Savio coach admits to molesting teens See paragraph 2. :-)
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/051/metro/Savio_coach_admits_to_molesting_teens+.shtml By Douglas Belkin, Globe Staff, 2/20/2003 While two of his victims wept quietly at the rear of the courtroom, a coach at an East Boston parochial high school pleaded guilty yesterday to molesting three female athletes for two years during and after track workouts. James Doherty, a 62-year-old former athletic director at Savio Preparatory High School, admitted to rubbing the legs of members of the girls' track team after practice and then groping their genitals. Prosecutors said he also told the teenage girls that he needed to put his hands on their breasts while they lifted weights to determine if they were using their muscles properly. Doherty, of Winthrop, pleaded guilty to five counts of indecent assault and battery against the teens. Prosecutors requested that Doherty serve 21/2 years in prison, but East Boston District Judge Paul Mahoney, citing Doherty's poor health and clean record, decided not to send him to jail. Rather he ordered him to serve five years' probation and to attend counseling. Mahoney also required that Doherty sign up with the state's sex offender registry and not have contact with the victims or any children younger than 17. In a statement released after the hearing, Laura Malouf, a lawyer for one of the victims, said her client ''is very disappointed with the court's sentencing decisions today. The interests of justice were not served by sentencing James Doherty, an admitted sex offender of minors, to probation.'' Doherty, dressed in a black pin-striped suit, stood quietly with his hands clasped in front of him as Suffolk assistant district attorney Courtney Linnehan ran through the allegations against him between 1998 and 2000. As two of his three victims tearfully read impact statements, Doherty averted his eyes. With their mothers nearby, the girls, now 17 and 18, told the judge with quivering voices how their lives had been shattered, their families disrupted, and their ability to trust others devastated since the abuse. One of the teens said she tried to kill herself and said she was ''stripped of my pride and dignity.'' The other said Doherty told her he loved her and wanted her to consider him as a grandfather. ''I wanted to make him stop, but I didn't want to lose him,'' she said. ''Every time I put on a pair of [running] sneakers, I can't help but think about what he did to me.'' Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer handling sexual abuse claims against the Archdiocese of Boston, said he is representing at least one of the Savio Prep victims. (Savio Prep is an independent school within the Archdiocese of Boston that is run by the Salesian Society.) After the hearing, he questioned why Doherty was not supervised. ''I will be assiduously investigating this matter in order to determine if there was a coverup,'' Garabedian said. Doherty was placed on administrative leave the ''minute the complaint was made and he hasn't been back in the school since,'' said Ralph Bagley, an attorney for Savio Prep. Bagley said Doherty would probably be discharged because he cannot work with minors as part of his probation. As of last night, Doherty had not been fired. Lawyers for Doherty told Mahoney that their client has had three heart attacks in recent years, and the last one put him in a coma for three days. ''His doctors said he would not have been able to withstand the rigors of a trial or incarceration,'' said lawyer Randy Chapman. ''His health was a strong motivating factor in avoiding a trial.'' Doherty, a former Marine, began his career in the athletic department at Savio Prep in 1963 and became athletic director in 1966. In 1992, he was inducted into the Massachusetts Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame. -- -Time flies like the wind. Fruit flies like a banana. Stranger things have - -happened but none stranger than this. Does your driver's license say Organ -Donor?Black holes are where God divided by zero. Listen to me! We are all- -individuals! What if this weren't a hypothetical question? steveo at syslang.net To unsubscribe, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with body "unsubscribe man-bytes-dog" (the subject is ignored).
