Suddenly our youth org is looking for a new 10 and under head coach (long story lol). We are going to open this up until filled, but hope to have a new coach asap. We will look at the usual, such as coaching experience, ability to organize practices, coaching philosophy, etc.
If there were two or three qualities you wohld look for in such an applicant, what would they be?
Other than what you listed:
Criminal Background Check (pull up the old S.I. article online named "Who Is Coaching Your Kids"?)!!!
Also a good knowledge on handling Sports Injuries (a course in First Aid is recommended for = the same one that is for Rescue Squad members) IF you do not have a Certified Trainer (or Doctor) present at both practices & games!
If my son were playing - I would want a Criminal Background check for sure on all new coaches brought in (High School Coaches are checked before being employed):
Every Parent's Nightmare The child molester has found a home in the world of youth sports, where as a coach he can gain the trust and loyalty of kids--and then prey on them
By William Nack And Don Yaeger
Sept. 13, 1999
Sports Illustrated
Norman Watson still misses the game he loves most. He misses thedusty world of Little League baseball. He misses riding to thegames on a motorcycle, and he misses managing and umpiring andthe feeling that Little League gave him, the sense that in alife of drift he somehow belonged. Come the shades ofnightfall--as he stokes the embers of his darksome fantasies inhis prison cell--he also misses sex with his preferred partners.He misses the boys.
Blue-eyed and articulate, cool and composed, Watson hardly fitsthe stereotype of the child molester--a snaggletoothed gargoylein a trench coat at the edge of a playground, leering at thedowny-limbed children playing on the swings. That was neverWatson, never his pedophiliac style, though he has spent most ofhis 54 years sexually preying on children. By his own count, hefigures he has molested "a couple of hundred" children overthree decades. Most of them were youngsters, between the ages of11 and 14, whom he first met through his work in Little League.With many of those kids he spun his sticky web into affairs thatlasted months and even years.
It's because of his uncontrolled desire for sex with boys thatWatson is sitting this August day in a small cubicle inside alarge California prison, serving the second year of an 84-yearsentence that will end no sooner than his life. Hands folded ona table, now smiling at a remembrance, now teary-eyed atanother, he occasionally glances out the window to a largervisitors' room, waving or nodding to some fellow prisoners whilescanning the faces of others. He lives warily these days, anundiscovered pariah leading a life of maximum insecurity. Toother prison inmates, child molesters rank somewhere betweenroaches and the AIDS virus, but despite the dangers of revealingthe nature of his crimes--he has until now kept them secret fromhis fellow inmates--Watson sees a redeeming value in grantingthis interview. "My life is over anyway," he says. "Maybe I cansay something that will make sense to parents...."
After so many years in the criminal justice system, after somany years of counseling and therapy, Watson has reached thisineluctable conclusion: He should die within these walls thatnow confine him. "I think it's good I'm no longer in theposition to do any more damage," he says. "I have hurt peopleout there. I've sat here, and I've had plenty of time to thinkabout it, and I know some abused kids have been scarred forlife.... I have a predisposition to want to be around, and amsexually aroused by, young boys. I can't be where I have accessto boys."
Sixteen months earlier, during his sentencing hearing in a SanBernardino (Calif.) County courthouse, Watson, at times weepingwith his face in his hands, had sat and listened as angry,tearful parents, some with their long-molested children at theirsides, sent him off to prison with cries of execration. He'dpleaded guilty to 39 counts of lewd acts with children, fourboys and a girl, that had occurred between 1990 and '96, whenWatson was a San Bernardino Little League coach and umpire andthe five kids were all playing in the league. Unbeknownst to theplayers' parents, Watson was on probation during much of thatspan for a 1980 molestation offense in nearby Riverside. None ofthe parents knew that their beloved and winning coach--thisglib, engaging soul who had lived with and among them, who hadso generously baby-sat their kids, taken the youngsters tomovies and bought them expensive gifts--had undergone more thanfive years of treatment in two state mental hospitals for childmolesting. One of those institutions was Patton State Hospitalin San Bernardino, not far from the East Base Line Little Leaguefield where Watson would become a leading coach.
