Boston Sexual Abuse Lawyer Blog

A Queens, NY judge has rejected Bob Oliva's motion to dismiss the $20 million lawsuit filed by a man who was sexually abused by the former Christ the King Regional High School basketball coach.

The decision by Queens Supreme Court Judge Roger N. Rosengarten means the case will go to trial later this year unless Oliva's attorney, Henry Weil, files an appeal or Oliva reaches a settlement with the plaintiff, Jimmy Carlino.

"The trial will continue to expose Bob Oliva for the sexual predator that he is," Carlino's Boston-based attorney, Mitchell Garabedian, told the New York Daily News.

The Daily News reported that Oliva admitted in a Boston courtroom last year that he had sexually abused Carlino during a trip to Massachusetts in 1976, when Carlino was 14. Oliva was sentenced to probation for five years and required to register as a sex offender.

Weil had argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because it was barred by the statute of limitations and Oliva had not been charged or convicted of abusing Carlino in New York.

Rosengarten wrote in his decision that under New York law, the clock on the statute of limitation is reset after a defendant is convicted of a crime -- and that it doesn't matter where the crime occurred or where the defendant was charged.

The lawsuit, filed on April 1, 2011, three days before Oliva pleaded guilty to two sex-abuse charges, says the disgraced former coach abused Carlino more than 100 times between 1974 and 1978. Most of the abuse took place in New York, the suit says, but Oliva also molested Carlino during out-of-state trips.

Another man told the Boston grand jury that indicted Oliva that the legendary coach had sexually abused him also.

The Boston Globe reported today that a plea deal to resolve sexual abuse charges stemming from the alleged molestations of three former students of Brookline's Maimonides School collapsed at the last minute when Rabbi Stanley Z. Levitt decided that he would not plead guilty to the charges and would instead take his case to a jury.

With Levitt's alleged victims prepared to read victim impact statements concerning allegations dating to the mid-1970s, Levitt's attorney declared that although an agreement for a guilty plea had been reached, Levitt had changed his mind, the Globe reported.

The turnabout prompted harsh criticism of Levitt and his attorney, Scott Curtis, from Suffolk Superior Court Judge Carol S. Ball, who pointed out that two of the alleged victims had traveled a considerable distance to Boston in anticipation of witnessing an admission of guilt by Levitt. "I would have hoped you or your client would have had the courtesy to let these people know before traveling to Boston,'' Ball said, speaking to Curtis. "It's like adding insult to injury.''

At another point during the hearing, Ball added that it was "the height of discourtesy'' for Curtis not to inform prosecutors of Levitt's change of heart in time to allow the alleged victims and family members to change their travel plans.

Levitt, asked outside the courtroom if he had been discourteous to his alleged victims with his last-minute change of heart, said, "The only victim here is me.''

Michael Brecher, one of the three former sixth-graders who has accused Levitt of abuse, said prosecutors told him that Levitt backed out of the plea agreement at the last minute after refusing to admit his guilt in open court.

"He couldn't do what I have wanted him to do all along, which is to take responsibility for his actions,'' Brecher said.

With a trial date set for May 14, Curtis said Levitt's defense will be based on the fact that the allegations lodged against him are more than 35 years old.

Continue reading "Accused Brookline rabbi backs off plea deal, seeks jury trial" »

Accused child molester Ernest Lorch, the founder of the prestigious Riverside Church (NY) basketball program, is not competent to be extradited to Massachusetts to stand trial for sexual abuse, a Westchester judge ruled in White Plains, as reported by the Daily News.

State Supreme Court Judge Albert Lorenzo made the ruling after prosecutor Carrie Russell of Massachusetts' Northwestern District Attorney's office said at an extradition hearing that she would not contest three experts' claims that Lorch suffers from dementia.

But Lorch is not off the hook in Massachusetts just yet. Lorenzo said he could review the case in three months. Northwestern District Attorney David Sullivan said his office will review the case to determine if it should continue its efforts to bring Lorch to Massachusetts to stand trial.

