Locker Room

You've seen it in the movies a hundred times. The downtrodden, dead-in-the-water, underdog football team lumbers into the locker room trailing at halftime. They players are dirty, they're tired, and they know they have no shot. Suddenly, a coach or player springs to his feet and, with a profound revelation or a few inspirational words of wisdom, wills the team to victory. But does that really happen? Can the outcome of a game really be altered just by one coach or player inspiring his team before the third quarter?

A Cumberland County grand jury has indicted Peter Henriques in the murder last spring of classmate Nielsa Mason at their high school in Upper Deerfield Township. The indictment was returned Thursday, more than a month after a county Superior Court judge ruled that Henriques, 17, of Fairfield Township, would be tried as an adult instead of as a juvenile. If convicted of first-degree murder, Henriques could be sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 30 years. Cumberland County Prosecutor Arthur J. Marchand, who had pushed for adult status, said yesterday that a trial date had not been scheduled.

And now, a moment for male bonding, guys talking to guys, about women. You might even want to bring this page into the locker room. The guys in question would like that. After all, they're college men. Frat guys, athletes - the self-proclaimed "Real Men of Rutgers. " Let's listen to what they say about the other 50 percent of the population: "Wake up, people! A partner is not an object to possess or abuse. " And: "It is up to men to ensure that sexual assaults no longer take place.

The 16-year-old sophomore whose body was discovered in the Cumberland Regional High School boys' locker room last month was strangled and beaten, officials said yesterday. According to Cumberland County Prosecutor Arthur Marchand, an autopsy revealed that blunt trauma to the head, neck and abdomen, along with manual strangulation, was the cause of Nielsa Mason's death. Marchand said there was also a puncture wound in the victim's neck, but no evidence to support authorities' initial belief that it was the fatal wound.

Minutes after Nielsa Mason was last seen alive, a "startled" Peter Henriques was seen leaving the boys' locker room, according to testimony yesterday from a teen who had been playing basketball at Cumberland Regional High School that day. Moments later, Nick Demianczuk noticed a pair of legs sticking out from beneath a shower partition. "I happened to glance into the shower room," said Demianczuk, then 19, of Bridgeton, who had gone to Cumberland Regional with several friends for a pick-up game.

It was family night at Lower Makefield's Pennwood Middle School pool, and a children's diving class was about to let out. Twenty boys, ages 7 to 15, were about to swarm into the locker room, shake out their sopping heads, and change into street clothes, when two men, dressing for their swim, noticed what seemed like a gleam coming from under a folded towel on one of the benches. They looked and discovered a video camera. Someone had cut a hole in a camera case, aimed the lens at the changing area, and set the tape to record, they said.

A graduate student at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine was found unconscious yesterday with her hands bound, lying on the floor of a basement locker room on campus, authorities said. The 28-year-old woman, who became semiconscious as rescuers arrived on the scene at 38th and Spruce Streets, was taken to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital for examination, including tests for sexual assault. Those tests were incomplete last night. "We're not even sure at this time how she got her injuries," said Thomas Seamon, Penn's managing director of public safety, who, along with Philadelphia police, gave scant details of the investigation.

The knot of fear that gripped South Jersey the day after a Cumberland Regional High School girl was beaten to death in the boys' shower relaxed last night when authorities charged a 16-year-old male acquaintance in the murder. Police hauled the boy into the Bridgeton state police barracks with a coat over his head, shielding him from television cameras, and booked him in the murder of Nielsa Mason, 16, a quiet and well-liked sophomore track athlete whose battered and slashed body was found in the locker room Monday night.

Hidden-camera videotapes showing members of the University of Pennsylvania men's wrestling team changing and showering in a locker room have been displayed as pornography on a paid Internet site and offered for sale via mail order, a university official said yesterday. At least one tape was made in December 1997 at the Midlands Open, an annual wrestling championship held at Northwestern University, probably with a camera hidden in a gym bag with a mesh opening, said Ken Wildes, director of university relations.

About 50 boys on the Benjamin Franklin High School football team blocked, tackled and grunted for two hours in full pads, the temperature about 90 degrees, and finished off with 40-yard sprints. At 6 p.m., shirts drenched with sweat, foreheads dripping, they plodded into the locker room. Four boys showered. Everyone else on the team rubbed on deodorant, threw on street clothes, and headed home. "I'm hot," said Damien Landers, a senior tackle, after practice in early September, "but I shower alone.