i felt that just because of the fact that i wasn't going to let them it was going to beat me nonstop. >> in our series sex crimes in sport, "america tonight's" lori jane gliha investigates a silent crime in locker rooms even at high school level violent hazing and how players get weighed way with away with it. >> a darker side of the locker room rituals is violent even abusive hazing and it may be more common than you would expect. one in five student-athletes report they have been victims of hazing. charges of sexual assault "america tonight's" lori jane gliha find that often schools turn a blind eye to the worst of it. >> they were kicking me, i was kicking back, they were grabbing my legs, hitting me. >> jesus is describing his teammates, associates he respected until they beat and sodomized him. >> just because the facts i wasn't going to let them, they were going to beat me nonstop. they weren't my brothers anymore to me. >> jesus had trained for years hoping one day to become a goalie on la puente's team. >> what did it feel on the soccer field? >> it's a rush, knowing you're the last guy on the field that could prevent a goal. i wanted to become like a pro-soccer player, i really did. i lost that hope already. just soccer is not the same after what happened. i didn't see this turning out to be like how it did. >> reporter: as a freshman he often heard what he thought were tall tales about a 20sed tradition for incoming varsity players. they called it el palo. >> what does that mean for that when they said that? >> it's spanish for stick saying like they would stick the pole or whatever, really they had in reach to get which would normally be a flag pole or something and they would just put it in your butt. >> when they said that and you heard these things did you think -- were you nervous? or were you thinking it was like funny? >> i would take everything as a joke. i would see it as just like they're just trying to get in my head. they're trying to get in my head ha ha, just a joke for me as a freshman coming in but it was pretty serious i guess there. >> so serious another student subjected to the hazing ritual suffered injuries setting off a criminal investigation in 2012. when parents were told of the severity of the abuse jesus said he was bullied and forced to suffer abuse. >> it was hell, it was hell for me. people make fun of me, just students are cruel. they don't care how you feel. they just want to get a laugh out of it. >> jesus said school officials threatened her with arrest if she spoke publicly of the abuse. the charge the school said was absurd. >> they were trying to push it under the rug. making it seem like it was just kids playing around. >> reporter: los angeles county detectives found multiple soccer players experienced abuse, reported poked or sodomized with a stick. initiation into the soccer field was just fun and nothing abusive. attorney brian claypool says that's not enough. >> school administrators need to open their eyes number one. they need to pay attention. number two they need to listen to students. they need to monitor students. they need to supervise teachers. >> reporter: claypool represents jesus bonea and several others in a lawsuits against the school district. he says the coach and the school should have known about the tradition that he says went on for years. >> it is a culture that's created within a school. this is not an aberration, this is not something that happened out of the blue where an administrator could say oh we didn't know about this. >> since the 1970s franklin college professor frank newer has been investigationing. >> a lot of people are in favor of the hazing, think it's a bonding, all in good fun. they may have gone through a tradition themselves. they want their children to be accepted by their peers. >> he says a strong anti-hazing policy and training for coaches and students can help change the culture of abuse. but many school administrators aren't taking charge. >> i want to thank all of you for being here. >> reporter: we wanted to know more about the policy at la puente high school and whether it's changed since the incident with jesus. school administrators wouldn't sit down citing the lawsuit. so we found them at a school board meeting. >> do you have a policy and procedure? that's a simple question. superintendent i'm lori jane gliha. i have a quick question -- >> we have to have a huge change in attitudes in this country towards initiations, with the idea of safeguard beinging our young people. supposedly the first situation is to keep them safe, in many sthanses weinstances we have not kept them safe. >> more abusive and sexual. >> 47% of all entering college students say they were hazed at the high school or junior high level. now you can't go a week, during sports season, without two to five hazings involving young people and a lot of those are sexual assaults involving sodomy improper touching, putting buttocks in their faces. that did not happen in the '70s when i was writing about it. >> reporter: it's happening now. recently sayerville high school cancelled their season after reports of senior players sodomizing younger players with their fingers. a student who ate a pickle from another athlete's body. and for one young player in vermont what began as hazing ended in tragedy. >> we buried our son august 31st, 2012 and we thought after that day there could be nothing in this world that could hurt us more. we were exceedingly wrong. >> jordan prevy was a football player in 2011 when his teammates held him down and sodomized him with a broomstick. in 2012, jordan killed himself. this january his mother told a vermont court she never learned about her son's abuse until a year later. >> we are still having to deal with jordan's suicide now we have to deal with what happened to him by the football team. >> ryan carlson pled guilty and apologized