"We want to look at the case and make sure his condition is permanent," Sullivan told the Daily News. "It is disheartening for an individual that we wanted to bring to justice to slip through the justice system because of his condition. We will make a decision in the next month."

Lorch, 79, was indicted by a western Massachusetts grand jury in October 2010 on attempted rape and indecent assault and battery of a person over 14 years old.

The indictment said Lorch assaulted the alleged victim sometime between March 1977 and April 1978 during a trip to Amherst for a basketball tournament. The indecent assault and battery charge was later dropped because it was not on the books until after the attack allegedly occurred.

Mitchell Garabedian, the victim's Boston attorney, said his client is "disappointed" that Lorch may not be prosecuted because of his failing health.

"He wanted the truth to come to light," Garabedian told the Daily News. "My client should be proud for coming forward and reporting sex abuse. By doing so, he made the world a safer place."

Garabedian said he is trying to determine if the ruling will permit him to proceed with a civil suit against Lorch and Riverside Church.

The state Appeals Court has overturned the conviction of a Lowell woman found guilty along with her husband in 1997 of drugging and raping their four sons because she may have been incompetent to stand trial.

The court in its decision last week said a Superior Court judge erred in 2002 when he denied Nancy Adkinson's motion for a new trial. The judge said even though Adkinson suffered from abuse at the hands of her husband, a competency hearing was not required.

The Appeals Court said in its decision that the Superior Court judge's definition of competency was "too narrow" and there was "substantial evidence" that Adkinson was incompetent.

Prosecutors told The Sun of Lowell that they are reviewing the ruling.

Adkinson was sentenced to 35 to 40 years in prison.

A Boston doctor avoided going to trial by admitting to a judge yesterday that he traveled to Alaska in 2009 with the intention of having sex with a 6-year-old boy. The Associated Press reports that John Mark Felton, a 47-year-old research physician, was to be tried Monday in US District Court in Anchorage. He decided instead to plead guilty as part of a plea agreement.

Felton had pled guilty to traveling to Anchorage on Nov. 16, 2009, to engage in illicit sexual conduct. At sentencing on Sept. 13, he is expected to receive between 20 and 30 years in prison.

Prosecutors said Felton was in a child-sex chat room on Feb. 28, 2008, when he began conversing with a man who he believed was offering his young grandson for sex. He told the man, who was actually an undercover agent with the US Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, that he would travel to Alaska to have sex with the boy.

When Felton was arrested at the Anchorage airport, he had a Spiderman child's costume.

The AP reports that Felton -- who at the time lived in a luxury condominium in Boston's Back Bay neighborhood and was vice president of clinical operations at a vaccine development company in Cambridge, Mass. -- waited nearly a year and a half before reaching out to the man again. The trip was planned in e-mails over the next few weeks.

Felton, who at times trembled in his chair while seated next to his lawyer, was asked during the change-of-plea hearing if the facts of the government's case against him were true.

"Ah, yes,'' he told US District Court Judge Ralph Beistline.

Felton, a British national who moved to Boston in 2008, will have to register as a sex offender and will be deported when he is released from prison.

The Berkshire Eagle reports that Gary Mercure, the Catholic priest, could spend the rest of his life in prison for raping two altar boys in the Berkshires.
It took less than two hours for a Berkshire Superior Court jury to convict the 62-year-old on three counts of forcible child rape and one count of indecent assault and battery on a child younger than 14.
The charges stem from separate crimes committed by Mercure in 1986 and 1989, when he raped altar boys from his former Catholic church in Queensbury during day trips to the Berkshires.

Judge John A. Agostini ordered the Troy, N.Y., clergyman to be held without bail at the Berkshire County Jail & House of Correction until he is sentenced Wednesday at 2 p.m.
Mercure smiled at his crying sister as he was led away in handcuffs.
Mercure, who was permanently removed from ministry in New York in 2008 but technically remains a priest, plans to challenge the conviction.

