The Saugus School Department has taken a lot of heat this week for the way it responded to fallout from its decision to put football coach Anthony Nalen on administrative leave.
Much of it has been deserved.
But before we get to that, let’s put some facts on the table. The minute schools get wind of charges dealing with minors that may end up being deemed criminal they are obligated to report them. As mandated reporters, that’s not a matter of choice. Nobody from the Saugus school system can arbitrarily decide that this charge has merit while that one does not. Accusations are all treated equally. All have to be processed the same way, and that’s through the superintendent’s office, then turned over to police.
The police are only asked to do one thing: determine whether criminal charges should be brought against the accused. In the case of Nalen, police decided that whatever happened (or didn’t happen) on Aug. 17 did not rise to the level of criminal charges being brought.
At least three players, two from last year and one last month, have said they practiced in their boxer shorts after Nalen disapproved of the shorts they were wearing and told them to change. The purpose here isn’t to debate the charges, except to say that the police department’s decision not to go forward with criminal charges would indicate that hazing — which had been suggested — was not a factor.
But at this point, and barring any subsequent revelations, Nalen’s situation is somewhat reminiscent of Labor Secretary Ray Donovan in 1987 after he was acquitted of larceny charges in a kickback scheme. Asked Donovan, “Which office do I go to to get my reputation back?”
And one of the reasons for that is until Thursday, the school department and superintendent Dr. David DeRuosi adopted a “radio silence” policy on the issue. After they informed Nalen that he was on administrative leave — which is not unheard of in these situations — they backed away.
This could be because once the probe was in the hands of police, DeRuosi felt it best to let the department do its job. It could also be because personnel matters in general, and unpleasant ones in particular, can be so thorny that it’s best not to say anything lest you say the wrong thing and make the situation worse.
But remaining silent resulted in a lot of people having the wrong idea about what was going on. Children protested on the sidewalk outside the administration building on Main Street, pleading that they get their coach back. Included in these protests were parents. And Nalen ended up out there twisting in the wind, having to deal with allegations that included hazing, which is about as dirty a word as there is in the business of coaching boys and girls today.
Accepting the fact that the school department had to exercise extreme caution in whatever it chose to say about Nalen, it still should have said something. Word broke this Thursday when accounts of it appeared in another local paper. The issue exploded Friday once it hit the Twittersphere. It only picked up steam over the weekend and kept rolling right along through this week.
That’s seven days that the department remained silent. Seven days where Nalen had to sit there and wonder if he was going to be found criminally liable.
Somehow, at the very least, the town had to protect Nalen in case these charges were scurrilous (if they weren’t, then all bets are off and he’d get what he’d deserve). The first thing it could have done was to make sure people understood what “mandated reporter” meant. Then it could have pointed out that coaches who face these situations are often placed on administrative leave (such as what happened with the Andover hockey situation last winter) and that it did not presume to judge Nalen guilty before the facts were in. Third, it could have said that once the reports and investigations were concluded, a decision on Nalen would be made as quickly as possible (it should still do that; the longer this goes, the worse it’s going to get, and there’s no guarantee it won’t get uglier either way). And fourth, and at the very least, it could have put out a “no comment” statement regarding its reluctance to comment on a complicated personnel matter.
Perhaps had any of this been communicated, we wouldn’t have had the sight of all Nalen’s assistants refusing, en masse, to coach last Friday if Nalen wasn’t with them — thus costing them their jobs.
All of this could have been avoided if people had just not been so fear-crazed and communicated some basic facts to the parents of these kids.
Steve Krause can be reached [email protected].