NEW JERSEY
The Record
BY MARY JO LAYTON AND COLLEEN DISKIN
STAFF WRITERS
The Record
[roster of defendants]
In the past three years, 23 teachers, coaches and school officials in North Jersey have been charged with or convicted of sex crimes against children. Three have been arrested this month alone.
Statewide, nearly a dozen teachers or coaches have made headlines since the beginning of December, accused of everything from videotaping boys showering in a school locker room to having sex with teens they were chaperoning on a field trip.
“The details of some of these cases are really disturbing,” said Bergen County Prosecutor John Molinelli.
The roster of cases includes a math teacher from Hasbrouck Heights who was sentenced to probation after exchanging 11,000 sexually explicit emails with a teenage girl at his high school and a Hackensack soccer trainer who went to prison after sexually assaulting an 11-year-old student. In Teaneck, a basketball coach admitted to authorities he collected naked photos of his players.
The cases come amid the sex scandals at Penn State, Syracuse University’s basketball program and the Amateur Athletic Union. It is happening years after similar scandals rocked the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts of America, setting off a national public discussion about trusted leaders accused of disturbing acts against children.
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