Syracuse University Assistant Coach Bernie Fine was fired yesterday over a tape recording of a call with Fine’s wife released by his accuser, who says that Fine molested him in the 80’s, when he was a teenager. The call has to be heard to be believed, but the gist of it is that Fine’s wife Laurie knew that Fine was molesting alleged victim Bobby Davis in her house, and had some suspicions about other kids, and did nothing. Davis also says that he had a sexual relationship with Mrs. Fine when he was 18.
The timeline on this incident is also puts the actions of Syracuse University, the Syracuse Police Department and the media under suspicion. Davis went to Syracuse Police in 2002 and was told the statute of limitations on his charges had passed. He then recorded the call with Mrs. Fine and provided the tape to (at least) the Syracuse Post-Standard and ESPN. Both of them apparently did nothing with the tape. The Post-Standard says that Mrs. Fine confirmed the accuracy of portions of the tape but claimed that it was “phony”. ESPN says that it had the tape authenticated by a voice expert, but did not explain why they had it for 9 years and did nothing with it.
The police department and the Syracuse DA are in a media pissing match over the Fine incident, with the DA claiming that the Chief leaked materials from the investigation to embarrass the DA’s office and to deflect blame from the PD’s inaction in 2002.
Syracuse University launched an internal investigation in 2005 when Davis brought the accusations to them. Chancellor Nancy Cantor says that the tape was not provided to the University at that time. And, at that time, Davis was the sole accuser. Last month, Davis’ stepbrother, now 45, came forward to claim that Fine molested him when he was in the fifth grade. Yesterday, a 23 year-old man claimed that Fine molested him in a hotel room in Pittsburgh in 2003. That accuser is facing sexual assault charges against a child in Maine and his estranged father says that none of it has happened.
The whole thing is ugly, but unless that call is an amazing fake, Bernie Fine and his wife are two awful human beings.
Steeplejack
“Jist” should be “gist.”
Schlemizel
Sports build character! Sports are a real benefit to campus life! Sports are integral to the universities mission!
Eventually we are going to have to admit that we, as a society, have build a monster. Its a monster that allows crimes to go unpunished and thousands of live damaged or destroyed in pursuit of wins. While football and basketball are the worst offender (because of the money & notoriety they bring) they are not alone.
It would be nice to think that raping children would be the final straw but it won’t be. Hell rape & murder have not stopped the sport Juggernaut yet, if the co-ed was asking for it I guess those kids were to. Plus it could never happen at my beloved U.
The Other Bob
How many does it take?
At one time we were suppose to teach our kids to respect authority, respect your elders, say sir and yes mam.
Now we must teach our kids that no authroity is absolute and that it is OK to question the actions of a teacher, coach, priest, etc.
When I was in 2nd grade, a gym teacher threatened to hit me with a tennis racket for not properly sitting at attention. I never told my parents because I was technically doing something wrong.
I hope my kids respectfully question authority far more than I did.
JPL
Seems to me that the police, school and ESPN had plenty of time to verify the tape.
mistermix
@Steeplejack: Fixed – thanks.
moonbat
@The Other Bob: My thoughts exactly. How many does it freakin’ take to investigate? And ESPN has a lot of ‘splainin’ to do too.
“We report the news about the tape as soon as someone else breaks the story.” Hmmm…
bin Lurkin'
This crap is far more common than most people want to admit. Most molestation victims never tell anyone and given the last couple of stories that have come out can you really blame them?
Predators on children naturally gravitate toward positions where they have contact with and power over children, that’s not to say that everyone in those sorts of positions are child predators but it is foolish not to be thoroughly aware of the facts.
arguingwithsignposts
ESPN in not a journalistic organization.
deep cap
Don’t worry, there will be rioting. I wonder if the police will use vegetable products to control the crowds?
MattF
This is a story where you feel the urge to put air quotes around every other word. ‘Journalists’, ‘sports’, ‘investigation’, ‘university’, ‘human being’, et cetera.
The Other Bob
@moonbat:
I guess you could say that ESPN is just part of the college athletic industrial complex.
RalfW
Reading this, and adding in Penn State, made me think of ancient Roman and Greek cultures, with their traditions of male culture that developed into pederastic environments.
There were some very weird power trips going on 2-2,500 years ago, with all sorts of justifications and rationalizations.
And the pattern repeats.
As a side note, between this, Penn State and UC Davis, we’re getting a clearer picture of how chancellors and University systems – no real surprise here – are first and foremost interested in self-protection/institutional defense.
The duty to protect children seems quite absent.
