On Dec. 6, 2025, 15-year-old female athlete Kallie Keeler attended a wrestling match, thinking it would be an opportunity to show off her talents and hard work. She’d been a wrestler since she was 4-years-old and had grown up loving the sport.
However, during the match, something went wrong, and a video of the event captured Keeler’s distressed face looking to her mom for help. In the recording, her mother anxiously says, “I don’t know what she said to me, I don’t know why she looked like that.” According to a legal complaint filed against the school district afterward, Kallie was attempting to tell her mother that her opponent’s fingers were “in my c**chie.”
Kallie was unknowingly paired with a trans-identified male athlete, and during the match, she claims she was sexually assaulted. Kallie reported the assault to her mom, and shortly thereafter, a coach from her opponent’s team admitted to Keeler and her mother, Stephanie Brown, that Kallie’s opponent was a biological male. The male allegedly had “shov[ed] his fingers through her spandex clothing, digitally penetrating her vagina, and holding the position for several seconds.”
Keeler and Brown were quick to report the incident to the athletic coordinator and principal of Rogers High School in Puyallup, Washington. Unfortunately, the school refused to do anything about it. For several weeks, Keeler and Brown said they waited for an update on the sexual assault investigation, but were kept in the dark.
The athletic coordinator, Peter Collins, and principal, Jason Smith, did not file a school incident report until January 30, 55 days after it initially occurred. The assault wasn’t reported to the Department of Children, Youth, and Families until February 12. According to Washington’s RCW 26.44.030, professionals are required to report reasonable allegations of assault to law enforcement within 72 hours. According to court documents, Smith first learned of the assault during a phone call on December 9.
In June, Keeler and Brown filed a lawsuit in the U.S. district court against Washington Superintendent of Public Instruction Chris Reykdal, the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association, the Puyallup School District, Rogers High School, as well as Principal Smith, and the opposing team’s coach, John Morrison.
Kate Anderson, the senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom, is representing Keeler and Brown in their lawsuit. She has alleged that the school didn’t begin seriously investigating the assault until after there was backlash from the media.
“[Kallie] has wrestled for a long time and she would like to continue,” Anderson told IW Features. “She plans to go back to wrestling provided that she can be assured that she won’t have to worry about wrestling a male again.”
In Washington state, there is no requirement that high school athletes be informed when they are competing against a trans-identified athlete.
“When girls sign up for high school athletics, they’re being forced to accept the risk of being sexually assaulted,” Anderson told IW Features.
On August 18, Keeler’s attorneys appeared in court seeking an injunction. The case is currently ongoing.
The U.S. Department of Education is also investigating the Puyallup School District as both a violation of Title IX and mishandling the reporting of an alleged sexual assault.
After the assault, Kallie sat out the end of last year’s wrestling season. And though she still currently attends Rogers High School, Kallie is asking to transfer “due to a hostile environment.” According to Anderson, there has been a very vocal, but very mixed, response from the community, and Kallie has faced a lot of harassment.
“[Kallie] is a very strong person,” Kate told IW Features, but lamented that she had been subjected to such a painful experience. “She was assaulted in public with all of these people standing by — the whole thing is on video.”
