Perverted Coach
Coach Marries 16 Year Old Girl
By Daniel Muniz

"School officials can't be responsible for what happens the other hours of the day, and I would think the relationship developed much more outside of school."
-Attorney for Brunswick Country School District

That is perhaps the lamest excuse possible for a school district to use in explaining how a 38-year old high school coach ended up having a serious relationship with a 14-year old girl and then marrying her when he turned 40 and she turned 16. What this grown man did to a young teenage girl is outrageous but for school officials to try to wash their hands from it with such a flimsy explanation is downright shameful.

At 14 years old, Windy Hager was a freshman at South Brunswick High School in North Carolina. As a young girl, Windy had tremendous enthusiasm for track and field so high school seemed to be the perfect place for her to indulge in her passion for the sport. And that is where 38-year old Brenton Wuchae, a track coach for the school, stepped into the picture. Wuchae immediately took an interest in assisting the teenager in developing her skills. He also took a romantic interest in her which led to a very serious relationship with her.

However, Windy’s parents, Betty and Dennis Hager, knew something was up.

The coach was spending way too much time with their daughter and doing things that seemed a bit out of the ordinary. He would offer her rides from school and both of them inundated each other with personal emails and text messages. In fact, they would text message each other through the wee hours of the night.

Naturally, it was time for the parents to put their foot down. They directly confronted Wuchae but they didn’t believe a single word he said when he tried to assure both of them that his relationship with their daughter was strictly professional and purely innocent.

Unsatisfied, they informed the high school principal of their suspicions. The principal’s written response was:

It is at that point that the educational leadership of that high school failed. Instead of intervening and bringing the illicit relationship to a grinding halt, the administrator did do anything and took the coach’s word that nothing inappropriate was happening between him and the teenager even though they were spending an inordinate amount of time together or in contact with each other.

The Hagers were incensed.

They went to school board but got nowhere with them. They next contacted the police which also turned into another dead end. They even tried the court system in an attempt to secure a restraining order on Wuchae but to no avail. Even this escalation did not alarm the school administrators.

Then Windy gave her folks a bombshell. She handed them a consent form so that she could marry her coach. The Hagers were devastated. But worse, they reluctantly agreed to sign it fearing they had no other choice. Windy had already totally withdrawn from them and it wouldn’t be long before she would be of legal status to do whatever she pleased. The parents chose the lesser of two evils in the hopes that they could someday reconcile with their daughter instead of her being ripped away from them for the rest of their lives.

The Hagers followed their gut instincts. It didn’t take them long to figure out that Wuchae was a liar and a miscreant of an educator who betrayed the professionalism of his trade.

But worse, it was the educational leadership who ignored all the events that led to its outcome. It should have been immediately apparent that a grown man does not spend that kind of time with a young girl and doesn’t matter if he is 38 or 28 or 22 years old. And it is bad enough for a school to have a faculty member who is a pathetic pig but for the administration to drop the ball like this is inexcusable.

However, incidents like this are going to continue to happen on a frequent basis.

School administrator’s needs to use an iron fist in articulating school policy regarding inappropriate relationships with students. But more importantly, they need to investigate these accusations when parents present credible evidence of this kind of misconduct occurring because it is parents who can immediately determine if something is amiss.

And to add insult to injury, law enforcement and the legal system also failed the Hagers. The police and the courts should have given this situation the attention it was due instead of sweeping it under the rug. It is this kind of sloppiness that allows predators to escape prosecution and punishment.

But the worst thing that this incident draws attention to is that a parent can do everything right, like contacting the teacher, then the principal, school board, police, and the courts, and still end up getting railroaded by everyone. The Hagers did what any normal parent would do in this kind of situation so it is outrageous that the entire system failed them.

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