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I know the story. I know the participants.

Rivera-Soto’s son is a sophomore on the high school football team. The team traditionally asks the sophomores to perform house-keeping-type duties, e.g. carry blocking and tackling dummies back to storage after practice. He refused, and explained that his refusal was due to his lack of respect for the team’s captains. Not the sort of thing to win friends and influence people on a high school football team. Despite his willful arrogance, he was not harassed by the team or its captains, unless you consider shunning by the upperclassmen to be harassment. His high school, to its credit, has strong anti-bullying policies. The senior in question was not found to be bullying or harassing the boy. The senior treated the boy as if he did not exist. This is accepted now as fact.

The incident occurred during football practice when a game called “roach football” was being organized by the coaching staff. The game is essentially “rough touch” in which tackling is not permitted, but blocking is encouraged; no protective football padding is worn. The term “roach” is used by the coaches as an inducement for the blockers to smash into the defenders hard enough to put them on their backs, limbs pointing skyward in dead-roach arrangement. This is not a game for sissies. The accuser and the accused were playing on opposite sides and on the play in question, a screen pass, the accused, playing offense, was in the flat sealing off inside pursuit. The Rivera-Soto kid, playing defense, attempting to prevent the ball’s advancing, was blocked by the accused. In the heat of battle something met with the accuser’s face and he suffered a split lip, a not uncommon occurrence in football of any sort. The accuser left the field in tears. He was tended to by the trainer (who, incidentally, claimed in the subsequent investigation that the wound could not have been caused by a head-butt due to its location on the boy’s mouth, but my digression into “Forensic Files” territory is too much even for me). The coaches investigated the incident at that time, concluding no foul play. The Rivera-Soto boy returned to the field to finish practice, then met the team later that evening for a team dinner that the accused also attended. No harsh words were exchanged at the meal. The above is accepted as fact.

The boy’s father, Judge Rivera-Soto, filed a complaint with the school over the “injury”, claiming it as part and parcel of systematic harassment at the hands of the accused. The incident was duly investigated by the school who, after interviewing the coaches, trainer and other players, found the injury to be accidental; that indeed the injury was the result of playing a game in which split lips are all too common. This is accepted fact.

The judge, however, possibly seeing a conspiracy afoot (there is competing conjecture as to his motives, described below), chose to take it to court. My understanding is that the judge pulled every trick he could to gain whatever advantage he determined his position could provide, including the old standby “do you know who I am?”, while handing out his NJ Supreme Court business card. This was at every stop along the way, incidentally, and is at the heart of the Ethic Board’s complaint.

The judge’s putative indiscretions will be decided in due course. What is interesting is why the judge would go to all this trouble in the first place. There was never a real case against the accused. He wasn’t harassing the kid, nor was there anything untoward about the split lip incident. The school has strong no-harassment policy and found no breach of that policy in its investigation. The investigation found that the accused did nothing more malicious than ignore the Rivera-Soto boy; not very nice maybe, but indisputably non-harassing. Why would Rivera-Soto, no dummy, make a mountain out of this molehill? Is there something else here?

Well, just so happens that chitchatting abounds over the bridge tables, croquet courses, and polo chukkas of Haddonfield on the very topic of the judge’s true motivations here. Here goes:

Rivera-Soto took a big pay cut to sit on the bench. His older son attends an expensive, exclusive private school in Philadelphia. Supposedly (I don’t know if this is true), NJ has a law that requires a school district to pick up the cost of a private education for any student for whom the school district can’t provide a safe or appropriate environment to meet his/her needs, e.g. special needs kids. Word is that the judge’s new meager salary doesn’t allow him to pull together the tuition he needs to send this kid to the swanky Philadelphia prep school. Some say (to quote Fox News) that Rivera-Soto started all this to set up an argument that Haddonfield High School is an unsafe place for his kid to attend, and the school district should therefore pony up at least most of the tuition to the prep school, no doubt a very large number of Franklins, as tony a place as it no doubt must be.

I have no idea if the above is true. I do know that the judge is deeply unpopular in the town, seen as arrogant, condescending, imperious, and superior. It’s basic human nature that people will think the worst of someone considered to be a jerk and Judge Rivera-Soto far exceeds the minimum qualifications. Those Haddonfieldians who know the judge are relishing his comeuppance, breathing deep the sweetened air of blissful schadenfreude.

As for the kid, there are things about him I know but won’t discuss. He is a kid and deserves the benefit of the doubt. But, there are issues beyond what can be considered normal, garden-variety kid issues.

By the way, Haddonfield football coach Frank Delano, a good guy from all accounts, is NOT a lawyer, as indicated in this thread. I don’t know why anyone would want to smear him with an accusation so vile.