Freshman's Father: Cheerleading Initiation Crossed Line

INDIANAPOLIS -- An alleged hazing incident for which six girls were dismissed from Lawrence North High School's varsity cheerleading squad crossed the line of acceptability, the father of a freshman cheerleader said.

Robert Hampton said the incident, in which older Lawrence North cheerleaders allegedly blindfolded, struck and smashed food on the school's freshman cheerleaders, could have led to injury.

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Video: Freshman's Father: Cheerleading Initiation Crossed Line

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"It could have gotten out of hand," Hampton told 6News' Linda Allen on Wednesday.

Hampton's daughter, Sharonda Hampton, 15, said she and other freshmen were blindfolded and brought to an abandoned building at Fort Benjamin Harrison. There, she said, the older girls punched the freshmen in the crotch and put food and other things, including cat litter and shaving cream, on them.

School officials said pictures of the incident were posted on the Internet site MySpace.com. Sharonda Hampton said she and her fellow freshmen weren't very upset about the initiation until the pictures were posted. The older cheerleaders had made the freshmen promise not to tell anyone about the incident, she said.

"That's what kind of upset me," she said of the posted pictures. "They shouldn't have (done) that They should have just kept it in like they said they (would). But they didn't."

Six senior cheerleaders were dismissed and two cheerleaders were suspended from the squad because of the initiation incident. The six dismissed cheerleaders were suspended from the team last year for allegedly being intoxicated at the school's 2005 homecoming game, school officials said.

Sharonda Hampton said she didn't believe the latest incident warranted dismissals.

"I think they should have just suspended them from some games. They shouldn't have kicked them off the team," she said.

Her father took a harsher view.

"If you can't follow the rules and regulations, you have to suffer the consequences," Robert Hampton said.