Several of the priest's victims were present when Thursday's guilty verdicts were handed down. Afterward, one victim wiped tears from his eyes while making a call on his cell phone, while others embraced Berkshire First Assistant District Attorney Paul J. Caccaviello and Assistant District Attorney Marianne Shelvey, the prosecutors who tried the case.
The victims were escorted from the Pittsfield courthouse by plainclothes Massachusetts State Police troopers and court officers, who prevented members of the media from approaching them.
Caccaviello said the victims didn't wish to speak with the reporters who crowded the courthouse hallway with television cameras and microphones.
"They're still processing this," he said.
Caccaviello said Mercure's conviction should bring some closure to the victims, who remained mum about the abuse for more than 20 years.
"We're very gratified for that verdict," he said, calling the victims "heroes" for coming forward.
Asked how the victims were faring, Caccaviello replied, "Right now, there's a whole range of emotions."
The Berkshire District Attorney's Office hasn't yet formulated its sentencing recommendation, but Mercure could spend the rest of his life behind bars. "He's been convicted of life felonies," Caccaviello said.
So much of the trial's testimony focused on individuals and events from New York, with only a fraction of the testimony pertaining to the Berkshire County assaults.
"It presented difficult challenges," Caccaviello admitted.
However, the jury ultimately believed the testimony of the five altar boys who accused Mercure of long-term sexual abuse in New York during the 1980s.
Two of those men also testified that Mercure raped them during car trips to the Berkshires, including a 1986 outing to a hiking area bordering Great Barrington and Monterey and a 1989 trip to the former Brodie Mountain Ski Area in New Ashford.
"I think that the jury could tell that our two victims were credible," Caccaviello said.
All of the former altar boys hail from New York and are now in their 30s, including one who's the father of an infant child.

Continue reading "Mercure Convicted of Child Rape" »

A sexual assault case against a Connecticut man involving a 14-year-old girl took an unexpected turn at Hartford Superior Court when a Massachusetts woman appeared with a new allegation of abuse that allegedly occurred in Somerville 21 years ago, as reported by the Somerville Patch website.

Nelson M. Kawakami, 57, of 401 Prospect Ave., West Hartford, Conn., was expected in court January 19 for a plea hearing on multiple felony charges, including second-degree sexual assault and five counts of felony risk of injury to a child.

Superior Court Judge John F. Cronan instead abruptly issued a continuance before his court opened for public business. The request for a continuance was not made by the defense, but by the judge, whose office the Massachusetts woman, now 30, contacted.

Kawakami is now scheduled to return to court March 2.

Outside of court was a Massachusetts woman who says authorities were recently informed that she also was allegedly sexually assaulted by Kawakami, a relative, when she was 9 and living in Somerville. She has not filed a police report.

The Massachusetts woman was at Superior Court with a sister, 29, and their mother, 57. Until Wednesday, they said they have not seen Kawakami in 15 years and became aware of the case in the news.

"We just want to support the 14-year-old girl," the woman's sister said.

Details of the Massachusetts woman's alleged abuse were apparently e-mailed to authorities. A statement was faxed to Superior Court Jan. 3. The woman no longer lives in Somerville.

Without a sworn statement reporting a crime, the woman's claims against Kawakami would not be admissable evidence in court.

Kawakami, who was arrested by police Nov. 18, remains free on $75,000 bail.

The alleged West Hartford sexual assault occurred June 1, 2006, West Hartford police said. The victim revealed the alleged abuse to police last year. At the time of the alleged assault, Kawakami was working as a contractor at the victim's home, police said.

Other details emerged from the West Hartford police arrest warrant.

The Connecticut victim, now 19, came to the police station Sept. 17 with two other women and filed a sexual assault complaint. One of the women was Kawakami's wife, Marlene Kawakami, who was described as a friend of the victim.

Marlene and Nelson Kawakami have been married 29 years, according to the arrest warrant. Mr. Kawakami later provided a sworn confession, police said.