By the time Watson was sentenced, the parents' sense of betrayalhad mutated into fury. One by one, parents and children rose atthe sentencing to read their victim-impact statements. "You mademy life a wreck," said one 13-year-old victim. "You scared thesekids, took advantage of their innocence and suffocated them sothey would not tell on you," a parent said. Another parentlooked at Watson and said, "You're worse than a thief. You'reworse than a murderer. A thief steals what can be replaced. Amurderer kills his victim one time. What you have done to thesechildren is going to last the rest of their lives, andunfortunately history says that a fair portion of your victimsare going to start victimizing others as you have done.... Ihope you rest in hell."
Now Watson shifts in his cubicle chair and rubs the stubble onhis face. "I've got a lot of time to think in here," he says. "Idon't allow myself to think about what I've done to all thosepeople because I don't think I could handle it. There's onething that's helped me since I've been incarcerated here: I'mwhere I belong."
In preying on prepubescent and newly pubescent athletes, Watsonwas hardly a lone wolf. While there have been no formal studiesto determine how many child molesters have coached youth teams,a computer-database search of recent newspaper stories revealsmore than 30 cases just in the last 18 months of coaches in theU.S. who have been arrested or convicted of sexually abusingchildren engaged in nine sports from baseball to wrestling--andthis despite the fact that child sex-abuse victims, for reasonsranging from shame and embarrassment to love or fear of theirmolesters, rarely report the crime. For every child who reportsbeing molested, according to a variety of experts on the sexualexploitation of children, at least 10 more keep their secretsunrevealed. The molesters are almost always men, and in youthsports most, though not all, of the victims are boys. (The onegirl Watson admitted molesting was only five when he beganabusing her. He says because she was a player he viewed her "asjust one of the boys.")
Today the reporting of child molestation in youth sports isabout where the reporting of rape in society was 30 years ago.However, there are indications that things are changing, thatafter decades of being ignored, minimized or hidden away, themolestation of players by their coaches is no longer thesporting culture's dirty little secret. "I'm no longer surprisedwhen I read that this or that pillar of the coaching communityhas been accused or convicted of multiple counts of childmolestation," says Steven Bisbing, a clinical and forensicpsychologist from Takoma Park, Md., who studies sexual abuse ofchildren by authority figures. "It's not an isolated problem,just a few bad apples. This was the prevailing view for a longtime: 'It's isolated. It's one guy. They're rid of him. No moreproblem.' That's absurd.... It occurs with enough regularityacross the country, at all levels [of society], that it shouldbe viewed as a public health problem."
Although child molestation is by no means confined to sports,the playing field represents an obvious opportunity for sexualpredators. In the U.S. more than 10 million children under theage of 16 play organized sports, coached or otherwise supervisedby more than a million adults, many of them unscreened malevolunteers--which is to say, men on whom background checks havenever been done. "Youth sports are a ready-made resource poolfor pedophiles, and we better all get our heads out of the sandbefore we ruin the games," says Bob Bastarache, a police officerturned private investigator and the current president of one ofNew England's largest AAU clubs, the Bristol Stars, of NewBedford, Mass. "Parents today are so busy, they're allowingcoaches to take over the after-school hours, and that's the footin the door pedophiles need."
The phenomenon touches communities large and small and caninvolve coaches both celebrated and obscure. On Aug. 30 ClydeTurner, the track and field coach at John Muir High in Pasadena,was given concurrent sentences, one of three years and one ofeight months, following his conviction for molesting and showingpornographic material to a freshman on his team. Turner, who isfiling an appeal, was well regarded for his work with youngathletes and his record as a coach; his teams won four statechampionships in the 1990s.
Another coach widely respected in his community was John (Jay)Davidson of Beverly, Mass. Davidson was a coach and anorganizer--former president of the local Babe Ruth League,founder of the highly successful New England Mariners youthbaseball club and an instructor who participated in baseballcamps throughout the country. On Oct. 9, 1998, four days afterbeing charged with sexually assaulting two of his players duringovernight stays at his house, Davidson, a 41-year-old bachelor,sent off a letter to parents of his players proclaiming hisinnocence while keening in despair: "No money, no baseball, nofriends, never again working with kids." He then sliced open hisarms with a knife, called 911 to report his suicide attempt anddied before help could arrive, surrounded by photos of boys hehad coached.
