Michigan- They gathered in his home, the teenage boys and their high school coach. He supplied the cigars, the alcohol and the porn.

They watched dirty movies, drank and talked about girls, the ones the boys desired, the ones the coach would help them get. He called his boys the Face Men: the swiftest, strongest, best-looking jocks in the school.

Together, they plotted sex parties and schemed about their targets.

Tecumseh High track coach Matthew Peterson hosted raucous parties for dozens of students, mixing them vodka and pop, pumping beer from a keg and acting as a kind of deviant emcee — convincing girls and boys to pair off in his hot tub, in his bathroom, in his bedrooms.

Gossip about sex and alcohol benders slowly filtered into the community in the summer of 2003 and eventually led to the coach’s imprisonment two weeks ago. The Peterson party culture also led to convictions and citations against 13 students, including a former track star described by police as Peterson’s lieutenant — Michigan State University football player Cole Corey.

A Free Press investigation — based on thousands of pages of police and court records, police evidence photos and dozens of interviews — found that school officials and some parents knew for months, even years, that Peterson was corrupting the teens.

But no one reported him to police.

Not parents who knew their children had partied all night at Peterson’s house. Or a school official who failed to report a rape allegation for two months, police said.

School officials finally alerted police in February 2004 — five months after they confronted Peterson about the underage drinking and allowed him to resign quietly.

Why then?

They were threatened with a lawsuit.

“I believe they didn’t want to get into” finding the truth, said Tecumseh superintendent Mike McAran, who said he was hired last year to restore order to the district. “It’s a rat’s nest.”

High school sex and drinking aren’t uncommon. Having a trusted figure facilitate the behavior is.

“Coaches have an aura,” said Dee Reau, who helped coach the girls track team. “Kids would do anything for you. They look up to you. He was manipulative and aggressive and led them astray.”

Jail officials would not allow an interview with Peterson. His attorney, Anna Marie Anzalone, said, “He sincerely regrets everything that happened.

“He lost his family, his children, his wife, his respect in the community.”

As he was sentenced May 4 in a Lenawee County courtroom, a handful of parents and residents wept tears of relief and frustration. Some said they thought he got off easy.

Peterson, 33, originally faced 32 charges related to the parties, including accessory to rape, which could have sent him to prison for life. The prosecutor cut a deal that allowed him to plead guilty to four felonies, including distributing pornography to children. The rape-related charge was dropped.

The judge gave him a sentence ranging from 56 months to 7 years.

“There is a lot of injury out here,” said John Clark, the police investigator who spent two years piecing together the case. “A lot of people are hurt.”

Nine years after Peterson was hired, parents, school employees and residents still ask how all this could have happened.

And why no one came forward sooner.

Peterson arrived in Tecumseh from the University of Michigan, where he worked as an athletic trainer. He was also coaching middle school track in nearby Clinton, where he grew up.

He was 24 when he took the track job in Tecumseh, a rural town of 8,700 people about 30 miles southwest of Ann Arbor. The short, slightly built coach drove a sports car and acted as if he had more money than he did.

Early on during his six years as track coach, colleagues and parents developed conflicting opinions of the charismatic young coach. They found him charming and suspicious, boyish and cunning.

Police said he read Seventeen magazine to learn the language of the school hallway — his kids referred to him as “Coach Pete.” He sometimes referred to himself as “the Dizzle,” hip-hop slang meant to project a certain cool.

Catherine McAran, a Tecumseh track member in the late ’90s and the daughter of the current superintendent, remembered Peterson chumming up to athletes.

Within that group, McAran said, Peterson groomed leaders and bought their loyalty with the use of his car and the keys to his house and its fully stocked basement bar and outside hot tub. It was a pattern he followed the next six years.

In 1998, when Peterson was out of town, McAran said, one student leader — a school administrator’s son — invited her to a party at the coach’s house. She remembers sitting in the hot tub, being offered a drink and thinking, “This is bizarre.”

“I wasn’t feeling quite in control,” she said.

So she left and forgot about it.

Peterson was breaking school rules, too. Other coaches said he supplied boxing gloves during track practices, encouraging the big kids to pummel smaller ones, sometimes until they bled. He once snuck sophomores into a freshman-only race. David Greene, the Tecumseh girls track coach at the time, said Peterson once offered $100 to a special education student to coax him into drinking a Gatorade bottle filled with urine. The boy refused.

Some of the school infractions were reported to the athletic director at the time, Jim Gilmore, according to school records and interviews. Nonetheless, he gave his coach good marks in performance reviews — obtained by the Free Press — and praised his potential.

Gilmore left the athletic director post to become an assistant principal at Tecumseh Middle School in 2003. In a recent interview, he said could not recall much from Peterson’s tenure. The criminal allegations, he said, “came out of the blue. Nobody saw it coming.”

“He did a credible job as far as coaching,” Gilmore said. “The kids liked him.”

By June 2003, Peterson’s behavior was criminal. He let his team and dozens of students have the run of his house, his bar and his laptop for porn, according to police records.