I don’t think there’s a causal link, but all this certainly should give pause to the insane notion of the GOP which advocates abolishing child labor laws. There’s not, y’know, any massive power differential in that environment of institutional self-protection and moral relativism.
mark
ESPN could have given the tape to their parent network ABC.
No, its easy to see why ESPN sat on this after watching them lovingly cover the Penn St. football team for the past 2 weeks. 2 weeks ago on “Upset Saturday” they lead off with Penn States brave effort and interviewed all the “victims” like: the temp coach and the fans. “How are you all holding up?” sniff sniff.
Big Corp. Media are superb at immediately turning any Establishment scandal into a “Whats the fallout for the poor, poor enablers?” “How are they dealing with the allegations?” If Watergate happened today, Pat Nixon would be on the Today show defendin’ her man. Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman and family would host a Christmas special, and Gordon Liddy would get his own show…before prison. Disgusting.
satby
I read recently that one well known therapist suggested that almost all alcoholics had suffered some sort of abuse as children; with my SO it was molestation at age 8. The fallout from that (by a neighbor’s older daughter) has persisted for almost 50 years.
But we persist in acting as if all molesters are extremely evil people too, when in many cases they are very damaged people themselves. I’ve come to believe that our shaming and ostracizing approach keeps this hidden (and still pervasive) when treatment and understanding might do more to reduce the occurrence of child molestation and heal both the child and the molester. This doesn’t have to be the worst thing that happens to a kid if therapy would be available and our society was less nuts about sex.
Edited to add, that doesn’t mean that the Fines weren’t acting badly and should of course face whatever penalties exist. Just that making everybody in these situations monsters doesn’t help solve the problem.
satby
ahh, and let me make clear I’m not defending molesters or child rapists. I’m simply pointing out that the way we handle it now as a society has clearly failed.
kd bart
How is what the Syracuse Post Standard and ESPN did no different from what Joe Paterno did or didn’t do? They had evidence of possible child abuse and did not go to the authorities with it.
otto
Go read any scouting website. I used to be interested in reading about the players that might be at the local colleges, and about who might be pro material, but it’s so damned creepy!
If you read any of the scouting websites, you will see that the conversations about the relative physical traits of a bunch of teenage boys is being discussed as something that is just part of the routine of recruiting discussions.
It gets really weird to read these old men discussing the height, weight, muscle definition…
Donut
@bin Lurkin’:
Not only is what you said correct, but in the vast vast majority of cases, when abusers/predators are married, the spouse knows an awful lot about what is going on. The wife here is nearly as culpable. There rarely is a rational reason for these things, but then again, most people aren’t all that rational to begin with, and become even less so in these circumstances. Fukkin sad and painful – but at least we are talking about it, if nothing else, and hopefully removing some of the stigma. Hopefully – buy probably not, I admit.
Mr Stagger Lee
Most of your announcers, sports talkers, and behind the scenes types are graduates of the Newhouse School of Public Communications located on the SU campus. I can see why they would hush this one up.
Shalimar
Makes me wonder how many other cases people at ESPN know about but don’t report on.
D. Mason
These are the fruits of hero worship.
Gin & Tonic
@kd bart:
Did they? They had one possible victim, telling a story about something that happened quite some time ago, and a creepy telephone conversation that never actually said anything incriminating. Is that evidence? It’s completely unlike the McQueary story, which involved a disinterested witness. Do you go to the cops if one person says “so-and-so molested me 10 years ago”?
This guy and his wife may be monsters, they may not, none of us knows for sure yet. Seems to me there’s a lot less here so far than there was with the Sandusky case. And from what I’ve read and heard, the Syracuse paper tried to corroborate the initial story and failed. IMO, they deserve credit for not blowing this open if they had no confirmation.
bin Lurkin'
@Gin & Tonic: Your post is why so few victims speak up put in a nutshell.
Does it really have to get to the point of dozens of victims over a period of decades before suspected child abuse is worth reporting to the authorities charged with enforcing laws against that abuse?
Donut
@satby
Agreed that most abusers were also victims (my knowledge on this topic stems from my dad, who was a clinical psychologist for 30 years, specializing in sex crimes), and double down on the lack of empathy and/or sympathy for predators – there is no excuse, period, that justifies abuse. It’s one of these things that likely can never be eradicated, sad to say. The cycle of victim to abuser to victim is crushing. Personally, I think if abuse can be proven it’s best to lock ’em up forever. My old man says in 30 years of work, he came across hundred and hundreds of these people, and often spent hours in court and at parole hearings. He testified only one time that he thought a perp was okay to go free, meaning he was unlikely to abuse again. One time, in three decades.