The sexual exploitation of children is such a volatile subjectthat even noncriminal allegations can lead to complaints againsta coach, especially if parents discover he has a molestationconviction on his record, regardless of whether it was decadesago. One of the Boston area's most successful youth basketballcoaches, Jim Tavares, was forced out of the AAU last year undersuch circumstances. Tavares, for 20 years the coach of the NewBedford Buddies basketball program for kids ages 12 to 17, whichhas developed dozens of Division I college scholarship players,resigned his AAU membership under pressure in March 1998 afterthree sets of parents, each with a son on the 13-and-under teamcoached by Tavares, complained to the AAU about him. Accordingto the parents, the 56-year-old Tavares took whirlpool baths inthe nude with their sons--allegedly telling the boys thatdespite their reluctance, they had to take off their swimsuitsbefore entering the hot tub--and watched them as they tookshowers.
One of the parents who complained had learned that Tavares hadbeen convicted in 1974 in New Bedford of "unnatural acts with achild under 16" following an encounter in a swimming pool with aboy who played on a youth football team Tavares had coached.Tavares received a two-year suspended sentence. In an interviewwith SI, Tavares expressed surprise that the boy in that casehad filed the complaint, revealing that for six months beforethe incident he and the boy had been in a relationship thatincluded physical contact.
Despite this and another criminal conviction--in 1968 in NewBedford for being "a lewd person in speech andbehavior"--Tavares established himself as a prominent youthbasketball coach. In fact, he is still coaching, with thesupport of parents who are aware of his past record, though Nikeno longer sponsors the Buddies and the club is no longersanctioned by the AAU. Asked if someone with his criminal recordshould be allowed to coach children, Tavares took offense thatanyone would even raise the question. He said he felt there wasnothing inappropriate about his taking nude whirlpool baths withhis players and denied asking them to take their suits off orwatching them take showers. He also pointed out that the policehadn't charged him with any crimes.
Tavares, who lives with his mother, speaks with despair aboutthe parents' complaints and the airing of his criminal record.He has filed a suit in Massachusetts Superior Court fordefamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress andinvasion of privacy against one of the parents who complained."I'm very, very depressed," he says. "I go to bed hoping I die,and I wake up hoping I die. This has probably been worse thanwhen I was arrested for the actual thing [in 1974]. I lost mywhole life [last year]."
Allegations of child molestation can reverberate throughcommunities, wreaking a kind of psychic devastation. In LasVegas, former Little League coach Garen Pearson faces trial on19 counts of sexual assault with a child under 14, 14 counts oflewdness with a child under 14, four counts of sexual assaultwith a child under 16 and two counts of open and gross lewdness.Pearson, a 40-year-old landscaper, who is pleading not guilty,according to his lawyer, is accused of molesting five boys ages9 to 15, four of whom he coached, between 1994 and '99. Policesay that the case began after a 10-year-old boy who played forPearson broke down in tears in his parents' bedroom and toldthem that Pearson--who had been invited to attend the boy'sbirthday party several days later--had molested him numeroustimes. According to their parents, some of the boys Pearsonallegedly molested remain traumatized. One mother told SI thather 10-year-old son, one of the purported victims, became sofearful of being in any of the rooms in which Pearson hadallegedly molested him that she and the boy had to move out oftheir apartment. "The only two places he would go were mybedroom and the kitchen," she says. "He wouldn't go in theliving room. He wouldn't go in his room. I couldn't see raisingmy son in a place where he was petrified."
Parents of Pearson's purported victims offered SI severalreasons why he got away with his alleged molesting for so long.One was that he was so personable. Another was that, at leastfor a while, he had a girlfriend. (Police say that he never hadsex with her.) Perhaps the most commonly cited reason was thathe was such a gifted coach. He took a losing team and turned itinto a winning one. "We were blinded by the winning and the funwe were having," says "David White,"* the father of a boyPearson allegedly molested.
At practices Pearson kept the atmosphere upbeat and workedpatiently with his players to teach them proper technique. "Wemight work a whole practice on rundowns," says a parent. "Kidsloved that. If somebody wasn't using two hands to make a catch,he'd have him not open his mitt and catch the ball with theoutside of the mitt, forcing the kid to use his other hand. Theywere excellent drills--and they'd work."