publicly. jordan preevy's family is now trying to get a bill passed called jordan's bill, quickly reporting all accusations of child abuse to child and family protective services. compassion for the perpetrators and strength for themselves. jesus bonilla is trying to do the same. >> what would you say to the kids if they are sitting here now? >> i see it as at the end of the day, they are vimed too they got it done -- victims too they got it done as well. >> until the players and coaches confront the problem rather than hide it, the cycle of abuse will not be over. >> don't they have anything written down about what hazing policy should be, what can be allowed? >> yes, it wasn't until after that public meeting until after i filed that freedom of information ak, they act they do have an antibullying policy, they don't torgttolerating bullying, they also have training for their staff to talk about how they should supervise kids and things like that. >> it is pretty incredible. what is more disturbing, it is not just the school, it happens all over the country. what is done -- what has been done to make it more effective to protect kids? >> yeah, well it is that happening all over the place you don't hear about it until it is after the court of law when the police are involved. what can do you to stop things from happening? first of all not being in denial making sure, this can happen at my school and get an alumni, do you have a hazing culture here? not only have a written policy but bring in people to train them and make kids understand you know this is why this is important to know about and this is why you shouldn't be dhoing kind ofdoingthis kind of thing. >> jordan's family, so shocked by this, they want something to be done. >> they think a stronger law should be necessary in their state, they think that laws are too vague in vermont. there are indications that the school may have known about some of the hazing incidents before the police ever did and before the department of children and families ever did. this law would strengthen the rules and hold the schools more accountable to reporting to the police and to the department of children and families and hopefully prevent an incident like this from happening again. >> "america tonight's" lori jane gliha thanks. "america tonight's" special look at sex crimes in sports, on thursday. a campus once called the rape capital. >> it's hard to be called those things but if in the long run it's going to help this problem get better i think everybody here is ready to stand up and do something about it. >> "america tonight's" sarah hoye in miz mizzoulala in montana. (a) when can be done to stop >> what can be done. done. >> in our fast forward segment you'd think the aim of school districts is to keep kids in class and learning. but in order to clamp down on bad behavior, many school districts put zero tolerance policy in place. "america tonight's" sarah hoye found that policy could become a pipeline to prison. >> he pushes me in order to stop. when he pushes me, i take off my head phones and say hi how are you. he says where are you coming from? i said i was standing in the grass right in front of the cars i did not go off campus, i was waiting for the crowd to clear off. at that point in time, he took out his handcuffs and tried to arrest me. he asked me did i have something on my person that he should know about, i told him i did have a pocket knife. >> what was going through your mind when city police showed up? >> was i that bad a person, did i have to get booked and put in a cell and stay there? >> the police charged him with possessing a weapon. a misdemeanor school gave him five months. in north carolina being arrested as a teenager has enormous consequences. it's only one of two states in the country that considers 16 and 17-year-olds to be adults. which means misdemeanor charges are on your permanent record. >> wade county has one of the largest school to prison pipelines in history. for years they were short term suspending kids, over a,000 kids were being suspended for the rest of the school year. told get out you're on the streets come back next year. >> fast forward to new evidence. a new study ranks north carolina 12th in referring student offenders to police and the center for public integrity finds disproportionate right for black hispanic students. and hawaii and washington, d.c. had the lowest referral rates. next how to begin a conversation about the end. >> we want people to go to the kitchen table, with the people that they love and have a conversation about what it is that they want. people are not dying in the way they would choose. >> the words that need to be said before it's too late. late. >> the deadline we all think of at this time of year is tax day of course. but april 16th is now also being touted as a day to get our lives in order. as organizers promote national health care decision day. one of the key decisions is what each of us want for our own final days. now, we're being encouraged to start the conversation about the end. a tough talk about how we want to die. >> my name is joe nire and i'm 47 years old. i was diagnosed with glioblastoma. >> the most dangerous brain cancer there is. standard protocol is for you to be on chemo kind of for life. five days on and 18 days off. i did the five days on it, pretty horrible for sure. and it took me 13 of those 18 days before i could really get off the couch and get back to being able to do what i love. for me it's much more about quality of life than it is quantity. i opted to not continue the chemo-protocol at all. it was too much time of feeling ocial and or thehorrible and very slim gain. >> joe spoke with his family, wife laurie, sons and brother making it clear to them how he wanted to be cared for and how he wanted to die. >> if i got knew pneumonia or something like that, if it's a treatable condition if it's