A dozen people have filed a lawsuit against a former high school trainer in southern California.
One of those 12 plaintiffs is former NFL cornerback Shareece Wright.
Wright came out of anonymity this week when he told ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” that he was indeed one of the 12 people who were suing the Colton Joint Unified School District and Colton High School’s former athletic trainer, Tiffany Strauss-Gordon.
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Shareece Wright plays defense against the Philadelphia Eagles. (Rich Schultz /Getty Images)
“The less it’s kept a secret, the harder it is for it to continue to happen,” Wright said.
Wright said he met the trainer in 2002 when he was 15, and she was 21. Wright said Strauss-Gordon would flirt with him and call him a pet nickname.
Wright said over the course of the next three years, before he turned 18 – the age of consent in California – they had multiple sexual encounters in the training room, locker room and weight room. He also says they had sex at her father’s house, who was the head football coach at the time.
September 14, 2014: San Diego Chargers CB Shareece Wright (29) during the NFL game between the San Diego Chargers and the Seattle Seahawks at Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego, CA. (Orlando Ramirez/ Icon Sportswire/Corbis/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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“You’ve got football, you’ve got the coach’s daughter, you’ve got a permissive school environment where it’s allowed to happen. I mean, you’ve got sort of a perfect storm of sexual abuse that could be covered up easily,” attorney Morgan Stewart, who represents Wright and eight other plaintiffs, told ESPN.
Strauss-Gordon has been suspended by the district since 2022. The suit was filed that September, but ESPN says school officials knew of allegations as far back as 2011.
Wright was selected by the then-San Diego Chargers in the third round of the 2011 NFL Draft, one of three Colton players drafted that year.
Julian Edelman, #11 of the New England Patriots, runs for a touchdown against Shareece Wright, #29 of the San Diego Chargers, during an NFL game at Qualcomm Stadium on December 7, 2014, in San Diego, California. (Donald Miralle/Getty Images)
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Wright also played for the 49ers, Ravens, Bills and Texans before retiring in 2018. He had served as a team captain for USC in 2010.
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