By Michael O'Keeffe
New York Daily News
January 11, 2009
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/high_school/2009/01/10/2009-01-10_christ_the_kings_bob_oliva_denies_claims.html
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| Legendary Christ the King coach Bob Oliva (above) staunchly denies allegations that he sexually abused longtime friend Jimmy Carlino (top). Oliva has resigned after 27 seasons. |
They met nearly 40 years ago at a parish hall in Queens, and their lives have been inextricably intertwined ever since.
Bob Oliva was a young coach in his 20s, running the youth basketball program at St. Teresa of Avila Roman Catholic Church. Jimmy Carlino was a 7-year-old kid who wanted to play hoops. Oliva seemed to know more about the game than anybody, and he could dunk a basketball. That made a mighty impression on a boy who wanted to become a basketball player.
"He said I had potential but I needed the right equipment," remembers Carlino, who is now 46. "He told my dad to get me a pair of Converse sneakers. He gave me a pair of white tube socks. I will never forget that."
They became close in the years that followed, at times inseparable, but they are now embroiled in a vicious public fight that has threatened the legacy of the most important high school basketball coach in New York City for nearly three decades and has seemingly left that boy's life in a shambles. Carlino still refers to Oliva as his godfather - even as he describes the coach as a sexual predator who abused Carlino's trust and stole his childhood. Oliva says he loved Carlino like a son - that is, when he's not calling Carlino a liar who is leading a conspiracy to smear his name and destroy his legacy.
The ties that bind these men remain powerful.
"I don't want to ruin his reputation," says Carlino, who now lives in Florida. "But I do want him to be away from kids, so he doesn't hurt anybody again."
Oliva was the boys' basketball coach at Christ the King Regional High School in Queens for 27 seasons. He groomed scores of young men for Division I teams and the NBA, including Lamar Odom, Speedy Claxton and Jayson Williams, and he racked up 549 career victories and five city championships at the helm of the perennial city basketball power.
But in April 2008, not long after Oliva coached what would be his last game - a 56-48 loss to Holy Cross in last year's CHSAA final - he learned that Carlino had told mutual friends that the coach had repeatedly molested him during the 1970s, when Carlino was a teenager.
It was the beginning of the end of Oliva's coaching career.
"I deny every bit of it," the 64-year-old Oliva says of the abuse allegations. "It's unbelievable how he concocted that story."
Oliva took a leave of absence when the Royals began preparing for this season on Nov. 1, claiming that his doctor told him that stress was aggravating a heart ailment.
He officially resigned last week. "It is a terrible way to go," Oliva says. Carlino has been consulting with attorneys for months about filing a lawsuit against Oliva. Statute of limitation issues will make it difficult to pursue legal action in New York and other states, but Carlino and his lawyer John Klawikofsky continue to press ahead.
On Friday, Carlino retained Mitchell Garabedian, the Boston attorney who has represented hundreds of clergy abuse victims. "On behalf of Mr. Carlino, I am investigating the allegations against Mr. Oliva," Garabedian told the Daily News. "That is all I can say right now."
Oliva says he welcomes a lawsuit; a bare-knuckle courtroom brawl will help him reclaim his reputation. "I know they are exploring litigation," Oliva says of Carlino and his attorneys. "Let them bring it forward. Right now they are trying me through the newspaper. This is not fair."
Oliva claims that he has received an outpouring of support from colleagues who have expressed shock at the allegations. But there are many in the New York basketball community - including longtime friends and colleagues of Oliva's - who believe Carlino's allegations are credible.
"One of the first things ‘Shock' said to me when these allegations came up was that Jimmy didn't have a case because the statute of limitations had expired," one longtime acquaintance says, referring to Oliva by his nickname. "I remember thinking, if I was accused of something like this and I was innocent, the last thing I would be talking about is the statute of limitations."
***
By the time Jimmy Carlino was 12 or 13 years old, he was developing into a sharp ballplayer. Oliva had become a friend of the family and when he opened a bar in Queens called the Short Porch - named after right field in the old Yankee Stadium - Carlino's father, who has since died, picked up a Sunday afternoon bartending shift. Carlino started working as the tavern's porter. He says he liked the attention he received from Oliva. It made him feel important and grown-up. But he says there was an ugly side to all that attention, too.
