CALIFORNIA
SFGate
By Kale Williams Published Thursday, March 12, 2015
A former high school football coach was vindicated Thursday and awarded a hefty sum in a wrongful termination suit after he was fired for reporting players’ sexual hazing and then further defamed by the diocese that ran the Catholic school, his lawyers said.
After a two-week trial, a Sacramento Superior Court jury found in favor of Chris Cerbone on all claims and awarded him $4 million for wrongful termination from St. Patrick-St. Vincent High School in Vallejo.
The jury also concluded that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sacramento, which runs the school, had falsely accused Cerbone of allowing the abuse to occur, said David Lowe, one of Cerbone’s attorneys.
Cerbone, a 52-year-old former New York State Police officer from Petaluma, was hired as head football coach at St. Patrick-St. Vincent in August 2013. In December, Cerbone heard reports that some varsity players had engaged in hazing in which they would “stick their naked buttocks in the face of the freshmen or slap their penises on the freshmen’s faces,” the suit said.
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