Parents acknowledge that they were so enraptured by Pearson thatthey ignored a possible warning sign: He spent inordinateamounts of time with the boys off the field, taking them to seemovies, to the golf course and on desert outings. On some of thedesert visits, police allege, Pearson took along two boys andplayed a lubricious game with them. Everyone would flip aquarter simultaneously, after which, depending on how the coinslanded, the players would either have to touch Pearson'sgenitals or let him touch theirs.
The boys' parents are now left to wonder why they found nothingsuspicious in Pearson's deep involvement with their kids. "Isthis a normal situation?" White asks. "A 40-year-old guy who'sliving with his mom, helping coach little boys, who doesn't havea kid on that team? Is that normal?"
Of course, not all such coaches should be seen as pedophiles.Nor are single men the only pedophiles. On June 18, in anIllinois courtroom filled with the parents and relatives ofvictims, a Cook County judge sentenced Michael Hughes, 33, to 27years in prison after Hughes pleaded guilty to molesting eightboys, ages 12 to 14, most of them members of his youth footballteam in the Chicago suburb of Streamwood. Hughes sexually abusedmost of the boys downstairs during sleepovers at his HanoverPark house, while his wife and two young daughters were in bedupstairs.
"The biggest mistake people can make is to think that it justdoesn't happen here, that we're safe," says FBI special agentRoger Young, an expert on crimes against children, who worked onthe Pearson case. "The size of the town doesn't matter--sexualexploitation of children occurs everywhere."
Watson and Hughes fit the broad profile of the child molestermost often found in youth sports. Though Hughes was married,most such molesters are not. The majority are white males whohave average to high IQs and extremely good verbal andinterpersonal skills. The majority also claim they were molestedas children (though only a small percentage of victims becomemolesters). While in youth sports leagues the crime most ofteninvolves men molesting boys, experts don't view molestation as ahomosexual phenomenon; in other settings, such as the home, menmolest girls far more often than boys. Nor is pedophiliacurable. Like alcoholics, however, molesters can be treated(generally with drugs that diminish their libido), and like alladdicts, they are cautioned to stay away from that to which theyare addicted--in this case, children.
Kenneth Lanning, an FBI supervisory agent who has writtenextensively about child molesters, divides them into two groups.The so-called situational child molester isn't a true pedophilebecause he doesn't prefer having sex with children; rather, heturns to them for any number of reasons--out of boredom orcuriosity, in response to a precipitating stress or simplybecause he is sexually or morally indiscriminate. It's theso-called preferential child molester who's the genuinepedophile, who prefers to have sex with children and seeks themout as partners.
In this second group, there's the "introverted" type, who lacksthe interpersonal skills necessary to court a child, so heforcibly molests very young children, or makes obscene phonecalls, or exposes himself to kids, or wanders through cyberspacechat rooms talking to children and fellow pedophiles. There'salso a "seductor" type, and this is the kind of pedophile mostlikely to seek work as a coach of children--the likable, chatty,often witty guy who finds in sports an accessible pool ofchildren to prey on. He uses his position as a coach to win overthe kids' parents and, through patience and stealth, breaks downthe children's inhibitions until he's able to seduce and molestthem. Most such pedophiles have an age preference, but whatreally sets them apart from situational and introvertedoffenders is the often staggering number of boys they seduce.These sex offenders "will molest more children than any othertype," says Young, "anywhere from 12 in a lifetime up to 500 or600." (Studies have found that the average preferential molestervictimizes about 120 children before he is caught.)
Seductors aren't violent; they don't force their victims to havesex. Stemming from ancient Greek, the word pedophile literallymeans "lover of children," and in fact the seductor sees himselfas a kind of Don Juan of deviance. He's the pied piper ofmolesters. Children often adore him. Parents see him as just themale role model their boys need and invite him to Thanksgivingdinner. All the while, of course, the pedophile is picking outhis targets--the boy he senses needs attention, the boy whoreminds him of himself when he was young. He believes he trulydoes love the boys in a way that raises him above other abusers.Lanning says that these seducers see themselves as a breed ofpedophile apart. "They get along so well with kids," Lanningsays. "They like to talk like this: 'Society confuses us,' theysay. 'They mix us up with those guys who abduct and use forceand brutalize children. We are child lovers! I've had sex with ahundred children, but I've always asked.'"