These perps are supreme liars and manipulators. That is all they do.
burnspbesq
The people of the State of New York, acting through their representatives in the Legislature, in their infinite wisdom chose to have an extremely short statute of limitations for crimes involving sexual abuse. As a result of that choice, it appears likely that unless evidence of post-2006 conduct comes to light (and no such evidence has come to light so far), Bernie Fine is never going to face a jury.
There are good reasons to have short statutes of limitation for certain kinds of legal actions. There are also good reasons for not having short statutes of limitation. The people of the State of New York may wish to re-evaluate their prior decision. That is up to them.
But if you are eligible to vote in New York, and you want to know who is responsible for Bernie Fine never facing a jury, look in the mirror. You made that call. Not ESPN, or the Post-Standard, or the Syracuse PD, or the Onondaga County DA. You, and your neighbors.
Gin & Tonic
@bin Lurkin’: Need some more straw there?
“Suspected child abuse” is, and should be, a fairly high bar to clear, as a false or mistaken allegation can also ruin a life. One person saying “this guy molested me 30 years ago” is not much to go on. Nowhere did I say “dozens of victims over decades.” More than one would be good, though.
Feudalism Now!
The 2002 SPD investigation went as far as “past statute of limitations” and nothing we can do. I am not sure what personnel SPD would dedicate to working a cold case with a large gang problem and all the new duties of a year after 9/11. Not an excuse but an explanation.
The 2005 SU internal investigation did not receive the tape and only had Davis testimony and the cursory SPD notes. There was not enough there, there.
The Penn Rape story brought Davis story back in the mix and more victims came forward. The testimony of Tomasselli is what really moved the case to a full investigation with the search warrant being served yesterday. The SU chancellor has handled this appropriately and Boeheim recanted his initial statement and realized his blame the victim may have impeded victims from coming forward. It was a contrast to Joe Pa. Jimmy B is in for a lot more scrutiny as this investigation procedes. State Police and the Feds will be a lot more thorough than even the SU lawyer.
slag
@Gin & Tonic:
Your definition of the word “good” is different from mine.
Gin & Tonic
@slag: OK, bad word choice. But you know what I meant.
bin Lurkin'
@Gin & Tonic: My point is that the authorities are the ones who should do the investigation and determine whether any given incident is child abuse or not.
Even that’s by no means a sure fire way of catching and ending child abuse, anything less is pathetically inadequate.
One in four girls is molested at some point as are one in six boys, it’s a huge and major problem that flies very much under the radar.
Donut
@Feudalism Now!:
I don’t know the specifics of this case all that well, and again, I’m no expert on the topic, just related to someone who used to be one and of whom I’ve asked a lot of questions over the years, so all of my knowledge about this stuff is kinda-sorta-well-informed, but second-hand at best, and even that is being generous. But that all said, my guess would be that Fine is not likely to wind up defending himself in a criminal court, unless someone else turns up who can credibly accuse him of something that happened (more) recently.
The alleged victims that have come forward may be able to get civil damages, but who knows about that, either? How much can an assistant basketball coach be worth, personally? I guess he could have some cash socked away, but there likely isn’t much satisfaction there, either. And if there isn’t solid evidence that someone at Syracuse knew about abuse allegations and covered it up, then how much liability does the University have? They might wind up paying something just to make it all go away, but even that doesn’t guarantee a lot of money will change hands.
I guess what I’m getting at is it’s hard to see, right now, that money is not the biggest motivator here for the alleged victims who have come forward, to date.
@bin Lurkin’:
Like most sexual offense crimes, those numbers likely don’t reflect the actual instances of abuse that occur – meaning they are too low. I don’t disagree with you that police need to be on top of these investigations, but G&T has a good point – there is only so much the cops can do, which has both positives and negatives – like anything else, there is always a big, sometimes ugly grey area.
gene108
@slag:
When you are dealing with a he-said-(s)he-said scenario, what should someone do?
If I accused you of a crime, should the government rush in a declare you guilty? What’s the burden of proof required before government decides you are a suspect?
These aren’t easy, obvious, questions to answer. I don’t know what a “good” solution would be.
Roy G.
As a young basketball player, I happened to pick up a copy of Jim Carroll’s book ‘The Basketball Diaries,’ which turned out to be about much more than basketball. His creepy reminiscences about being paid for sexual favors by his basketball coach, which in turn fed his drug habit, are tolerable only by the quality of his writing. Carroll was fortunate that his talent as a poet/writer enabled him to get past it, yet it took a huge toll on his life, physically and emotionally.