Some of his best athletes were about to graduate.

It was time to celebrate.

Court records, police reports and witness statements painted a graphic picture of one night in early June.

On the eve of graduation, Peterson stood in his basement bar playfully holding up a videotape before a group of teens who had been watching Comedy Central and playing video games.

The tape, Peterson teased, was a “special movie” created by one of his track team members. It offered a full view of the boy in the raw. The coach warned he could get in trouble for showing the tape. He put it in the VCR anyway.

“It’s up to you to push play,” he was described as telling the teens.

One athlete did. For the next 21 minutes, a crowd of teens, some as young as 15, watched the TV as two schoolmates had sex, shot to a techno music soundtrack. Peterson offered commentary about the girl’s breasts.

Matthew Dunn, then 17, a shot-putter and member of the Face Men, starred in the salacious tape with his 16-year-old girlfriend. The girl had agreed to make the video, but didn’t know Dunn — who later pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for his role in the tape — had taken it to Peterson’s house the night before to give the coach and his Face Men a private screening. At least eight boys watched.

Dunn’s stepmother, Shelly Dunn, said in an interview that he acknowledged his behavior was wrong, but she said he was a victim of influence.

“He’s just made bad choices in the people he trusts,” she said.

The next night, when the girl arrived at Peterson’s house for the pre-graduation party, the sex tape already had been played again. And Peterson had tapped a keg. Students streamed in and out over the next several hours, the boys guzzling beer and the girls drinking cocktails mixed by the coach and his favorite Face Man, Cole Corey, police records said.

A 16-year-old girl vomited after downing a concoction the coach mixed for her. She ended up on her knees with her face buried in Peterson’s toilet, as Corey and another boy stood over her, mugging for a snapshot. She later passed out on the floor.

Another girl, a sophomore at the time, recalled walking into the coach’s house and feeling uncomfortable right away.

“I remember feeling kind of uneasy because it was an adult having the party,” she told police in a statement. “I knew what was going on was wrong, and I think a lot of us knew, but everyone was too intimidated by Coach Pete.”

She already thought Peterson was creepy based on an incident at school.

“I remember him saying ‘Hi’ and touching my shoulder,” she told police, “and I moved away and he was like, ‘Oh … how you going to play the Dizzle like that?’ ”

Another girl left the party early, too, offended after Peterson invited her to join their exclusive club — all she had to do was perform oral sex on him or Corey — an offer made at several parties, students told police.

Corey, who is scheduled to be sentenced today on a felony drug charge unrelated to the parties, declined comment for this report.

Pressure to have sex

Police accounts also described the coach as orchestrating the evening mostly from behind his bar, boasting he could mix just about any drink. Some of his other favorites were there, including Face Men Anthony Sandoval and Jack DaSilva.

DaSilva was a virgin. On this night, Peterson decided, that would end — the coach and other Face Men didn’t want their buddy and track captain graduating from high school without having sex.

When a popular, attractive 17-year-old girl arrived, Peterson plied her with 9-inch-tall tumblers of vodka and a cherry-flavored mix, police records show. Peterson and three Face Men then pressured her to have sex with DaSilva.

She thought the track stars and coach were joking. But after he handed her another drink, Corey and another Face Man started “egging her on” about going outside, where DaSilva was in Peterson’s hot tub.

When she resisted, police records show, the coach pulled her aside. An awkward silence fell over the room.

He lowered his voice.

“Go out with Jack,” the coach was described as saying. “What happens here stays here.”

He told her it was her duty.

“No,” she replied. “I’m not like that.”

She walked off.

As the party dwindled, the girl spent the next 20 minutes or so cleaning and talking to other boys. She said she noticed that DaSilva had not returned and felt compelled to check on him because he was a friend and had said earlier he was “wasted.”

Another witness told police that the girl clearly was drunk.

Outside, the girl approached the tub and asked DaSilva whether he was OK. He invited her in. She said she refused and began walking away, and he called out:

“Hey.”

In police statements and testimony, the girl gave hazy descriptions of what happened next. She described being in and out of a deep slumber. She said she felt jets forcing warm water over her. She was nauseated. She heard laughter.

She said she looked up and saw faces on Peterson’s deck, staring down at her. She recalled in testimony that Peterson, Corey and another girl were cheering. She told police only that she heard their voices.

The girl said she realized she was naked in the water as she looked at DaSilva’s face, his hands on her waist. She said she tensed up when she realized they were having intercourse and tried to push herself off.

She recalled blacking out after someone lifted her away. Someone splashed water on her face. She opened her eyes, saw Sandoval and was now on his lap, according to police records.

It scared her, she said, and she jumped out of the tub. She found her clothes in a tree — she had no idea how they got there — and bolted inside.

Peterson and Corey caught up with her.

“I tried to leave; Cole Corey told me I couldn’t, I was ‘drunk’ … I just needed to ‘shut up and go to bed,’ ” she said.