While society has no trouble envisioning the violent molesterand the child who is forced to submit to a sexual predator, manypeople are baffled by how adult seducers are able to get youngathletes to go along with them voluntarily. "These men seducechildren, in this case boys, in exactly the same way that menand women have been seducing each other since the dawn ofmankind," Lanning says. In other words, they flirt with them,laugh at their jokes and shower them with attention, with gifts,with affection. "They size up their weaknesses, theirvulnerabilities, their needs," Lanning says. "They will targetthe kids who are more vulnerable, the kids who are not havingtheir needs met elsewhere. Kids from broken homes or whosefathers travel a lot. A lot of these guys will specialize ascoaches on inner-city teams or as coaches of troubled youth."
These extended courtships, which are calculated to break downthe child's inhibitions, might take weeks or even months, butthe determined pedophile coach knows exactly what he's doing andhow to take advantage of his position of authority and trust.Lanning believes there's no easier target for seduction than anadolescent boy. The youngster is not only at a stage of sexualexploration, an innocent in search of his sexual identity, buthe's also often in rebellion against his parents, bent on takingrisks. And all of this comes at a time when his hormones are infull gallop.
"The only difference between seducing an adolescent boy andseducing a woman is that it's about a thousand times easier toseduce the boy," says Lanning. "Why? The ease of sexual arousal.What does it take to give a 14-year-old boy an erection? A rideon a school bus and two potholes. You are talking about a boywho can be aroused by almost anything." Add to this alreadyvolatile mix the use of alcohol, marijuana and videopornography, all used by some molesters to further erodeinhibitions, and the seduction can occur with surprising ease.
Alcohol, pot and porn all played a part in Hughes's scenariosfor seduction. First Hughes captured the hearts, minds and trustof the parents. One single mother invited him to holiday dinnersand her children's birthday parties. "He was very sensitive,"she says. "He'd give you the shirt off his back. I never knewanything was going on." Another couple, wanting to go out tocelebrate their wedding anniversary, had Hughes baby-sit their13-year-old football-player son at Hughes's house. While theparents were out, Hughes molested their boy. "I feel realbetrayed," says the mother. Hughes was described by more thanone parent as a "great guy" who provoked no strong suspicionsover the large amounts of time he was spending with the boys.
In 1984 Hughes had been convicted on two counts of taking"indecent liberties" with a child in a community near Streamwoodand was sentenced to four years probation. This didn't come tolight during the years he coached in Streamwood because no onelooked into his past. Hughes resigned in late 1996 afterStreamwood Park District officials decided to do criminalbackground checks on all of their volunteer coaches; Hughesobjected strenuously to the checks. When he quit, he toldparents he had "scheduling conflicts" at work. The parents werestill ignorant of his past, and Hughes continued to come aroundand hang with the boys at some practices and games. "He wasstill very involved talking to the kids," says the father of thevictim for whom Hughes had babysat.
Hughes seemed an ideal companion for the boys. "He was a nice,nice man," the mother of one victim says. "The kids idolized him.A real fun-loving guy. He was just a big kid at heart. The boysliked him so much. They'd have done anything for him."
Through one victim after another, Hughes's modus operandi wasremarkably similar from the summer of 1996 through May '97, whenhe was having the sleepovers, usually for one child at a time."We thought he was having a bunch of boys over," one parentsaid. Typically, Hughes would take the boy for a ride in hiscar, give him Mountain Dew laced with Seagram's Seven--sometimesHughes would also offer the kid marijuana--and then drive him toHughes's place, where he would pop a pornographic flick into theVCR. While the movie was showing, he would massage the boy'sshoulders and eventually molest him.
That Hughes could follow this routine with a succession of boysbefore he was caught isn't surprising. "In these cases the kidsalmost never tell," says Lanning, who lectures on child sexualabuse to police investigators. "I've been talking about thisdynamic for a long time. It's not uncommon, when I finish aclass, that a police officer will come up and say that somethinglike that happened to him when he was a boy: 'I've never toldanybody about this.' I say, 'Why are you telling me?' He says,'You described exactly what happened to me. So I knew you'dunderstand.'"
