Former Becker student/athlete and Kimball teacher and coach, Johnny Benson  has been cleared of any sexual assault accusations filed against him by a former student at Kimball High School.

Benson, who first arrived at Kimball H.S. in 2017, resigned his position last fall after an investigation was launched by the Stearns County Sheriff’s Dept. into a player on Benson’s football team reporting a possible sexual assault in early October.

The player — whose name is being withheld due to his minor status at the time — told officials he had been talking with Benson in the locker room after a mid-week practice. Benson said he and the boy had a good session that involved them talking about football and NFL players who had successfully changed positions.

After Benson left school that evening, the boy’s mother arrived saying she had been trying to call her son who apparently put his cellphone on “silent”. The boy’s girlfriend also arrived and drove the boy to his father’s house.

That’s when things starting spinning out of control.

Background

Benson told this reporter the father of the boy had a history of being belligerent to many of Benson’s players and to him during the course of his coaching career. The father’s son was the starting QB and Benson was working with the youth to improve his status and attitude both on and off the field. However, Benson says the father would approach the team’s bench and use degrading and hurtful terms — often using derogatory words and calling Benson “gay” and a “fag”.

The boy’s father would also send texts and leave irascible voice messages with Benson, who decided to block the father from his phone in August of 2018.

In 2019, Benson filed a report with the school claiming the boy’s father was harassing his kids and himself and using  offensive language.

“Many times I confronted the kid’s father and told him to go away, to stay away from the bench” said Benson. “

At a football game in 2019, the father’s son was removed from the game after he punched an opposing player.”

Benson said the father was so mad at Benson, he took the boy home in his own car instead of letting him ride on the team bus.

“It just so happened, the kid who replaced the boy at QB did well and it was time we needed to take a look at a few things,” said Benson.

Benson said he had a conversation with the boy a few days later in the lockerroom and told him he thought it would be a good idea to move him to wide receiver.  That is the night in question and Benson said the boy didn’t like the decision and that is when “all hell broke loose.”

After the boy arrived  home after the meeting with his coach, the family of the boy claimed he was “mellow” and seemed “tired” — not his usual self. So, the family loaded the boy into the family car and took him to the hospital where he was given a sexual assault exam, swabbed for DNA and tested for drugs.

No drugs were found in his system, Benson’s DNA was not on his body and there was no evidence of physical trauma. But when interviewed after midnight by Stearns County Sheriff’s investigator Mark Mix, the player was asked if he thought Benson had assaulted him. The player said “probably” but that he didn’t “know for sure.”

According to the report, the player told Mix: “I feel like he maybe did something because three hours is a long time and I don’t remember everything that happened in three hours. So I feel like something could have happened in that amount of time.”

The investigator asked if Benson had ever done anything to others on the team, and the player said no.

Benson received word from an assistant coach who told him the father wanted to tell Benson, “you don’t know who you are f-ing with.”

Three days later, the sex assault accusation was filed.

According to a search warrant, the player said that coach Benson had applied Biofreeze to his lower back and buttocks, while wearing a latex glove, to relieve stiffness and pain the player had complained of. In a later recorded statement, cited in the search warrant, the player claimed that the Biofreeze did not smell or feel the same as when he had it applied at a different time on his arm.

The search warrant was served on the boys’ locker room at the high school, and Benson’s locker there in particular (which had been locked and untouched since Oct. 10). The warrant was for any form of drug or narcotic that could have been mixed with Biofreeze or other ointment or medication. 

The search warrant states that none of this was found, and that nothing was confiscated from the school.

Another search warrant was issued for cell phones and devices. Authorities took into custody two phones, two iPads, and Benson’s iMac computer (these were all kept in custody until June this year). Benson gave authorities full access (usernames and passwords) to everything on all five of these devices, as requested.

Questions

The Monday following the father’s threatening message to Benson, the boy’s father demanded a meeting with Benson and the Activities Director at Kimball H.S. with an explanation for his son’s position change.

Benson was told of the meeting but declined to go. The next day, Benson’s career at Kimball came to an end.

“Next thing I know I’m being escorted to the office, I was told by my principal that I was fired for sexual assault.  I asked her, ‘Who? What? Where?’” Benson said.

The school district hired attorney Liz Vieira to conduct an outside investigation. It appears that she rapidly reached a conclusion and recommended termination without the option of neutral arbitration. Days later, on the advice of his union lawyer , Benson decided to resign before a special school board meeting could be held to consider his case. Benson had heard they were recommending his termination and instead accepted his resignation.

WayPoint Inc. private investigators discovered and were able to corroborate multiple defamatory and harmful statements made by the boy and his father.

The county’s investigation offered a hint of those statements when Mix told assistant coach Joe Anderson that “more than one person” said the allegation had been made to “get back at Benson” for moving the player to a new position. Anderson “agreed with that but thinks they didn’t think it would get this far,” according to Mix’s report.

During the investigation, Benson was obliged to give a DNA sample and conduct a polygraph — both of which he passed.

“The school administration failed me,” Benson said. “The poor kid was mis-guided and there was no buffer from reality.”

Aftermath

At a board meeting after the end of football season, held in the cafeteria to accommodate a larger-than-usual audience, several coaches and parents attended to support Benson and to ask why he was being fired. The only answer the administration gave at that time was “because of morals,” Benson said, adding that the administration did not elaborate.

Benson, who starred for Dwight Lundeen and the Becker football program from 2007-2011, received a handful of offers from Division II universities, plus offers to walk on at Minnesota and Northern Illinois.

Instead, he chose to go play for his grandfather, John Gagliardi at St. John’s University.

Now, Benson hopes to move forward with his life, find another teaching job and keep coaching.

“I’m resilient,” he said. “If I fold under this, the first time something bad has happened, what message does that send to the kids?”

His lawyer team is exploring potential civil actions against all parties who defamed  and slandered him and his reputation, including Kimball H.S.

It’s never a better time than now for Johnny to live by his grandfather’s motto in life: “It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing.”

Today, he just hopes to get another job coaching football and, ideally teaching special ed as well.