A Maine man came forward Sunday and became the third person to publicly say he was molested as a child by an assistant basketball coach at Syracuse University. Later in the day, the school announced that coach Bernie Fine had been fired.
Zach Tomaselli, 23, of Lewiston said Sunday that he recently told police he was molested by Fine in a Pittsburgh hotel room in 2002. He said Fine touched him “multiple” times in that one incident.
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The Post-Standard in Syracuse first reported his accusations earlier Sunday.
Tomaselli, who faces sexual assault charges in Maine involving a 14-year-old boy, said during a telephone interview with The Associated Press that he signed an affidavit accusing Fine after a meeting with Syracuse police last week in Albany.
Syracuse police declined comment. A phone call and email to the office of Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick were not immediately returned.
Tomaselli’s father, meanwhile, maintains his son is lying.
Two former Syracuse ball boys were the first to accuse Fine, who has called the allegations “patently false.” Syracuse placed Fine on paid administrative leave when the accusations surfaced.
But Sunday evening, the school released a statement saying that “Bernie Fine’s employment with Syracuse University has been terminated, effective immediately.” The 65-year-old Fine was in his 36th season at his alma mater and had the longest active streak of consecutive seasons at one school among assistant coaches in Division I.
No one answered the door at the Fine home Sunday. His attorneys released a statement saying Fine would not comment beyond his initial statement.
Tomaselli said the scandal at Penn State involving former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, and the accusations against Fine and investigation that followed, prompted him to come forward. Sandusky is accused in a grand jury indictment of sexually abusing eight boys over a 15-year period.
“It was the Sandusky stuff that came out that really made me think about it,” Tomaselli said in the phone interview with the AP. “It made me sick to see all that support for Fine (when he was initially accused). I was positive he was guilty.”
Tomaselli told the Post-Standard that he didn’t ask Syracuse police or federal authorities for help in getting the criminal charges against him in Maine dismissed.
Tomaselli was arrested in April on 11 warrants charging gross sexual assault, tampering with a victim, two counts of unlawful sexual contact, five counts of visual sexual aggression against a child, and unlawful sexual touching and unlawful sexual contact, Lewiston police said Sunday. They did not say what led to the charges. He has pleaded not guilty.
Tomaselli told the Post-Standard he met Fine after he and his father, Fred, attended a Syracuse autograph session on campus in late 2001.
The newspaper reported that Fine later called Tomaselli’s parents to arrange for Tomaselli to go to Pittsburgh with the athletic department staff on a chartered bus, spend the night in Fine’s hotel room and attend the team’s game on Jan. 22, 2002.
Tomaselli told the Post-Standard that he had dinner with the team, then returned to the hotel room where he accused Fine of putting porn on the TV and fondling him in bed.
Tomaselli attended the basketball game the next day, sitting several rows behind the bench, and rode the chartered bus back to Syracuse, the newspaper reported.
“The one time there was multiple incidents is that one night, but there was only one night that he ever sexually abused me,” Tomaselli told the AP.
However, during a phone interview with the AP, Fred Tomaselli said: “I’m 100 percent sure that Bernie Fine was never in contact with (my son) Zach. He never went to Pittsburgh to a game, never been to that arena.”
“I brought him to a couple of games in Syracuse. We always sat in the nosebleed section and left after the game. He never stayed for any overnighters and never even got within shouting distance of Bernie.”
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