Former Youth Soccer Coach in Virginia Ordered to Pay $5M to Settle Rape Allegations

In an out-of-court settlement ending nine years of litigation, a former Fauquier County Soccer Club coach has been ordered to pay $5 million to a former youth player; the coach allegedly raped and drugged the boy repeatedly from 2005 to 2009, beginning when he was 14 years old.
The soccer club, which has since merged with another organization to become the Northern Piedmont Sports Club, avoided any financial liability over claims that its leaders failed to protect the juvenile from the coach’s predatory behavior. A jury trial scheduled for last week was called off because of the out-of-court settlement.
The financial damages are half of what William “Jake” Fisher, now 31 years old, asked for in the lawsuit, which he filed in 2013. Fisher claimed that Mark Gallick, 58, who in the 2000s coached the Fusion travel team, “ingratiated” himself with several boys on his team and “groomed” them by “isolating them in situations without any other adult supervision.” Fisher maintained that Gallick supplied boys with alcohol, exposed them to pornography and “secretly plied” several boys — including Fisher — with the “date rape” drug gamma-hydroxybutyric acid (GHB), also known as “Liquid E,” “Liquid X” and “G.”