Fifty days. That's how long Rogers High School principal Jason Smith, 55, and athletic coordinator Peter Collins, 49, waited before police heard about a female wrestler's sexual assault claim. The family reported it immediately. The school sat on it for nearly two months.
Both men have now been criminally charged.
The incident happened in December 2025 at Rogers High School in Puyallup, Washington — part of the Puyallup School District in Pierce County. A female wrestler named Kallie Keeler reported that she was sexually assaulted by a biologically male transgender opponent during a match. Her family brought it to school officials right away, as you'd expect any parent to do when their daughter tells them they were violated.
Smith and Collins received the report. And then — nothing. No call to police. No mandatory report filed. For over 50 days, the accusation sat inside the school's administrative structure while Washington state law required them to report it. The law isn't ambiguous. It's not a gray area. School officials in Washington are mandatory reporters. Period.
On July 21, Pierce County District Court filed gross misdemeanor charges against both men for failure to comply with Washington's mandatory reporting law.
What makes this different from every other trans-sports controversy we've seen play out in school board meetings and cable news segments: this is the first time school officials have faced criminal accountability for covering up an incident involving a transgender athlete. The pattern up until now has been familiar — parents complain, school boards deflect, lawsuits get filed, nothing happens to the adults who let it happen. Pierce County prosecutors apparently decided that pattern was over.
The federal government noticed too. A Title IX investigation has been opened into the Puyallup School District, and Keeler's family has filed a federal lawsuit. The Washington State Superintendent's office and the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association are both now involved.
Washington voters will have their say on the broader question this November, when a ballot initiative on banning biological males from girls' sports goes before the state. But that vote is about policy. What happened at Rogers High School is about something more basic — whether the adults in charge of children will follow the law when the law conflicts with the ideology.