The Albany Times-Union reports that an alleged victim of Gary Mercure, a former Roman Catholic priest charged with raping two young altar boys, told a jury Thursday that Mercure would take him into the rectory and have him close his eyes and pray as the priest fondled and abused him.

Mercure, 62, is on trial in Berkshire County Court on three counts of rape of a child with force and one count of indecent assault and battery on a child under the age of 14.
The first of the alleged victims to take the stand was a 35-year-old man from North Creek (NY) who was an altar boy at Our Lady of the Annunciation Church in Glens Falls when Mercure was stationed there. The man said Mercure started abusing him when he was 7 or 8 years old.

All through the testimony of both alleged victims, Mercure sat calmly and looked straight at them nodding his head 'yes' or shaking his head 'no' at questions by First Assistant District Attorney Paul Caccaviello and responses by the witnesses.
During his opening statements, Caccaviello said one of the victims for years poked holes in his bedroom wall and hid the underwear he wore during the abuse incidents.
''Years later the parents are doing remodeling and find all of their son's underwear stuffed into a wall,'' Caccaviello said.
Jurors looked disturbed by some of the testimony and some leaned forward to get a better look at Mercure's reactions to the witnesses statements.
The second or the victims, now 34 and living in Glens Falls, said he also met Mercure and became an altar boy at the same church when he was 7 or 8 years old.
When he was 9, Mercure took him to a lake to swim and then allegedly attacked him when they got back to the car, he said.
''I was raped,'' the man said. ''He physically had sex with me and hurt me. He said if my parents asked what happened to say I got hurt on the rocks.''
One of the alleged victims said Mercure would touch him while they dressed before Mass.
''He grabbed my penis,'' the man said. ''I did not know what to say. I was confused and scared.''
Warren County District Attorney Kate Hogan investigated claims of the two alleged victims and others against Mercure in 2008 but charges could not be brought because the statute of limitations in New York had elapsed. But during her investigation, Hogan learned of separate trips the men made with Mercure to Berkshire County, one victim in 1986 and the other in 1989. Massachusetts law allows charges to be brought against Mercure for those incidents.
One alleged victim said Mercure took him to a trail head in Berkshire County and allegedly raped him in the back seat of the car. The other recalled a ski outing to Brodie Mountain with Mercure when he was also allegedly raped in the back seat.
Mercure's attorney, Michael Jennings of Springfield, urged the jury in his opening arguments to ignore the testimony they will hear regarding incidents in New York.
''Through this all Mr. Mercure has been dragged into the public square and branded a rapist,'' Jennings said. ''You are going to hear evidence that will disturb you, make you angry. You have to push that off to the side and keep an open mind.''
Mercure, who also served in two Troy parishes and at a church in Albany, was permanently suspended from ministry in August 2008, which means he cannot dress as a priest or celebrate Mass. Mercure was not officially defrocked (permanently removed from the priesthood). Only the Vatican can make that decision, officials said.

Plea negotiations have broken down for former Holyoke teacher Lisa M. Lavoie, who is accused of running off with a 15-year-old student, scuttling a change of plea hearing scheduled for this week, according to the Springfield Republican.

Lavoie, 25, of Ludlow, was scheduled to plead guilty in Hampden Superior Court before Judge Cornelius J. Moriarty to some charges related to her multi-state flight with an eight-grader at the Maurice A. Donahue Elementary School in 2009.

Assistant District Attorney Patrick S. Sabbs told the judge that sentencing discussions between Lavoie's lawyer and his office broke off during the weekend, leaving the outcome of the case uncertain.

"I think we will be able to work something out by the end of the year," Sabbs said, referring to the end of William M. Bennett's tenure as district attorney.

Lavoie's lawyer, David P. Hoose, of Northampton, who was awaiting a jury verdict in a federal court case, could not be reached for comment. At Saab's request, Moriarty set a January 20 trial date in case no plea deal could be arranged.

The former teacher at the Maurice A. Donahue Elementary School has been free on $25,000 cash bail since pleading innocent in March 2009 to six counts of statutory rape and one of enticement of a child under the age of 16 in a case involving a then-eighth-grader.