Her car keys and cell phone were missing from the bar, where she had left them. She told Peterson she wanted to go home, but she was told instead to sleep on the floor. She crawled under a coffee table and curled up for the night.

The Free Press generally does not identify alleged sexual assault victims. She declined comment through her lawyer.

DaSilva’s mother declined comment on his behalf.

Elbert Hatchett, his Pontiac attorney, said DaSilva was seduced and only pleaded to misdemeanor assault to avoid trial.

Sandoval’s attorney, James Daly of Adrian, said the sex was consensual. But in reaching a plea deal, his client acknowledged in court that it was not.

The day after Peterson’s bash, the coach showed up at a party thrown by another Face Man. There, police said, he approached the 16-year-old girl who appeared in the sex video. Witnesses heard the coach offer her $4,000 for sex. She declined.

According to police reports and interviews, the girl’s father learned of Peterson’s proposition sometime later. At his daughter’s request, he let it drop, rather than go to police.

More parties followed that summer. Police ultimately investigated four of the bashes and said they suspected similar parties had gone on for years.

Peterson hosted several, continuing his role as sexual matchmaker, the records show. At one teen’s home, Peterson got into a fight over a girl and a parent tossed him off the property.

Rumors of the benders began spreading among a few teachers and parents as summer was ending in 2003. In August, Tecumseh’s football coach, Randy Hutchison, heard that students had been drinking at Peterson’s house. David Greene, then the girls track coach, heard similar stories. Neither knew then about the solicitations and the one girl’s rape allegation.

Both told the new athletic director, Adam Benschoter. Benschoter had taken over for Gilmore, who had left for the middle school by then. Benschoter told the principal, Linda Hutchinson, and the district superintendent, Richard Fauble.

According to printouts of e-mail exchanges obtained by the Free Press, Hutchinson asked Peterson on Sept. 11, 2003, for an explanation of the parties.

He responded: “My side is simple … They came over and when I checked on them throughout the night they were playing PlayStation and a couple were sitting in the hot tub. NO alcohol was consumed at my house… I am disappointed that rumors are flying around. I believe it is simple, if you believe these rumors I will resign.”

The next day, Hutchinson replied: “Adam B is out of the district … We recommend that Adam accept your resignation.”

The same day, Hutchinson wrote a memo to Benschoter asking him to type a report of the allegations and send a copy to her and Fauble. The following week, Peterson quit in writing in September 2003.

School officials attributed it to his failure to turn in uniforms. Peterson, who also taught health at Lincoln High in Ypsilanti, continued to work there.

Benschoter thought there was more to learn. He told the Free Press that when he asked the school administration whether he should keep investigating, his bosses told him: “Let it go.”

And police remained in the dark.

Depression set in quickly for the girl who claimed the sexual assault in Peterson’s hot tub. Rumors about her flew through the school. She’d always been popular and academically ambitious, an honor student.

But by that fall, her senior year, friends, classmates and even teachers began questioning her character. Some even shunned her. Meanwhile, Peterson approached her and asked, “Are we cool?” she wrote in a victim impact statement to the court for Peterson’s sentencing two weeks ago.

“I felt like this would never end,” she wrote in the victim statement. “I felt very alone.”

She said she thought about killing herself. In December, she decided she had to tell someone at the school about the night in Peterson’s hot tub.

She told Benschoter, police records show, but also told him not to involve police.

Benschoter, now the athletic director at Adrian High, said in an interview that he did not recall hearing the rape allegation that month. Asked whether school officials should have called police earlier, based on the underage drinking at the coach’s house, he said, “Looking back on it now, I would say yes.”

In February 2004, two months after the girl spoke with Benschoter, the Tecumseh girls track coach, Greene, went to a coaches’ meeting in Jackson. Some coaches asked why Peterson wasn’t there. Greene said he told them Peterson had been forced out because he invited kids to his house to drink.

Peterson heard about Greene’s comments and sent him an e-mail:

“David, I will politely ask you this once. Stop spreading rumors about me and why I left Tecumseh. I was not fired and there was no ‘scandal.’ What you are doing… amounts to liable,” a reference to libel. “If you continue … I will pursue legal action.”

Greene opened the e-mail Feb. 16. He passed it to Hutchinson, who turned it over to Todd Bingaman, the new district superintendent who had taken over from Fauble. Fauble retired in December 2003.

Bingaman alerted police that day. Almost six months after the school learned of Peterson’s underage drinking parties, and two months after hearing about the rape allegation, a full investigation was finally under way.

At Lincoln High, where he still taught, Peterson was fired amid the police investigation.

Hutchinson is retired and could not be located for comment. Bingaman died from cancer. Fauble lives on a farm near Tecumseh. On a recent afternoon, he stepped off his riding mower to talk about why the school waited so long to call cops: “I don’t think anybody knew the magnitude of it.”

When pressed about the reason for the delay, he said, “I don’t know, because it should’ve been done. …You don’t push things under the carpet with children. You don’t do that. Period.”

Did he think school officials should have done more