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  Ex-coach Pleads Guilty to Molesting Boys

By Jeremy Pawloski
The Olympian
September 4, 2010

http://www.theolympian.com/2010/09/04/1358107/ex-coach-pleads-guilty-to-molesting.html

Former youth football coach and youth minister Derwin Pasley has pleaded guilty to molesting three boys – two of them former players on the team he coached in the Black Hills Junior Football League in 2009, and one who was 13 when Pasley was his pastor at Risen Faith Fellowship in 2002.

Thurston County Special Trial Division chief Christy Peters said Friday that Pasley, 33, had pleaded guilty to two counts of second- degree child molestation and one count of third-degree child molestation as part of a plea deal.

Peters and Pasley’s defense attorney Amy Muth have agreed to a joint recommendation that Pasley serve a 121/2-year prison sentence, Peters said.

Pasley’s sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 7 in Thurston County Superior Court.

Pasley’s crimes came to light in October 2009, after a 14-year-old boy coached by Pasley in the Black Hills Junior Football League told Olympia police that Pasley had molested him. The league has no affiliation with Black Hills High School.

According to court records:

The boy told police Pasley had driven his younger brother and him home from a game, and when they arrived at the home, Pasley told the younger boy to go inside. The 14-year-old said that Pasley then forcibly molested him. The boy “stated he refused several times as he was extremely upset, stating that he was screaming and yelling to be let out of the vehicle.” He said that during the inci- dent, he heard the car doors lock.

After the boy’s allegations came to light, a 13-year-old boy on the team Pasley coached came forward with details of being molested by Pasley, Peters said.

The third boy molested by Pasley was 13 when the incident occurred in 2002, Peters said. The boy knew Pasley because he went to Risen Faith Fellowship, where Pasley served as a youth pastor, Peters said. The molestation was reported to police at the time, but there was not sufficient evidence to go forward with criminal charges, she said. The case was reopened after the 2009 allegations against Pasley came to light, Peters said.

The victim in the 2002 case is now a college student, 21 or 22 years old, according to Peters. The statute of limitations for the 2002 case would not have expired until the victim turned 26, Peters said.

Peters said the state thinks Pasley victimized other juveniles between 2002 and 2009, but those victims have not come forward.

A woman who answered the phone at Risen Faith Fellowship in Olympia said Friday that she had relieved Pasley of his duties after the allegation against him came to light. The woman identified herself as the pastor of the church but refused to give her name.

Pasley was a coach for the Black Hills Junior Football League for nine years before his arrest in October 2009. The league includes players who are in second through eighth grades.

Charles Farrar, who was the president of the football league at the time of Pasley’s arrest, said last year that Pasley passed a Washington State Patrol background check when he was hired, then passed subsequent criminal background check updates every couple of years.

Pasley was arrested in 1994 for a felony sex offense against a child in what’s now called Miami-Dade County in Florida, court papers state. Pasley was acquitted of two counts of sexual battery of a minor there, according to Olympia police.

Washington law bars unfounded child-abuse allegations from third-party disclosure, according to the State Patrol. Olympia police detective Brenda Anderson confirmed last year that the prior allegations against Pasley would not have shown up on a criminal background check in 2009.

Jeremy Pawloski: 360-754-5465 jpawloski@theolympian.com

 
 

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