There are numerous reasons why children don't report sexualexploitation. Adolescent boys fear being teased about having hadsex with a man. "The stigma of homosexuality--probably much theworst thing that can happen to a boy," Lanning says. They alsofear that their parents might, in Lanning's words, "goballistic," and they're embarrassed that they have beenvictimized and duped. "I didn't want people finding out what washappening," one of Hughes's victims says. "I was flabbergastedwhen he did it to me. I didn't know what to say. I was high onpot and drunk, and I thought, I better go along. He was mycoach! I was embarrassed about it. I'm still embarrassed aboutit."
Societal ignorance about the nature of pedophilia is anotherthing that keeps victims from coming forward. "These kids get tothe point where they are willing to trade sex for attention,affection, kindness, gifts or money," says Lanning. "People say,'Who'd do that?' The answer, as best I can figure out, is justabout everybody." Much easier to understand, of course, is thechild who claims he didn't tell because the abuser threatenedhis life. "That's what we want to believe," Lanning says. "Theguy had a giant machete hidden in his closet, and he told me hewould cut off my genitals and murder my dog if I told. We'd allbe ecstatic over that. That's what we want to believe: Fear andthreats of violence. When the boy tells something more probable,like trading sex for kindness and attention, society doesn'tunderstand that.... They don't tell because, correctly, theyrecognize that society doesn't understand what happened to them,doesn't understand the seduction process."
So reluctant are victims to come forward and so persistent arepedophiles that Hughes and Watson would surely still bemolesting children today had fate not intervened. In the springof 1997, around the time that Hughes, who worked as a salesmanfor a video company, abused three boys at once in his office--hemolested the boys one at a time while the other two watched--themother of another victim was folding her son's underwear andputting it in a drawer when she saw, hidden among the clothes, aletter written by her son to his girlfriend. All she noticed atfirst was the word drunk, written in large letters. Curious, sheread the letter. It told how Hughes had gotten the boy drunk andthen "sexually harassed" him. After showing the letter toanother football mother, she confronted her son and told himthey needed to report Hughes to the police. The boy got angry."Just leave it alone!" he told her.
"He was only 13, and he was scared and embarrassed," the mothersays. "He thought he was the only one involved." She reportedHughes to authorities. Soon, under police questioning, otherboys told similar tales, and Hughes was called in forquestioning. He confessed. Hughes has been in jail ever since.He was originally accused of molesting nine boys, but that wasreduced to eight when the boy whose letter to his girlfriend hadlaunched the investigation died in a minibike accident.
In Watson's case, Michael Egelhoff, who had been molested by himas an 11-year-old Little Leaguer in Riverside in 1975, was sohaunted by that abuse that he asked a private detective to seeif Watson was still coaching children. The incident had occurred23 years before, and Egelhoff was now living in Portland, buthis own two children were becoming increasingly active insports, and the thought of them playing and the memory of whathappened to him pushed Egelhoff to find his old seducer. "Itjust really bugged me," says Egelhoff. "This guy had amysterious way of brainwashing people, and I just kind ofclammed up about it for many years. Something stuck in my brain,and it just kept nagging at me.... Something kept telling methat this guy didn't quit."
The detective called Egelhoff back two weeks later. "I'm reallyhappy you had me find the guy," the investigator said. "He's backin Little League."
When word got around San Bernardino that Watson might have ahistory as a child molester, two members of the East Base LineLittle League board, Tom and Dee Simanek, went to the SanBernardino County Sheriff's Department and called up Watson'sname on the Megan's Law CD-ROM sex-offender registry. There hewas, complete with his criminal record and even his picture,identified as a high-risk sex offender. "I was hysterical," DeeSimanek says. "This man was in my house, he stayed in my house,and I just couldn't deal with it."
By the time the Simaneks (whose sons were not among thosemolested by Watson) made their discovery, Watson was a practicedliar and manipulator. After three years at Patton StateHospital, to which a California Superior Court judge hadcommitted him for a maximum of seven years as a mentallydisordered sex offender, Watson handwrote a letter in January1984 seeking an early release: "My crimes (the only ones I everhad are child molest) are not anything to be proud of nor is myhistory of these crimes something to ignore. I havethough...come to grips with many factors and know that my childmolesting is something that has been replaced with those normalhealthy sexual thoughts that I was afraid to acknowledge for solong.... Given a chance to return to the community, I know I canand will make it."
