Posted on 02/24/2014 6:16:36 AM PST by Phillyred
What a coach, Mike Zolk thought. It was nearly midnight on a Friday in 2011. Zolk and his son were swatting balls at a batting cage in Northeast Philadelphia when Lou Spadaccini walked up. Spadaccini had coached Neumann-Goretti High School to its first baseball championships in decades. Zolk's son, nicknamed Zoom, played second base. The coach knew where to find Zoom that night after seeing a Facebook post by the teen. For an hour, he just watched the father and son swing. MORE COVERAGE DA: Teacher had sex with student, 14 2 Phila. priests permanently removed Utah mom buys all of store's 'indecent' T-shirts Must be a baseball junkie like me, the elder Zolk thought. What a coach. Spadaccini's success gave him access and credibility. It also made his crimes all the more scarring. That same year, Spadaccini, 37, plied two boys, both baseball prospects, with alcohol and drugs. He sexually assaulted one, then 13. He took the other, 14, to a hotel, but rushed him home intoxicated, although unharmed, when the boy's parents kept calling. The Philadelphia region has experienced a spate of such betrayals. In the last three years, 11 area youth coaches - from the Main Line to North Philadelphia to upper Bucks County - have been charged with attempting or having sexual contact with a player. Spadaccini is among eight who have admitted such crimes...
(Excerpt) Read more at philly.com ...
At its core homosexuality has always been the vile molestation of young boys by decadent men.
However, one thing stood out to me. This was one of the more egregious examples of lying by omission that I've read on this topic. Namely, in all of the examples listed, if the molestation was heterosexual in nature, the gender of the victim was listed. If it was homosexual, it was omitted.
SOP for media, but this was particularly blatant.
If your intention was to counter Catholic bashers, this article did not help your case, considering the main scumbag in the article was a baseball coach at a Catholic HS. The other scumbag, the AD at a Catholic HS did not help you cause either.
Seriously, always be wary of coaches of youth sports who have no kids on the team. Be wary of hangers on during the HS years. Adult men who have an unusual interest in HS sports, again without kids participating. Never, ever allow your kid to socialize with any coach, for any reason. Be wary about coaches promising college scholarships or pro careers to middle school kids. If it is not for nefarious reasons, he is BSing you all the same.
+ The article brought up the Sandusky situation. Did it surprise anyone that Jay Paterno has come out as a flaming liberal Democrat, probably just like Joe.
When you go to the link, most of the examples seem to be male coaches going after young girls. They are in one way different. One is criminal; the other is criminal and perverted, and therefore on some scale worse.
But in both kinds of case, there's a crisis of people farming their kids off to other adults without a thought. And of schools and leagues that are afraid to apply normal standards of employability to the folks they hire to coach other people's children: For instance, if they're above the age of, say, 30, do they have children of their own, in intact marriages?
There also seems to be a cult of informality, facilitating contact between minor children and coaches outside of school hours, with no parents present, including private, electronic messages. This is crazy. It opens the door to bad behavior by pushing what's supposed to be a pedagogical relationship toward a social relationship. And that's especially crazy, because there are not now any legal constraints on sexual contact between adult peers. So you get lonely, damaged adults applying that no-standard standard to their contact with minors in their power. A nightmare.
Yes, I noticed that too. It is just criminal what our lying press has become.
Good comments
I posted this reply a while back, here again:
Read a book on stories of experienced cops a while ago. The gist of the cops who handle predators is just as you pointed out. These predators make up their mind at a very early age that they like young ones. They will build their entire careers around their sick desires to end up in a place of authority over their victims; coaches, priests, teachers, youth ministers, etc. They are very patient and will build their “web” with social camouflage (i.e. married with kids) and look like pillars of society on the surface.
The one thing I remember from one cop is that they often are seen as “cool” and “hip”. They will have the latest gadgets (X-Box, sports cars, ski-dos, etc.) and often seem like saviors to single moms with “troubled” kids. It is all part of the web. The cop also said that almost every time these predators get arrested, there will be many people around him who will say it is not true, they can’t believe it, etc.
I point this out so that others will be on the look out for the “cool” coach, not the hard line drill sergeant type and the “hip” youth pastor, not the boring pious one.
It occurred to me then how vulnerable HS coaches are. All it takes is one kid with an attitude to make your life a living hell.
With pay worse than peanuts I still consider it the best job I'd ever had, and for a long while afterward thought about how I'd like to do it again someday.
I have so many great memories of my kids. And I can't say enough about being back in practice shape at 62-63. Though with all these crazy stories of murderous or sexually predatory coaches, I think I'll just rest on my laurels to date.
Does that seem selfish?
Note that the people in charge didn’t hush the cases up and shuffle the offenders off to other teams. It happens everywhere, yes. Pointing that out to deflect guilt is in really poor form though.
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