutor Mark Weaver on the criminal charges. Mark, how did you get involved in this case? Gallia County is a small county in southeastern Ohio. Lots of people know each other.

Starting point is 00:02:45 Sometimes it's appropriate for the judge to appoint a special prosecutor from someone outside the county who can come in and make an independent judgment. After all, one of the defendants in this case, the wrestling coach, Matthew Huck, knew lots of students, hundreds of students from his work at the school. And so it was a better idea to bring in somebody who doesn't live there, doesn't work there, and can make an independent judgment. That's why my colleague and I were appointed. Matt Huck faces the most serious charge in this case between he and his ex-wife. He faces a rape charge, but also several charges of complicity to allow unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. Pagehawk faces charges of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. Why does she not face more serious charges of, say, rape?

Starting point is 00:03:36 Ohio law, like every other state, has specific elements that a prosecutor has to be able to prove. Remember, our burden of proof is much higher than that of a civil attorney who simply has to prove their case by preponderance of the evidence. Every time I get a new child sex case, I have to look at what the elements are of each statute, what the evidence is, and what I can prove. Then we go to the grand jury and ask them for indictments. In this case, the charges that are currently filed are the ones we think are most appropriate. Having said that, in every case we're always open to additional charges where the circumstances weren't. So more charges could be filed? That's true in every case, and certainly the facts in this one suggest an ongoing pattern

Starting point is 00:04:19 of criminal sexual activity with minors by both of these defendants, in the one case being complicit, that's the husband, Matt Huck, and in the other case actually being involved, which is the wife, Michael Page Huck. This is a Law and Crime Legal Alert. Google Incognito tracked users browsing data without their knowledge. Mass Tort Alliance, one of our legal sponsors, is helping users file for compensation because Google misled users about the privacy of its Incognito browser. If you've used Google Incognito anytime since 2016, you can start your claim by answering less than 10 questions. Log on to incognitoclaims.com slash crimefix. Matt Huck has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges. The Gallia County School District has issued a statement saying it was sickened by the allegations.

Starting point is 00:05:11 All children in our community have the right to be safe from predatory behavior. Gallia County families entrust us with the responsibility of educating and protecting their children, and the safety and well-being of our students is our highest priority. Now to the allegations in the federal lawsuit, which go into a lot of detail. The suit claims that in 2004, plaintiff Jane Doe One was sexually assaulted by Coach Huck. This abuse occurred, according to the suit, when plaintiff was a 16-year-old high school cheerleader. The abuse took place, the suit says, with the assistance and knowledge of his then-wife, Paige Huck. The suit continues and outlines more

Starting point is 00:05:51 allegations against Paige Huck. In 2016, the suit says, Paige Huck sexually abused John Doe 1, a 17-year-old wrestler, and John Doe 2, a 15-year-old wrestler, sometimes together. The abuse of plaintiffs John Doe I, John Doe II, John Doe III, John Doe IV, and John Doe V took place with the assistance and knowledge of Coach Huck. At all relevant periods of time, Coach Huck was an employee of the BOE, serving as both a teacher and wrestling coach at River Valley High School. Page Huck, also a Board of Education employee, served as a substitute teacher and cheerleading coach at RVHS, that's the high school. The suit also claims that inappropriate things happened on out-of-town trips for wrestling meets. For instance, one allegation is that in January of 2003, Matthew and Paige Huck watched porn in a hotel room at a wrestling

Starting point is 00:06:46 meet with the wrestlers. Later that year in November, the suit claims that the Hucks hosted a lock-in party at their house where they played porn for the wrestlers, cheerleaders, and football players. The suit says, Paige Huck engaged in sexual intercourse with numerous male students. Male students stood in a line and took turns having sex with Paige Huck engaged in sexual intercourse with numerous male students. Male students stood in a line and took turns having sex with Page Huck in the bedroom while Coach Huck stood next to them and watched the sexual activity. Page Huck having sex with students and Coach Huck watching all of this. Principal Jacobs simply said he would look into it when alerted to the behavior. This is what the lawsuit claims.

Starting point is 00:07:25 After cheerleaders made a report to the principal, the suit claims that they were bullied and harassed. The report to Principal Jacobs, the suit says, is not even noted in the personnel files of Page Huck or Coach Huck. Then there is some information about Jane Doe One and an allegation that she made. She claimed that Coach Huck fondled her below her pants one evening. Jane Doe 1, according to the suit, continued to pretend to be asleep, but then got up from the encounter crying and headed to the bathroom. The suit continues. Jane Doe 1 asked a friend to take her home. During the drive, the friend told Jane Doe 1 that the same type of assault happened to her at the hands of the Hucks.

