A Lewiston man who accused former Syracuse University assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine of molesting him admitted Monday that he molested a boy while working as a camp counselor.

Zach Tomaselli told The Associated Press that he sexually abused a 13-year-old boy he met at a camp in Maine. The boy is now 14.

Tomaselli has pleaded not guilty to 11 charges but said he anticipates that he will plead guilty in Superior Court, and that a plea bargain including prison time is on the table.

“I don’t really see any other way at this point,” he said.

Tomaselli, 23, became the third man to make sexual-abuse allegations against Fine when he told police in Syracuse, N.Y., that Fine first molested him in a hotel room in Pittsburgh in 2002. He said Fine showed him porn, fondled him and watched him shower naked.

Fine, 65, has denied any wrongdoing. He was fired by the university on Nov. 27. He was in his 36th season coaching at his alma mater.

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“The only thing that transpired was the same stuff that happened to me,” Tomaselli said Monday of his relationship with the teenage boy in Maine. “This kid has been through a lot because of the way I controlled him and abused him.”

He said the plea agreement calls for him to serve three years in prison and register as a sex offender for life.

Tomaselli has said that he was abused by his father, Fred, and that he went to police about it in June in upstate New York. No charges were filed, and Fred Tomaselli said the allegations are “totally unfounded.”

Tomaselli’s attorney was in a Maine court last week, seeking to have Tomaselli’s confession to police suppressed. Defense lawyer Justin Leary said the confession was coerced. The judge hadn’t ruled on the motion as of Monday.

Leary declined comment Monday evening on his client’s admission to the AP.

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.

 


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