Ex-NFL CB Shareece Wright alleges sexual assault by trainer - ESPN

Former NFL player Shareece Wright has identified himself publicly as one of 12 anonymous plaintiffs who accused a former high school athletic trainer of sexually assaulting them while they were minors attending a Southern California high school, according to court documents and interviews.

Wright recently told ESPN's «Outside the Lines» that he hopes speaking out will «stop it from happening to other kids.»

«The less it's kept a secret, the harder it is for it to continue to happen,» Wright said.

Wright, 36, was one of six former Colton High School football players who originally sued the Colton Joint Unified School District and former athletic trainer Tiffany Strauss-Gordon in September 2022. The number of plaintiffs has since grown to 12.

Strauss-Gordon, suspended by the district since 2022, has denied allegations raised in the lawsuit and has not been criminally charged. She is the daughter of former Colton football coach Harold Strauss, who died in 2019. Strauss won more than 200 games over three decades as a high school coach. Under his tenure, the Colton team became a football powerhouse and a pipeline to the NFL. In 2011, three Colton players, including Wright, were selected in the NFL draft, the most that year from any high school in the country. Wright was drafted by the Chargers and played in the NFL from 2011 to 2018 for six teams.

Wright told ESPN, and alleged in the lawsuit, that he first got to know Tiffany Strauss, as she was then known, in 2002, during his freshman season at Colton. At the time, he was 15 and she was 21. He alleged that she became increasingly flirtatious, displaying favoritism toward him and giving him a pet nickname, behavior he now recognizes as grooming.

Over the next three years,