I highly recommend the book, as Carroll’s prose hit notes and nuances that were missing in the merely ok movie version, with Leo DiCaprio.
Lyrebird
@satby:
I totally applaud you and your SO for dealing w/what you’ve dealt with.
I can’t walk past this, though:
Therapists asserting this have done a lot of damage to people over the years; they used to say the same thing about eating disorders. There are people with lots of different kinds of addictions & self-destructive behaviors who weren’t molested. Given the potential for trusted counselors and authority figures to foster false memories, I worry that resources will end up being less available to survivors of child abuse if we’re not careful. (I say “we” bc I’m in a related field.)
Peace…
satby
@Donut: I didn’t know your father, but I think he was wrong. Human Rights watch did a study on this which demonstrated that the “facts” we think we know about offenders aren’t true. Some offenders are predatory and may need to be locked up forever, but many are able to be rehabilitated with therapy. That goes against the whole lock them up and throw away the key mentality we currently have now, but as long as we “monsterize” the perpetrators, we help perpetuate the crime.
I’ve learned more than I ever wanted to about this subject, and I believe as a society we’re on the wrong path. And as a mother, I want us to understand and deal with the real problem not with myth and urban legend.
Scott Supak
We live near Cooperstown, where a “hazing” ritual apparently turned into something more, and is being looked into.
http://www.uticaod.com/m/news/x1821246810/Cooperstown-player-s-parent-might-seek-charges
In this case, it looks like other players sexually assaulted a student. I’m sure a lot of this sick shit just goes unreported.
r€nato
observations:
1) ESPN does sports journalism, not journalism. Sports journalism is barely a step removed from writing press releases. While it’s despicable that ESPN sat on the tape, I’m not all that surprised they chickened out from investigating the allegations and maybe coming up with a big scoop.
2) to me, the problem isn’t collegiate sports; child molesters would simply work in a different profession if we could wave a magic wand and make college sports programs disappear. It’s the power and unaccountability that comes with a successful college sports program, that’s the problem.
Rafer Janders
@Gin & Tonic:
Did they?
Yes.
They had one possible victim, telling a story about something that happened quite some time ago, and a creepy telephone conversation that never actually said anything incriminating. Is that evidence?
Again, yes. It’s not definitive evidence, but it’s certainly evidence. Statements by a possible victim, and incriminating statements by an accomplice of the accuser, are of course evidence. Whether they’re definitive, or whether they can be admitted at trial, are separate questions, but they’re certainly enough evidence to get the ball rolling on a police investigation.
It’s completely unlike the McQueary story, which involved a disinterested witness. Do you go to the cops if one person says “so-and-so molested me 10 years ago”?
Again, yes. Give the evidence to the police and prosecutors and then let them weigh the facts and figure out whether there’s enough to move forward with an investigation. Doesn’t that seem preferable to just sitting on it and doing nothing?
Rafer Janders
@Gin & Tonic:
One person saying “this guy molested me 30 years ago” is not much to go on.
Why? Most people don’t go around willy-nilly making up charges of being sexually abused, so when someone does come forward, it’s generally good enough to at least get an investigation started. Let the police and prosecutors hear the charge, conduct an investigation, and then determine whether there’s anything there. Your preference, on the other hand, is that if someone comes forward and says that he was abused as a child, the authorities should then…do nothing?
Rafer Janders
@gene108:
If I accused you of a crime, should the government rush in a declare you guilty?
No, it should investigate, arrest and indict you only if there’s enough credible evidence, then give you a fair trial and convict you if a jury of your peers finds you guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. This is what reasonable people want done in these cases. Note, however, that you can’t get to this point if you never even investigate in the first place.
What’s the burden of proof required before government decides you are a suspect?
Um, almost none. Anyone can be a suspect, particularly if there’s an alleged victim claiming that that person has committed a crime — that in itself makes them, almost ipso facto, a suspect.
You seem to be confusing “burden of proof”, which is the standard used at trial for determining guilt at trial (i.e. proof beyond a reasonable doubt) with probable cause, which is the standard used for making an arrest. Probable cause for an arrest is generally something like a reasonable belief or suspicion that a person has committed a crime, or that the facts being claimed by the alleged victim are probably (but not necessarily) true. So it’s not a very high bar to clear — basically, if you have a reasonable suspicion that there’s been a crime committed, and a credible claim that the person being accused may have done it, you have probable cause to arrest.
