5 Men Plead in Assaults

By Philip Marcelo; Journal Staff Writer

GLOCESTER – Five Boston-area educators, three of whom were affiliated with the Boston public school system, have been arrested and charged in the past month with assault and disorderly conduct after allegedly beating Boston middle schoolers on a June field trip to Camp Aldersgate.

The last of the educators, Michael Huber, 23, was arraigned in District Court in Providence yesterday on a charge of simple assault. Huber, of Brighton, Mass., is a behavior specialist for Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention, a Roslindale, Mass., nonprofit group that offers afterschool tutoring programs for struggling middle schoolers.

Like four of the five program leaders, Huber pleaded no contest, and received a one-year filing for the misdemeanor charge.

The counselors and teachers were leaders of Rites of Passage, a mentor group run out of Harbor Middle School in which a single-sex group of 10 to 15 students and their adult sponsors meet after school throughout the year to address “boundaries in relationships, showing courage, responding to anger and loss, responsibilities to family and community, and cultural and self knowledge,” according to the group’s Web site.

About a dozen boys from Harbor Middle School in Dorchester, Mass., and Washington Irving Middle School in Roslindale, Mass., spent June 2 to 4, 2006, at Camp Aldersgate, a camp and retreat center at 1043 Snake Hill Rd. that is affiliated with the United Methodist Church, for the program’s leadership retreat, according to a police report.

The charges stem from the testimony of three boys immediately after the weekend trip, according to Chief Jaime Hainsworth.

One 12-year-old boy, whose name was withheld by the police because he is a juvenile, said that on the first night of the trip, the group was brought into a large building where the counselors ordered them to form a circle as the lights were turned off and a fire was lit in a fireplace.

The activity was called the “Ring of Fire,” and students were called one by one into the middle of the circle to be punished for past wrongdoings, including “talking back to parents, getting into trouble at school, sexual harassment in school,” the boy told the police.

The counselors then knocked the students on the floor, punched them in the chest, ribs or stomach, or kicked them in the buttocks, the report states. When one student, knocked to the floor, began crying, he was called “a baby, a bitch, and a snowflake” by the counselors, the boy told the police.

Another 12-year-old stated that the following night, students were taken into the woods, where they were ordered to sit alone for four hours in the rain in an activity called a “solo.” If they moved, the counselors said, the students would be punished.

Students that did not complete their solo were lined up against a wall, still in their wet clothes, as the counselors punched each student in the chest once, the boy told the police. Other students were ordered to wash dishes with their hands bound with plastic ties.

“These kids got beat, shoved, and pushed as part of this program that was about them being more of a man,” Hainsworth said. “But the counselors got more aggressive than what these young adults bargained for.”

The police notified the program leaders over the past month of the charges and their pending court dates.

Hipolito Riviera, 30, of Boston, pleaded no contest on Feb. 1 to simple assault and to disorderly conduct. A former associate teacher at Harbor Middle School, he received a one-year filing.

Hazim Fennell, 31, of Boston, pleaded no contest to two charges of simple assault on Feb. 1. Charges against the former associate teacher at Harbor Middle School were filed for one year.

Leroy Muhammad, 41, of Roxbury, Mass., pleaded no contest to two counts of simple assault and one count of disorderly conduct on Feb. 8 and received a one-year filing. Muhammad was a support counselor at Harbor Middle School.

Randy Curet, 33, of Brockton, Mass., pleaded not guilty on Feb. 8 to simple assault. His next court date is Feb. 22. Curet, a counselor at the Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention, is being represented by the state public defender’s office.

Muhammad, Fennell, and Riviera were placed on administrative leave in June and resigned two weeks later, according to Christopher Horan, a spokesman for the Boston School Department. Calls to the Alliance for Inclusion and Prevention were not returned and the current employment status of Curet and Huber is unknown.

pmarcelo@projo.com / (401) 277-7493

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