Watson was out of Patton State Hospital a month later andumpiring and coaching Little League inside a year. He wasreturned to Patton in June 1985 when a mental health officialfound that he had concealed his involvement in youth baseballduring court-ordered outpatient counseling. He was free 16months later. Over the next three years Watson remained underthe supervision of health authorities but frequently missedcounseling sessions. Nevertheless he was released fromoutpatient therapy in '90; that was the year he became a growingpresence on the East Base Line Little League field. That was theyear, too, that he began sexually molesting the first of hisvictims there.
"One of the first things he did was make friends with myparents," says "Mitch," now 18, one of the boys Watson molestedfor years. "He would start talking to my parents before he evenreally talked to me."
Watson, who had various jobs, including one as aplumbing-supplies salesman, was single and lived here and there,at times in parents' garages. He spent much of his time aroundthe boys on his team. He played Monopoly and Scrabble and cardswith them and their families. He bought one boy an expensive NFLteam jacket and Nike shoes. He took some of his players bowlingand to the movies. "He was like family," says Mitch's father."He went on vacations with people, he went on holidays, he wasinvited over on Christmas morning. He was part of the Base Linefamily."
"He learned your movements," says Dee Simanek. "He learned whatyour likes and dislikes were. I took him to the movies for hisbirthday--to see Star Trek. He would really get into it. He knewI was an Elvis fan, so he bought me all this Elvis stuff. Heknew how to infiltrate your family."
Watson smiles faintly when the word infiltrate is repeated tohim. "I definitely did that," he says. "My advantage is I have agood personality. People are drawn to me. They want me to shaketheir hand in public, stand in their pictures. I knew how to bepopular in that Little League environment. It gave me a sense ofpower, but more a sense of belonging, which is something I lackedin my life. When I wasn't around Little League, I was lost. Itwasn't just the boys. It was the whole Little League family thatI think fell in love with me. But I did a lot of this just forthe availability of kids."
Unlike Hughes, Watson didn't use alcohol or pornography tosoften his victims. "I felt if I had to use something artificialto get the affection and the gratification I was seeking, itwasn't worth it," he says. "I picked kids who would have beenlike me at that age--outgoing, active in sports, respectful,someone I could joke around with. It wasn't just about sex. Iwould be with them for six hours and maybe only 15 minutes of itwould be sexual."
Lanning says coach sex offenders often cop this plea. "It ismore than sex," he says. "They're out in the sports fields withthem, playing ball with them and laughing and joking with them.But what you have to understand is this: If it weren't for the15 minutes of sex, there wouldn't be the six hours of beingtogether. At some point there has to be sex."
For two years Watson molested Mitch repeatedly. He had not onlybeen his attentive coach--"My best coach ever," Mitch says--butalso, in the boy's words, "one of my best friends. He would talkabout sex a lot. And to me it just seemed like I was talking toa friend. He kind of inched his way in there to where I feltcomfortable talking to him. I trusted him." Watson manipulatedMitch into having sex with him by telling him that one ofMitch's older friends had allowed Watson similar liberties. "Ithelped make me think it was O.K.," says Mitch.
The boy was clearly trading sex for kindness and attention, andthe experience was killing him inside. "I was confused," hesays. "I knew I didn't like it. I cried and felt angry about itall the time, but I didn't know what to do to stop it. I knewthat if I just stopped going places with him, my parents wouldsay, 'What's up with Norm?' and then I'd have to tell them. Ialso knew that as long as it was happening to me, it wasn'thappening to anybody else. I thought that I could change him,that I could make him stop doing it and still not lose anythingfrom the relationship."
The seductor follows four distinct steps, according to Lanning:"He recruits, he seduces, he molests and then he breaks it offand moves on." Given his preference for boys between 11 and 14,Watson had always told Mitch that one day their relationshipwould have to end. Mitch recalls, "He told me, 'Soon you'regoing to get older and you're going to do your own thing.' Ididn't really understand what he meant."
