NEW YORK (NY)
Sportico [Los Angeles CA]
June 24, 2025
By Michael McCann and Luke Cyphers
In a significant ruling that paves the way for a trial centering on sexual abuse in a famed youth basketball program, a New York judge last week denied Riverside Church’s motion for summary judgment against ex-Riverside Hawks player Daryl Powell.
Powell is one of 27 men who have sued Riverside, accusing the church of negligence for failing to protect them from alleged sexual abuse. Ernest Lorch, who founded and coached the basketball program and who died in 2012, is accused of numerous acts of sexual abuse against players. Sportico has extensively covered the scandal and its accompanying litigation.
In her order, Judge Sabrina Kraus underscored the far-reaching sway and authority of Lorch. He developed the Hawks into “one of the most powerful” AAU programs in the country. Lorch also used sponsorships, including with Nike, to supply free apparel to players, whom he helped to place into elite college basketball programs. Lorch is credited with establishing “pathways” to the NBA “for scores of players.”
According to more than two dozen former players, Lorch was also a serial sexual abuser of boys, allegedly using predatory tactics to groom and repeatedly assault and silence them. Plaintiffs also say the Riverside coach often used cash from his considerable financial resources—Lorch was a corporate attorney and at one time the CEO of an investment firm that pioneered the leveraged buyout—to silence the players.
Powell joined the Hawks in 1974 at the age of 13. Like other former players, he accuses Lorch of various acts of sexual abuse, including instructing him to pull down his pants so he could fondle his penis. Powell also refers to Lorch’s alleged practice of paddling, where he had players line up outside his office, ordered them to drop their paints and paddled them.
Powell contends that church officials possessed actual knowledge of Lorch’s actions and took no meaningful action to protect the victims. Powell’s complaint refers to an assistant coach allegedly being told that Lorch brought a player “into a room, made him pull his pants down, and spanked and rubbed his buttocks,” and that the assistant coach told the player to “shut up or he wouldn’t be playing on the team anymore.”
Riverside contends it neither knew nor had reason to know of Lorch’s actions. It also maintains it was not functioning in loco parentis, meaning “in the place of a parent,” a doctrine some educational institutions use to act in a student’s best interest.
Judge Kraus explained why she finds summary judgment for Riverside unwarranted. She noted that summary judgment is a “drastic remedy,” since it takes a case away from a future jury and is only appropriate if there are “no triable issues of fact.”
Kraus determined Riverside hasn’t shown through evidence and testimony that they “lacked actual and/or constructive notice” or “that they properly supervised Lorch.”
In addition, Kraus wrote that Riverside relies on “what they perceive to be gaps” in the proof presented by Powell. The judge reasoned that a defense based on pointing out alleged gaps falls short of the standard needed for summary judgment.
In that same vein, Kraus underscored how Powell has presented considerable proof of sexual abuse, at least in the pretrial discovery stage. She recounted how Lorch is accused of “hounding” players about their underwear, including “children too young to wear a jockstrap,” and allegedly fondling, grabbing, rubbing and paddling the boys.
The judge noted that the alleged abuse occurred for many years and involved many boys, which suggests Riverside knew or should have known.
Abuse allegations against Lorch were first reported in 2002 by the New York Daily News, centering on claims made by Robert Holmes, a Riverside player in the early 1980s who is a plaintiff in the current litigation. (Editor’s note: Holmes and Sportico editor Luke Cyphers, who worked on the original Daily News stories, once collaborated on a potential book project that was never completed.)
Whether Powell and the other men can win trials remains to be seen. Riverside’s attorneys would have opportunities to cross-examine witnesses during trials and hope to point out inconsistencies or inaccuracies in their retelling of events. It’s also possible that none of these cases go to trial and are instead resolved by settlement.
The Riverside cases, which involve older plaintiffs, many of them now in their 50s and 60s, were made possible by New York state’s passage of the Child Victims Act. Beginning in 2019, people who claimed they were sexually abused as children were given a window to file lawsuits. Before passage of the CVA, potential claimants were denied access to the courts by New York’s statute of limitations, which banned lawsuits filed more than a year after incidents took place.
The CVA has resulted in more than 10,000 lawsuits against individuals and entities including Catholic archdioceses, Boy Scout organizations—and the Riverside Church, which is interdenominational. But the pace of the litigation for many of these cases has drawn harsh criticism from victims’ advocates, who have pushed for speedier paths to trials and settlements.
Kraus’ ruling in the Powell case so quickly after Riverside’s motion to dismiss may indicate a desire to move the process along in these cases.