By Lona O'Connor
Palm Beach Post
June 6, 2006
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/localnews/content/local_news/
epaper/2006/06/06/s1b_taylor_0606.html
BOCA RATON — Following allegations he had a two-year affair with one of his female basketball players, the athletic director of Pope John Paul II High School has resigned.
Brian Joseph Taylor, 28, resigned in March. As the girls basketball coach, he led his team to state finals in 2004 and had been on paid administrative leave since Nov. 22. His leave began five days after the alleged victim first told her story to Boca Raton police. His resignation came two months after the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office opted not to press charges.
The alleged victim told Boca Raton police detectives she and Taylor had begun a sexual affair in 2002, when she was a 16-year-old junior and a member of the girls varsity basketball team, coached by Taylor, who was then 24. The two continued to have sexual relations until she graduated in 2004, she said. She told police she was a willing participant.
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Then-head coach Brian Taylor carries the Pope John Paul II Eagles' second-place trophy in the 2004 Kreul Classic Championship. Photo by Steve Mitchell/The Post |
Taylor refused to talk to police.
Police submitted their report to the Palm Beach County State Attorney's Office on Dec. 9. On Jan. 31, Assistant State Attorney Patrick McKamney wrote, "Based on the evidence presented and the wishes of the alleged victim, the state shall no (not) file criminal charges at this time."
Taylor did not respond to several phone calls placed in March. In May, his attorney issued a short statement: "Brian denies that anything inappropriate took place and he did not violate the law in any way," wrote Jeffrey Harris. "This is also supported by the fact that the Palm Beach State Attorney Office chose not to file criminal charges."
The girl's mother strongly disputes the prosecutor's statement that her daughter was reluctant to file criminal charges.
"Why would she go to the police if she was not willing to pursue it?" the mother said.
The Rev. Guy Fiano, president of Pope John Paul II High School, did not return a reporter's calls. A spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Palm Beach wrote in a statement issued early in May: "At all times the administration of Pope John Paul II followed Diocesan policy of 'Protecting God's Children' with regard to the allegations made against Brian Taylor."
Assistant, player later dated
According to documents from the Boca Raton Police Department, the state attorney's office and interviews conducted over several months, the girl confided the alleged affair to an assistant girls basketball coach in March 2004, after the basketball season ended and before she graduated from school. He urged her to tell her parents. She said she would tell them, but made the assistant coach promise not to tell authorities.
Florida law requires immediate reporting of actual or suspected sexual abuse to the state child abuse hot line. The assistant coach was unaware of the law until Boca Raton police informed him, he said. They also advised him to bring an attorney when he gave his statement to police. Police ultimately took no action against him.
More than a year later, in May 2005, she still had not told her parents and was experiencing flashbacks, said the assistant coach, who agreed to talk to The Palm Beach Post only if his name was not used.
The assistant coach, who began dating the alleged victim after she graduated from high school, then decided to call the Rev. Jim Hess, the former spiritual director of the school. Hess advised him to call a sex abuse hot line, which he did the same day.
Hess immediately e-mailed his regional superior and reported what the assistant coach told him about Taylor, including names of two other Pope John Paul II girls basketball team members who were allegedly sexually involved with Taylor. Boca Raton police records also state that two other female students allegedly were involved with Taylor, but they refused to return police phone calls.
"The police are being contacted and you will be receiving a call," Hess wrote to his superior. "Brian's sister's wedding is in two weeks and no one wants to hurt her. The concerned parties believe that (Taylor's siblings) Tara Taylor (and) Bobby Taylor . . . are all aware of Brian's actions. As you know, the Taylors are John Horan's cousins." Hess' e-mails were included in the state attorney's file.
The Rev. John Horan was president of the school before Fiano, formerly the school's guidance counselor, took over in 2000. Taylor's mother, Mary, works in the school's athletic department and his sister, Tara Taylor Turnbull, works in the school's development department. Hess, the spiritual director at the school until June 2004, was transferred from the school after a dispute with Fiano.
