African American

leading up to the incident, which involved the insertion of a coat hanger in his rectum.

“This is not a rape case,” said an emphatic Stoker. “This is not a sex case. This started out as penetration with a foreign object ... Whatever happened in that locker room was not sexual.

“In my view, this is not a case about racial bias,”

“If I thought that you had committed this offense for racial purposes, you would go straight to the Idaho penitentiary.”

Howard taught him a song that glorified anal rape and the KKK, and members of the football team called him slurs including “nigger”, “chicken eater”, “watermelon” and “Kool-Aid”.

But on Friday, Stoker brushed aside those assertions. The victim “was not targeted, which dispels in my view any claim of a racial incident”, Stoker said. “Another individual who was involved said [the victim] was called ‘fried chicken’ because [he] said it was his favorite food ... I don’t think it’s a racial slur.”