NoXcuse
@Rafer:
Most people don’t go around willy-nilly making up charges of being sexually abused…
Guess again.
No one failed to investigate – the police, the paper, the university and the network all looked at it when Davis first levelled the claim – all based on a single person’s accusation.
Gin & Tonic
@Rafer Janders:
Not my preference, necessarily, but from what I’ve read of the incident elsewhere, and mistermix’s timeline above specifically, the authorities did, in fact, do nothing.
But he did, and it wasn’t.
The way I read it, guy goes to the cops, they say “sorry, too old” so he (possibly illegally) records a creepy but in no way definitive telephone conversation and goes to the press with it. The press, possibly being wary of libel laws, wants to verify his story and can’t, so decides not to run with it. *That* is who and what is being criticized here, and that is who and what I’m arguing did the right thing. The newspaper is not a mandated reporter of child abuse. Its remit is to print presumably factual stories or not print them if it can’t verify them.
Your preference is that the paper should have gone to the cops? On what basis? On the basis of a report they had already gotten from the alleged victim and declined to pursue?
I fail to see what ESPN or the Syracuse paper did wrong here.
Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods
Syracuse alumnus, here. Much as I like cranky old Jim Boeheim, I cannot accept that he wasn’t at least acquainted with rumors about alleged crimes committed by Fine.
Fine and Boeheim were joined at the hip for the better part of four decades. In that time, surely, someone would have whispered to Jim, “hey, your boy, Bernie, is a serial rapist.” Maybe responses to sex abuse vary by generation (Coach Mike Krzyzewski made a good point about that, offering some perspective on Joe Paterno’s inaction in the Sandusky affair). However, for Boeheim or Paterno to suspend disbelief over something so horrible, well, I’m at a loss for words.
Relatedly: Bet the ACC is having a bit of buyer’s remorse now…
burnspbesq
@Jamey: Bike Commuter of the Gods:
Nope. Taking Syracuse and Pitt was primarily about football. Everything is primarily about football. ‘Cuse basketball and lacrosse are nice-to-have, nothing more. BC may see getting to fuck UConn as the principal benefit of this, but that’s just one AD with an obsession.
Don
Because they’re in the business of maintaining access. If they could maintain viewership and never say a critical thing they’d do it. You see this nonsense time and again from them where they don’t ask any difficult questions, sit on evidence, play enabler for crappy people… so long as it’s useful to them.
Rafer Janders
@NoXcuse:
Um, I said “most people.” You responded with a cite to one over two-decades old case, a case that doesn’t even resemble this one because the charges were made not by the supposed victims, who were still children at the time, but by other adults? So why do I need to “guess again” my claim that most people — and try to read that again, a bit more carefully this time, MOST PEOPLE — do not make false claims of having been abused as children?
NoXcuse
Um, no, I didn’t. I cited to a list of 15 prolonged episodes where numerous people, including victims, made up charges of sexual abuse. If your point is that the general population doesn’t make up sex abuse charges, so what? Within the only subset that matters, there are ample documented cases of people making stuff up.
Further, your point at 39 was that a single person’s claim should be enough to warrant an investigation, which is what happened in this case.
Take your own advice and read moar carefully.
Pamoya
In the bad old days, the state couldn’t convict of rape unless there was extra evidence beyond the victim’s account. Today most (all?) states have laws that allow a rape conviction based solely on the victim’s testimony. One of the primary functions of a jury is to decide witness credibility, by considering things such as who has a motive to lie, or whether a witness’s testimony has obvious major inconsistencies/implausibilities.
Of course, that does not mean that juries will actually convict someone on the basis of a single victim’s testimony. Rape has always had a special status among crimes–no other crime provokes such fear of false reporting. Yet many other crimes, not just rape, are witnessed only by the victim and the perpetrator. The incidence of false reporting of rape is probably not significantly higher than false reporting for other crimes, and rape is also the most under-reported crime.
I attribute this special status to the fact that the people in charge of justice were historically almost without exception old and powerful men, who could picture themselves in the role of the falsely accused, but not in the role of the unjustly disbelieved.
I strongly support the innocent until proven guilty system in criminal justice, even though this means that many actual rapists will not be convicted because there is not enough evidence.
I just as strongly believe that the default in civil society should be to believe any victim who reports rape. “He said, she said” is usually invoked to mean that we can’t disturb the status quo because we can’t decide who is telling the truth. This is the equivalent of a default position of disbelieving the victim. Why would this be the default given the statistics of low rates of false reporting and the significant harms to society of enabling rapists when we push rape into the shadow because we can’t “prove” it?