Mitch learned soon enough. When he turned 14, he says, Watsonstarted molesting one of Mitch's younger friends, going back andforth between him and Mitch. "When I turned 15, there wasn'tmuch talking to me anymore," Mitch says. "It was all about himand all my [younger] friends.... Honestly, I think I felt kindof betrayed but relieved at the same time that it was finallyover." What Mitch didn't know was that Watson had startedmolesting Mitch's younger brother, "Wayne," then 13. "Normpromised me it would never happen to [Wayne]," Mitch says.
About a year after Watson's jilting of Mitch, the Simaneks foundWatson on the sex-offender registry. Watson's world had begun tocave in around him, but not before he appeared to be saved byhis hold on other parents. So strong was Watson's grip on theLittle League community that when the Simaneks approachedincoming board president Cassandra Bassett with the news ofWatson's history, Watson was able to convince Bassett and theother members that they had nothing to fear in allowing him tocontinue to coach. "I know I've changed," he lied. "I'm a goodperson. I've forgiven myself. That's not me anymore." The boardousted the Simaneks and one member even asked Watson if heneeded a lawyer.
"Wouldn't you lie?" Watson asks. "I didn't want to lose what Ihad. I gave them what should have been an obvious lie--the old'That's not me anymore.' I gave them the runaround, and theywanted to believe me."
Never is the seductor more vulnerable to being caught than whenhe breaks off a relationship with a victim. "Now the kid comesto the realization that the guy used him," says Lanning. Mitch,feeling betrayed--doubly so when he learned of the molesting ofhis younger brother--told his girlfriend and his parents whatWatson had been doing to him all those months and turned him into police. Sitting in the office of the detective assigned tothe case, Mike DiMatteo of the San Bernardino sheriff'sdepartment, Mitch told DiMatteo the names of all those hesuspected Watson of molesting. DiMatteo then confronted Watson,who confessed.
Mitch admits he was torn about whether to break his longsilence. "To me [Watson] had been such a friend that it was kindof like I was betraying him," he says. "Not that I wanted tohurt him, but that I didn't want it to happen to other people.Recently I've had a lot of anger, but I don't know. It's hard toexplain."
Bassett wasn't the first person fooled by a master seductor, butshe still agonizes over her role in defending Watson when theSimaneks divulged his history. When Watson was arrested,Bassett, whose son was not among those Watson molested, wasstunned. "I stayed nauseous for a long time, and it still makesme sick to my stomach," she says. "How could that go on right inyour face and you not see it? You could tell yourself a hundredtimes how easy it is, but it doesn't matter. You still feelstupid. You're supposed to be smarter than your children. You'resupposed to see these things."
The family of Mitch and Wayne is still lost in grief. Thefather, who is disabled, thought Watson was a godsend, playingball with Mitch and Wayne and doing what the dad could not dofor his sons. "I had no idea he was using my weakness to getinto our lives, to get with our boys," he says. "It is almostunbearable to think of. He destroyed our family."
Through all the therapy he has undergone, for all the boys hehas abused, Watson claims he never realized the pain he wascausing until Mitch told him about it. Watson closes his eyesand can't speak as he hears the boy's words: "I can't even ridein the van with my dad without being nervous, Norm. I'm scaredof men."
Watson left a swath of human ruin in his wake, just as emotionalwreckage lies everywhere child molesters have been. There's thefrightened girl Watson molested, who for years would wake upscreaming in the night and could not sleep in her own bed. Thereare the kids from Streamwood who stayed out of school, shyingfrom the taunts of "
{censored}" by their peers. There are all thoseparents who berate themselves daily for what their sons wentthrough. "I feel like I failed as a father," the parent of oneStreamwood victim says.
When Hughes was pleading for mercy at his sentencing hearing, hesaid, "I have sinned. I have caused a great deal of pain to manypeople, and for that I am truly sorry. None here can know theamount of remorse I feel. None here can know the sorrow and theguilt that I carry."
Oh, yes, they can--from their own experience, from theheartbreak his crimes have caused them. They all, the victimsand their families, can feel their own remorse, sorrow andguilt. And forever will. *The names of minors and some parents have been changed.