glioblastoma related i want to -- why is he not going to do everything he can? i am doing everything i can. i'm doing everything i think is best for everybody involved. myself and the family and i knew for me, for joe, that it was my way to gone go. >> the kind of death joe nire envisions is rare. despite survey showing most americans would prefer to die at home, more than two-thirds die at a hospital or nursing home. most often stay at an intensive care unit like this one at beth israel deaconess hospital. >> probable bacterial meningitis, along with a whole bunch of other lab abnormalities. her husband does not understand that she's doing very badly. >> it's pretty serious. >> today dr. asha anandia and her team are treating a 60-year-old woman with multiple organ failure. >> we don't know which way it's going to go but i think it's important that it's clear to the family that the patient is almost as sick as she can be. do you have any questions right now? i know it's overwhelming. we don't know if she'll survival survive this. we often have to start thinking about what the patient would want in terms of things like remaining on life support for a more prolonged period. >> nurse kathy purcell has worked in the icu here for 30 years. >> patients get acutely ill and come into the icu and nobody has discussed it. not ready to let go and let's not do more aggressive measures. say to the staff of course mom would want everything done. others would say no, she wouldn't want that done. and the way that i help and a lot of us do is to say to the family members now if your mom were listening to us, you know what would she be telling us to do? or you know what was important to her in her life? i think if decisions were made by patients, prior to their admissions and expressed to their family, then a lot of the suffering that goes on right now would be avoided. >> that is the goal of the conversation project. and organization founded by pulitzer prize winning author ellen goodwin. >> we want people to go and have conversations about what they want. my interest this this subject really grew out of the end of my mother's life, i was faced with a cascading number of decisions about her health care and i wasn't always sure of what she wanted. i often wished that i could have said mom is this what you want to do, is this what you want to have happen to you? >> the project has tools for families to think about and talk about what kind of death they want. >> when you ask people how they want to die 70% say they want to die at home for example. home is not a geographic place for example it's an idea. it's the way you want to die peacefully not in pain surrounded by the people you love not in the icu. people are not dying the way they would choose. that's a big motivation about the conversation project. >> he and his wife louanne decided to have the conversation with their daughters starting with 22-year-old kaitlin. >> what happened at grandpa's passing? >> when he got really sick at the end. some family members thought grandpa needed more care and should go intensive care unit while other family members thought he should be allowed to be at home and comfortable so it was very confusing. >> if something happened to me today i would not want to be kept alive by medicine. if i didn't have a chance to recover or if i didn't know you. >> if there's something going on with me and you're not sure how things would turn out say is mom actually going to get better? or is she going to live, but she'll never talk to us again? >> okay. >> for me the important thing is it's not what's the best medical thing that's out there and everything that possibly can be done. it's dignity for me. it's -- >> comfort. >> comfort. >> the shers are using the conversation project starter kit as a guide. >> it gave an outline which was really helpful and important. because all i would do was look back at my father-in-law or somebody that i had lost and say well what would i have done in that circumstance. >> we changed the way we give birth in america. it was women had their feet in stir ups they were knocked out it was women largely but parents to be in general who said wait, let's have this experience the way it should be. this is not only a medical experience it's a life experience. and i think if we change the way we give birth in america we can change the way we die in america. there are lots of hospitals where health care providers are eager to respect wishes. but it's been really hard to feel comfortable doing that. so what they need is for the culture around them to change. >> how are you? >> doctor laura rock agrees. she says when patient's wishes are not clear doctors are often forced to give more treatment than necessary. >> culture shift rare that we have a family that has had conversations about the kind of care that they would choose or their loved one would choose at the end of their life. it's rare. and when they have had those conversations, they aren't burdened with guilt of making decisions that they think is leading to the death of someone they love. >> that's what joe nire has tried to do for his family. by talking with them about how he wants to die. >> no matter what it's not going to be easy for laura. death's not going to go away but the fear and the anxiety of that can go away, if you are clear and communicate with each other that's huge. >> that's joe nire inspiring all of us to be clear and to have that tough talk. that's "america tonight". tell us what you want at aljazeera.com/americatonight. talk to us on twitter or facebook and come back. we'll have more of "america tonight" tomorrow. >> names like zuckerberg, jobs and musk, have helped make america the country envied by the world. we're looking at why so many americans are slowly rolling down the break down lane of the information superhighway and why nearly everyone you know have an iphone in their