Starting point is 00:08:06 The suit includes other descriptions of sexual abuse involving wrestlers. The next morning, after John Doe 5 spent the night on the couch, Coach Huck told John Doe 5 that Paige Huck wanted to see him in the bedroom. When John Doe 5 arrived in the room, Paige Huck was lying on the bed naked. Paige Huck initiated sex with John Doe 5. This occurred with Coach Huck and other high school wrestlers present at the Huck home. Then John Doe 4 said Paige Huck started abusing him when he was just 13 years old. The first sexual contact with John Doe 4 occurred when Paige Huck stimulated the genitals of John Doe 4, who was then 13, in the Huck's van on the way home from a wrestling meet held at another school.

Starting point is 00:08:50 Coach Huck was driving the van, and three other students were also in the van at the time. This is, again, all according to the lawsuit. On more than one occasion, John Doe 4 saw Coach Huck watching him have sex with Paige Huck through the opening in the bedroom door. John Doe 3 was 17. The lawsuit accuses Paige Huck of grooming him by using sexually explicit language at school functions. Knowing that her sexual activity with John Doe 3 was wrong, it would not be acceptable to anyone who found out. Paige Huck gave John Doe III $30 to $40 and instructed him to purchase a burner phone, which she could use to text with him to avoid detection of their communications. The suit claims that Paige Huck had sex with John Doe III between 50 and 60 times

Starting point is 00:09:38 during his high school years and also accuses her of groping him at friends' homes and in Coach Huck's office and the wrestling room at the high school and in Coach Huck's office and the wrestling room at the high school and in vehicles at the high school campus. Eventually, the suit claims that Paige Huck's conduct was addressed by school officials, and she resigned. But the suit claims that that didn't stop her behavior. Paige Huck resigned in 2016 after being confronted with allegations made by John Doe 1 about Huck abusing him and John Doe 2. Then in 2019, the suit says Paige Huck was permanently banned from the high school campus. Now I reached out to Matthew Huck's lawyers. They responded with a simple no comment, but Huck has denied the allegations in court documents related to the federal lawsuit.

Starting point is 00:10:23 Paige Huck does not have an attorney in the civil case, and my attempts to reach her have not been successful. I want to bring in the lawyer who's representing the Jane Doe and the John Does in this case. He is Craig Tuttle. Craig, first of all, how did you even get involved in this case and learn about the allegations? Sure. And thanks for having me, Anjanette. I was actually brought into this case by another colleague, an education lawyer who had been contacted by some of the victims in this case a number of years ago, actually about two years ago. And he asked me to look at it from a litigation standpoint. And when I first heard the story, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. It took some investigating and some talking with

Starting point is 00:11:06 tens and tens and tens of witnesses to really get to a point where I realized this is real, and this happened, and it's horrible. And I knew that it's something that I couldn't remain silent about. So we immediately agreed to get involved. The allegations that your clients are making are absolutely shocking. I mean, we have allegations that a woman who's a cheerleading coach and a substitute teacher who is married to the wrestling coach at the high school is basically having group sex and having sex with high school wrestlers with her husband, the wrestling coach, standing by and watching in their house. And that this was going on for a long time and that it was being reported to school officials

Starting point is 00:11:49 and they were saying they would look into it and then nothing ever happened. And I guess a cheerleader involved in this said that she was bullied and harassed after making a complaint or informing school officials about it. I mean, this is like mind boggling if this is indeed 100% accurate, the allegations that you make. So how on earth did this go on for so long? People talk. I mean, it's a small town. Right. Yeah. Something like this can only go on when the adults in the room are not acting like adults. And that's what we see here time and time again. We talked to these witnesses who came forward with concerns, and the response is not one of, let's actually

Starting point is 00:12:32 look into that. Let's figure out if this is really going on, because if it is, it's terrible. The response instead by the adult administrators at these schools was to laugh about it, to dismiss it as not credible, to tell the accused teacher and spouse about what was reported. That's the exact wrong way to go about investigating an allegation of abuse within a school. You don't run to the accused and tell them who reported on them and what they said. you sit down and investigate. And by reporting to the accused what was said and who said it, those reporters were then victimized again. They were bullied. They were harassed. They were ostracized. And that's not just one of our clients. That's multiple individuals. That's multiple witnesses