Investigators said a relationship developed between Lavoie and her student in fall 2008, and the two began texting and e-mailing before having sex.

In February 2009, the pair fled Western Massachusetts after learning their relationship had been discovered. They were found a week later in a motel room in Morgantown, W.Va.

Prosecutors have said that Lavoie and the teen drove through Vermont, New Hampshire, Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania as authorities pursued them.

The six statutory rape counts include three of aggravated statutory rape, a charge established under a bill known as "Jessica's Law" that was signed into law a year ago, prosecutors have said. Those charges carry a 10-year mandatory minimum prison sentence.

The aggravated rape charges were issued because, as a teacher, Lavoie was a so-called mandatory reporter responsible for reporting any suspected physical or sexual abuse of her students. The teen was placed in foster care after his return to Massachusetts, officials said in previous court proceedings.

A Sudbury nursing home resident who said she was sexually assaulted by an employee of the home more than a year ago will be allowed to testify at his trial, a judge has ruled, as reported by the Metrowest Daily News.

Ruby McDonough will be allowed to testify against Kofi Agana in his Framingham District Court trial on Jan. 12, 2011 Judge Robert Greco said. McDonough has been diagnosed with expressive aphasia, a condition that makes it difficult for her to communicate verbally or through writing.

McDonough had previously been ruled incompetent to testify by a Framingham District Court judge, but the state Supreme Judicial Court made a ruling that the judge erred by not allowing her to have an aide assist in her testimony.

McDonough, through her lawyer Wendy Murphy, was seeking to have that incompetence ruling overturned. Greco did not specifically overturn the ruling because he said the ruling did not make a judgement about her mental capacity. He said it was a ruling on her ability to testify.

After the ruling, a visibly happy McDonough gave a thumbs up to Murphy.

"The fact that she's being allowed to testify is the same as saying she is competent,'' said Murphy to the Daily News. "She's so happy."

Greco said McDonough will be able to testify with some accommodations, such as yes or no questions and being allowed to take a longer time than usual to answer questions. However, he did not rule how much an expert will be allowed to assist in the testimony.

Agana's lawyer, Robert Canty, said he expects that to be addressed in the final pretrial motions decided on the day of the trial.

Agana, 49, was arrested in February, 2009, and charged with indecent assault and battery on a person older than 14. He is in federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody because an immigration judge ordered that he be deported to Ghana.

The trial of a former Catholic priest on child sexual abuse charges has been postponed again -- the third time the trial has been adjourned since July, according to the Glens Falls Post Star, an upstate NY newspaper.

Gary Mercure was to stand trial Nov. 1, but the case has been postponed because of "unavailability of the prosecutor," according to the Berkshire Superior Court Clerk's Office.

Mercure has been indicted on charges he sexually abused two boys in the Pittsfield, Mass., area in the 1980s. He faces two felony charges of rape of a child by force and one count of indecent assault and battery on a child younger than 14, both felonies. The alleged victims were boys from the Glens Falls area who Mercure took to Massachusetts. He has pleaded not guilty and is free pending trial.

Mercure was a priest assigned to Our Lady of the Annunciation in Queensbury and St. Mary's in Glens Falls for more than a decade in the 1980s and 1990s. He has been accused of sexual abuse of the boys and others in Warren County, NY but could not be prosecuted locally because of a statute of limitations that generally requires felonies be prosecuted within 5 years of commission, authorities said. His last known address was in Troy, NY.

The criminal statute of limitations in Mass. was tolled while Mercure was in New York.

No new trial date on the current charges has been set, but it is scheduled for the next criminal court term, which starts in January, clerk Deborah Capeless told the Post Star.

The delay marked the third time this year the trial was postponed. It was originally scheduled for July, then September and finally Nov. 1. Mercure was first charged in October 2008. The case prosecutor, Berkshire County Assistant District Attorney Paul Caccaviello, was not available for comment.