When extreme hazing incidents occur, such as the alleged abuse among members of the Forney soccer team, many question how bullying is allowed to escalate to sexual violence in campus locker rooms.

"When something like that gets out of line, it's more often than not because the coaches aren't out and about in the locker room," said D.W. Rutledge, the executive director of the Texas High School Coaches Association.

Texas doesn't have any laws requiring adults to monitor athletes in locker rooms, where experts say hazing is more likely to occur. And the governing body for high school sports leaves it up to local districts to decide where and when supervision is needed.

Experts say most of the nation's 26,000 high schools across the country generally don't have policies requiring locker-room supervision, and implementing a one-size-fits-all standard for such monitoring could be tricky.

"Most schools don't have that because you don't want to say you have to have an adult in there with minors who are changing because then you could set off a whole other set of problems," said B. Elliot Hopkins, a hazing expert with the National Federation of State High School Associations. "More often, schools don't have anything in place until there's a problem, like after a hazing incident."

In Forney, five students were arrested and are facing criminal charges after a student told authorities he was sexually abused about once a week in the Forney High School locker room or in other locker rooms used by the team.

Former students have said coaches weren't usually in the locker rooms and would have stopped the abuse if they knew it was occurring.

When the hazing incident came to light, the Forney superintendent implemented new athletic protocols that require a coach to be present in locker rooms whenever students are inside, including at away games. Students also will be locked out of the changing rooms, gyms and other athletic facilities unless until a coach is present.

1 / 2A red sideline flag waves at a corner of the field during a soccer game between Forney High School and Poteet High School on Jan. 30 at Poteet High School in Mesquite.(Ashley Landis / Staff Photographer) 2 / 2

After 13 athletes were arrested in March and accused of sodomizing younger teammates in La Vernia, coaches were assigned to stations in the locker room before and after practice to make sure players have "eyes on them all the time," according to the San Antonio Express News.

But there's no state law laying out a protocol for locker room supervision.

And any rules, requirements or recommendations for adult supervision are "local decisions for each school or school district, and not UIL rule," said University Interscholastic League spokeswoman Kate Hector.

The UIL — which oversees administration of extracurricular academic, athletic and music contests in Texas — does require that coaches take part in yearly online rules training. Included in that program is an ethics and sportsmanship module where hazing is discussed.

In the league's sportsmanship manual, there a single page dedicated to the subject.

"Hazing should not occur in Texas high schools, and University Interscholastic League takes a very strong stance in the prevention of such practices," it reads.

The league doesn't have any language in its constitution that mandates sanctions or reprimands for coaches or programs when hazing occurs. But ethics or sportsmanship codes could apply in hazing cases.

It's unclear how often that's ever occurred at the local level, though. Hector said the league does not keep records of sanctions decided by UIL's district executive committees — local committees of representatives from competing schools.

She added that she could find only one instance where the UIL's State Executive Committee — whose members are appointed by the Texas Education Commissioner — heard a case that involved hazing, at Brownfield High School in 1989.

The UIL declined to make executive director Charles Breithaupt, policy director Jamey Harrison and athletic director Susan Elza available to answer questions for this story. UIL officials cited the ongoing law enforcement investigation in the Forney case, although none of those officials are known to be part of that criminal investigation.

The Texas Association of School Boards, which drafts many school policies that local trustees often adopt for their districts, does not recommend any specific policy addressing locker room supervision either.

However, the association offers frequent training to its members to make them aware of hazing and bullying risks. The group teaches them that locker rooms and buses are locations where such incidents are more likely to occur, but leaves it up to individual districts to decide how to address that, said Dax Gonzalez, who oversees governmental relations for TASB.

"You can't just say every school has to have someone monitoring the locker rooms. The size of our districts vary so much across the state that there's not one definitive answer on 'This is how to fix it,'" Gonzalez said. "This is a thorny issue but part of the answer lies in training."

Many times school officials express shock when learning that such incidents have occurred within their athletic programs. While there's been a major societal shift to be more aware of hazing and bullying, Gonzalez said, more training needs to be done in schools to increase awareness that such incidents aren't just national issues but can affect local communities, too.

Rutledge, the executive director for THSCA, said that his organization hasn't included hazing among the topics it discusses in various training programs for coaches and student-athletes. Not yet, at least.

"But that would be a great piece to put in, because it's in line with some of the things that we do," he said.

A little more than a year ago, THSCA unveiled "Starting the Conversation," an educational program for student-athletics addressing domestic violence and sexual assault. The program, aimed at high school students, was the first of its kind in the country.

Hopkins said regardless of supervision policies, coaches must be responsible for knowing what is happening with their teams. School staff and parents must be alert to warning signs, such as students suddenly not wanting to go to practice or unexpectedly passing on a chance to move up to varsity, he said.

"I've reviewed enough of these hazing cases to learn that there's always warning signs that someone should have seen," Hopkins said. "This just doesn't suddenly happen on one day."