After Hemet Scandal, Football Bounces Back : High schools: Community will never forget trouble, but team has rebounded under new coach.

They are playing football at Hemet High this season, which wouldn’t be surprising except for the off-field controversy that has plagued the Bulldogs.

This town was turned upside down last spring with revelation of a sex scandal involving then-football coach Randy Brown, his wife and members of the football team.

Now, six months later, the Browns have moved and the story is no longer the topic of conversation at every coffee shop in town.

But there also are people here, mostly the friends and families of the involved players, who can never forget what happened. They are working to change state law so that the Browns of this world do not go unpunished.

Nearly forgotten in all the hubbub are the current Hemet football players, who seem to have rebounded quickly from the events of last spring and, under a new coach, already are concentrating on the new season.

“Yes, we have a football team this season,” a reporter is told after calling the school.

And out on the football field, the structure of practices seems an indication that order is returning to this town. The Bulldogs were thinking this week of their game against Norte Vista tonight.

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Steve Simpson, Hemet’s new coach, organized a “Kick Off Classic” last month to mark the start of the season. More than 1,000 attended the catered dinner and scrimmage. Then the Bulldogs won their season opener, defeating San Bernardino last Friday at home, 31-6.

Simpson played football at Hemet from 1984-86 and served as an assistant to Brown for the last six years. Simpson said he is not bothered by the circumstances surrounding his promotion to head coach.

“I’m not one to look in the past,” Simpson said. “I saw it as an opportunity to come in and establish myself as a head coach.”

Simpson and the players have set their focus on this season.

“It’s a nightmare, but it’s over,” Sabir Akbar, a senior tailback, said about the scandal.

The “nightmare” came to light in March when Brown, a respected football coach at the school for seven years, and his wife, Kelly, were arrested by the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department on suspicion of having provided sex for two former football players when they still were students.

Brown told the players that a botched vasectomy had ruined his sex life. He coerced one player, and tried to coerce the other, into having sex with his wife, telling them that would salvage his marriage and help the team. For one of the players, the sexual relationship lasted for more than two years.

In May, Brown and his wife pleaded guilty to charges of oral copulation with a minor and to soliciting another. Under a plea bargain, Brown gave up his teaching credential, and he and his wife were given five years’ probation and ordered to register as sex offenders.

For their victims, former quarterbacks A.T. Page and Marc Searl, the Browns’ light sentences were difficult to understand. If a similar situation had occurred involving minor females, the defendants probably would have been charged with unlawful sexual intercourse, punishable by up to three years in state prison.

So Page and Searl, who had remained silent during the legal proceedings, went public, hoping to change the law. They went to Sacramento in July to tell their story to the state Legislature and lobby for a bill that would amend state law so that boys could be considered victims of unlawful sexual intercourse.

Page, now 20, is a freshman reserve quarterback at the University of Nevada and Searl, 18, is attending Mt. San Jacinto junior college in San Jacinto.

The families of the boys organized a letter-writing campaign and made countless phone calls to drum up support for the bill, SB22, which would make it illegal for an adult female to engage in sexual relations with a minor male. Mainly because of their lobbying efforts, the bill was passed by the Senate this month and sent to Gov. Pete Wilson for approval.

There was considerable opposition to the bill. Gloria Allred, a Los Angeles attorney, said that although minor males ought to be protected, the language of the bill could lessen protection for minor females.

“It’s clear to me that they are watering down the crime and making it unlikely that this is a crime that will ever be prosecuted,” Allred said.

Rex Beaber, a Los Angeles psychologist and lawyer, disputed that the boys were traumatized over the incident.

“For a lot of adolescent males, this would be a dream come true,” Beaber said. “The suggestion that this is a trauma, in my own mind, is ludicrous.

“In terms of the sexual contact between the minors and this woman, I don’t believe the actual contact was harmful at all. What may be harmful is the publicity.”

Searl and Page have since sued the Browns for unspecified damages, accusing them of assault, battery, conspiracy and infliction of emotional distress.

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There was a media blitz when Brown was arrested. At least seven television news crews set up cameras across the street from the school and print reporters roamed the town.

According to Dick Glock, Hemet High’s principal, the media were inept at locating people who actually knew what they were talking about.

One student had been at the school for only two weeks and told reporters, falsely, that he played on the football team. Another non-student rode past on his bike, claimed to be a former assistant coach and got an interview.

The sex charges against Brown were at first met with disbelief by most of the school staff. Then, disbelief gave way to grief. Several people interviewed compared the event to a death because of how it made them feel. Some staff members talked of a sense of guilt at not having prevented the crime.

Psychologists and counselors were brought to the school to help the faculty and students cope with their emotions. They held school-wide assemblies and special meetings with the football team.

“This damaged all of us to a certain extent when we didn’t have a chance to intervene,” Glock said. “We didn’t have a chance to keep it from happening and I think that there is a regret that . . . somehow you weren’t able to pick up on the situation and prevent it.”

But Beaber doubted that school administrators would suffer any long-term psychological effects.

“For public officials, who are basically bureaucrats, they always have as their fear legal liability and job security,” Beaber said. “Their interest in these disputes is just making sure no one blames them.”

But there is no denying that Hemet officials still are dealing with lingering effects of the scandal. The school board currently is drafting a resolution outlining a plan to deal with what some school board members say is a drug problem in the school district.

Bonnie Park, a member of the school board and a teacher in the district for the last 20 years, said that the district’s investigation into the allegations against Brown helped uncover evidence of the drug problem.

“A lot of things have surfaced,” Park said. “A lot of stuff comes out of the woodwork during something like that.”

Page told investigators that Brown had supplied him with alcohol and marijuana.

Park initially proposed mandatory drug testing for students participating in all extracurricular activities, but had to revise that proposal while lawyers checked into the constitutionality of it. The school board is scheduled to consider a revised resolution concerning a drug policy on Tuesday. There is considerable opposition to Park’s plan.

“The community has gone through a lot and they don’t want to go through it anymore,” Park said. “They want to keep it under covers. That’s my impression.”

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Meanwhile, at the school, athletes and cheerleaders practice as usual. If there has been a scandal here, it is difficult to discern by watching this normal scene.

“I think to say that none of us remember going through it would not be correct because we do,” Glock said. “But we’re focused on what we’re going to do this year. A new season has started. That’s one thing nice about school, really, is that you get to start over every September.

“This year, we have a little more reason, probably, to want a fresh start.”