Starting point is 00:13:21 who we don't represent, just who we've talked to in the process. And if you hear the same pattern of behavior enough times, you start to realize this is probably what was happening down there. Your clients now are in their 20s and in some instances, 30s. So this was going on allegedly as far back as 2003 and as late as like 2016. So this was a long time. You know, there was like a really long time that this was going on, 15 years or so, I think is what the allegation is. So, you know, what prompted them to come forward? I mean, something had to have prompted them to somehow make an allegation to an attorney in some fashion. Yeah. So John Doe, one actually was one of the first to

Starting point is 00:14:12 have things reported in writing. He actually went to a football coach back in 2016. And in reporting to that coach, that coach did the right thing. That coach took that information, put it in writing, submitted it to school administrators. Now, unfortunately, school administrators essentially shut it down and dismissed it as not credible at that time. But what we find out is that in the course of investigating another teacher in Gallia County for inappropriate behavior with a student, the law enforcement were interviewing various witnesses, one of whom was Mrs. Huck, who was involved in our case. And our understanding is, and we don't have the recordings yet from law enforcement, but our understanding is

Starting point is 00:14:54 in that interview, the conversation revealed that she was involved sexually with another student, one of our students, one of our clients. And at that point, it went to law enforcement and they began the very long and difficult process of trying to run down witnesses and leads regarding the allegations. This has been under investigation by law enforcement from our understanding since prior to COVID. So as you can imagine, COVID kind of slows everything down, but this is an investigation that law enforcement has been working for a long time, which led up to the ultimate indictment of Paige Huck in August of last year, and then the indictment of Matthew Huck just recently this year.

Starting point is 00:15:38 What law enforcement agency was investigating this? This was the Gallia County Sheriff's Department that investigated the case and ultimately when they had the case put together, special prosecutors were brought in to handle the criminal aspect of the case. So in other words, they didn't use the Gallia County prosecutor for these investigations and these pursuits of charges. They've brought in special prosecutors, one from Adams County nearby, and the other one is kind of based here in Columbus, working on these sex crime cases. It's kind of his specialty in his career. And they've just done a fantastic job with the

Starting point is 00:16:15 information they've gotten in pursuing the cases against both Matthew and Paige Huck. Obviously, time will tell what all the evidence is that they have. I'm not privy to that. But from what I have discovered in talking with various witnesses from the area, I know that the cases are quite strong. This area is in southeast Ohio. It's in a rural area, kind of in the foothills of Appalachia. Is there some kind of cultural aspect to this about why this wasn't taken more seriously in your opinion years and years ago i mean right now these are just allegations in a civil suit and criminal allegations they have to be proven in a court of law different standards of proof of course with a civil suit and a criminal charge but you know was there just some kind of weird jocular i don't know i like some kind of this was laughed off in your opinion?

Starting point is 00:17:07 Because the school officials are saying we didn't do anything wrong. We didn't do this anything wrong. Matt Huck is denying all of this in the civil suit. He's saying he didn't do this. Yeah, I think that's I think to sleep at night, that's what I have to believe, that this was some kind of cultural behavior. This was, in essence, kind of the good old boy system. I know we hear a lot about that down south in the Murdoch cases. I know I followed closely, and it was a big story about the good old boys. You protect your own. You protect your buddies. You don't let accusations against your buddies get too far.

Starting point is 00:17:45 And I think we're going to find out a lot as we conduct discovery in our cases, but I expect we're going to hear a lot of claims and denials that nobody knew anything. But when something like this is going on, and when so many students are aware of either the actual activities or the rumors about the activities, it's not believable that the adults didn't know as well. So we're left to assume and conclude that the adults in the room looked the other way on purpose to help out their buddy. I don't know if this was personal friendships. I don't know if this was a successful wrestling program. I've heard that alleged that they couldn't touch the powerful wrestling coach, but it's not okay on any level, of course. Well, we will keep an eye on it and see where the civil suit moves from here.

Starting point is 00:18:36 I just want to mention again, the school officials are denying this and the school officials who've been accused of covering this up and not doing anything. And Matthew Huck denies it as well in the civil suit, at least. Thank you so much, Craig Tuttle. We appreciate it. Absolutely. Thank you so much, Anjanette. Take care. And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix. I'm Anjanette Levy. Thanks so much for being with me. I'll see you back here next time.

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Coach and Wife Sexually Abused Cheerleaders and Wrestlers For Years: Lawsuit

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Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Coach and Wife Sexually Abused Cheerleaders and Wrestlers For Years: Lawsuit

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