Wrestler Re-Enacts Rape On `Donahue' -- Sunnyside Teen Describes Attack By Teammates

YAKIMA - Bryan Brownlee lay on his stomach while his attorney and television host Phil Donahue loomed above, playing the roles of teammates accused of using a mop handle to rape the 15-year-old wrestler.

Even Donahue had to acknowledge it was a bizarre re-enactment of a horrifying crime.

"I would not ask a woman to do that," he said.

Brownlee went on the show, which was to be broadcast at 4 p.m. today on KIRO-TV (Channel 7), to publicly discuss for the first time the Jan. 17 incident that has split his hometown of Sunnyside.

"I was screaming, yelling, crying, kicking, fighting," said the slight, blond wrestler, who appeared with his mother, Pauline, his attorney Christopher Tait, and Hispanic activist Sam Martinez.

"They tore my shorts all up," Brownlee said. "I saw the guy who was holding it (mop handle)."

Brownlee said he personally identified all four of the Hispanic youths who have been charged with second-degree rape in the case. He said witnesses backed his identifications.

"I saw them with my own eyes," Brownlee said. "They can't tell me they're innocent."

The accused have all been expelled from school.

The rape occurred during wrestling practice, when a group of wrestlers began picking on teammates. The group allegedly "dogpiled" on their targets, pulled off the victims' pants and used a mop handle to tap on their backs or buttocks.

Brownlee said he had been practicing with a teammate when the

attackers piled on. The attackers flipped him over, held him down and inserted the mop handle, Brownlee said.

He said he remembers the assailants asking: "Do you like it?"

Brownlee is white, making him a minority at both Sunnyside High School and on the wrestling team.

Both Hispanics and non-Hispanics have gone to great lengths to say the attack does not appear to have been racially motivated.

But some Hispanic leaders have questioned why only four Hispanics have been charged, when the incident may have involved more than a dozen people and dozens of witnesses.

"The school found four scapegoats," Martinez, a Hispanic leader in Sunnyside, said on the program.

"The school district has taken the position that if you kick out four kids, that's enough," said Tait, Brownlee's attorney, who has called for an outside investigation.

Brownlee said the coaching staff was not near the wrestling room when the incident occurred.

Teammate Matt Simmons, also on the "Donahue" show, said other wrestlers did not intercede because they feared they would be raped.