The school is run by the Carmelite order of priests for the diocese, which owns the school. Both Hess and Fiano answer to a regional superior based in Middletown, N.Y.
The regional superior called Fiano, who contacted police and diocese authorities, according to the diocese.
The next day, May 17, 2005, Fiano told Taylor about the allegations, but did not mention any of the girls' names. Taylor denied the allegations.
On June 2, 2005, Boca Raton police interviewed the assistant coach, who had given his name when he called the hot line.
From June to November, police and friends tried to persuade the alleged victim to tell her story.
Finally, on Nov. 17, the alleged victim agreed to talk to Boca Raton police, accompanied by her lawyer. She told them that her affair with Taylor had begun in October 2002.
Taylor and the alleged victim began by talking via the Internet and text messages, but Taylor soon began to bring up sexual topics, she told police.
On a visit to Taylor's office at the school, he asked her to show him her breasts. He talked to her about oral sex and told her that they could not have sexual intercourse because she was underage.
They met in the parking lot of a nursing home on Yamato Road, parked nearby and performed sexual acts in his car.
Their sexual encounters occurred three or four times a month, on and off campus, until she graduated in 2004, she told police.
Asked whether she wished to press charges, she said she was unsure, according to the police report.
Taylor played baseball for Pope John Paul II High School and graduated in 1996. After graduating in 2000 from Lynn University with a degree in hospitality management, he returned to work at Pope John Paul II as a girls basketball coach.
Students and staff described Taylor as a popular coach, who had an easygoing and sympathetic rapport with team members, in part because he was close in age to them. At the end of the successful 2003-2004 season, he was named athletic director.
At the beginning of the 2003-2004 school year, Taylor's brother Bobby told the assistant coach the names of two players that Brian Taylor allegedly was involved with. The assistant coach was skeptical until January 2004, when he saw one of the girls sitting on a couch at Brian Taylor's home. The assistant coach later saw the same girl in Taylor's car at a social event.
He also saw the alleged victim leaving Taylor's office in tears during the 2003-2004 basketball season, but she would not tell him why. At the time, he decided she was suffering from nerves brought on by the tense season. Only at the end of the school year, when she confessed to him, did the assistant coach put all those events together. He said he blames himself for not paying attention to the early clues he had.
The assistant coach quit his job at Pope John Paul II at the end of the 2004 school year and now works in an unrelated field.
'I could kick myself now'
When the player started seeing Taylor in 2002, she confided in a close friend. Contacted by reporters, the friend said it did not occur to her to tell anyone in authority at the time. When the affair began, the alleged victim seemed happy and flattered by Taylor's interest, said the friend, who would speak only on the condition of anonymity.
"I was 16," she said. "It wasn't until a year ago that I started thinking about it. I could kick myself now."
But during their junior year, the alleged victim played poorly. Later, she became jealous of a second girl on the team who seemed to be getting more of Taylor's attention, the friend said. This was the same girl the assistant coach had seen at Taylor's house.
The friend graduated in 2004 and went on to college the next fall.
More than a year later, in November 2005, the friend said, she was surprised and upset to learn that Taylor was still at the school.
She and her parents went to Fiano and Principal Sister Eileen Sullivan to discuss the allegations, including the possibility that other players were involved with Taylor.
The friend visited a private therapist for several months. She felt guilty, first for waiting so long to speak up and then for not getting anyone to believe her, she said.
The alleged victim and her friend were estranged for several months last winter, but have become close again, though they usually avoid talking about what happened.
The friend said that the alleged victim was demoralized after she went to police and doesn't want to talk about it anymore, even though she continued to have flashbacks and was extremely upset by a recent chance meeting with Taylor.
"She said all the pain wasn't worth it. She was the only one to say anything, and girls were calling her a liar," said the friend. "Now we both just want it to go away."
She recalls that the alleged victim recently remarked sadly, "We grew up too fast."
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