Oliva would berate Carlino, then turn around and make him feel special again. "He'd tear me down and build me up again," Carlino says. "He was a genius when it came to manipulating kids."
The sex abuse, Carlino says, came shortly after he started working at the Short Porch. Oliva, who was living with his parents in Queens, invited Carlino into his bedroom one night after a barbecue. He pulled out a film projector and showed the boy what the older man called a "Swedish" movie. The sexual abuse began after several Swedish movie sessions, Carlino says. Oliva encouraged Carlino to touch himself as they watched the movie and instructed the boy to touch him, too.
"He says, ‘Your hand, my hand, it doesn't matter,'" Carlino says.
They watched Swedish movies almost every Saturday night for several years, except during the basketball season, the abuse escalating in degrees, Carlino says, and becoming more explicit. They even took field trips together. Carlino says Oliva took him to a brothel in Queens for his first sexual experience with a woman. Carlino went into a room with a blonde and emerged minutes later with a big smile on his face. He wanted to do it again, he says, so he picked out another prostitute.
This time, he says, Oliva went into the room with him and watched.
Carlino says Short Porch regulars wondered why Oliva was spending so much time with a kid nearly 20 years his junior and that people began calling Carlino "Shock's Pet." Carlino felt strange and disconnected by the experience, he says: It didn't feel right, but Oliva smoothed everything over with ballgames and out-of-state trips. He had a way of making Carlino feel that everything was okay.
According to Carlino, the abuse stopped when he injured his back during a basketball practice. Carlino, who attended Archbishop Molloy High School, was bedridden for months. When he recovered, the invitations to the Swedish Movie Saturdays had dried up.
***
Even after the abuse stopped, Carlino says, he remained close with Oliva for years, a not uncommon occurrence in cases of sexual abuse, according to David Clohessy, the executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
"It speaks to the fact that sex abuse is often perpetrated by cunning and charming men," says Clohessy, who is not familiar with Carlino's accusations. "They work hard to stay close to the victim. What better way to act as if there was nothing wrong with the behavior, as if it was normal. That is why it takes some people a long time to understand that they were abused and that they were victimized."
Carlino grew up and moved to Florida, but the low-level anxiety he felt didn't go away. He says he still finds it hard to trust people and he is uncomfortable with emotional intimacy. He says he has frequented prostitutes in the past, and his friends joke that he can't buy milk at a convenience store without making a pass at the woman behind the counter.
"I hope my family understands why I can be so distant," Carlino says. He says he rebels at authority figures, and has trouble sticking to a job for more than a few years. He has sold newspaper subscriptions and has worked as a stock broker. He's managed strip joints and worked as a horse racing consultant for a Caribbean Internet gambling Web site. He was handsomely compensated at many of those jobs, but inevitably he would quit after a superior irritated him in some way. These days, Carlino pays his bills with savings and winnings from the track. There were other problems, too.
Carlino started suffering from severe anxiety attacks in recent years. The attacks were paralyzing; he couldn't fly, couldn't drive and couldn't work, he says. He checked himself into hospital emergency rooms several times because he thought he was suffering from heart attacks. His doctor gave him a full examination, which indicated no physical problems. The physician encouraged him to see a therapist.
The therapist, Carlino says, helped him understand that his anxiety attacks were a product of abuse. Carlino told his mother and sister about his Swedish Movie Saturdays with Oliva. He talked to friends about it. He also told his cousin, John Klawikofsky, a lawyer in South Florida who is now part of his legal team.
For years, Oliva, Carlino and others would get together for Final Four weekend at the condo Oliva owns in Myrtle Beach, S.C., but Carlino says he felt increasingly uncomfortable last year as college basketball's championship tournament approached. In late March 2008, he visited a friend named Nicky Sanchez at the luxury condo Sanchez's father owns in South Beach. Carlino says he told Sanchez, who played basketball for Oliva at Christ the King and later served as a volunteer coach, that Oliva had abused him. Sanchez, according to Carlino, said that he was aware of two other men who had been victimized by Oliva. They called one of the men in New York that night, and that man, according to Carlino, confirmed that he had been victimized by Oliva.
"I thought I was the only one," Carlino says. "I was shocked."
Sanchez told the Daily News that he remembers Carlino's confession of abuse, but he says they never discussed other alleged victims. Another friend present for the conversation, Philip Comiso, backs Carlino's account. The man they called that night in New York has told the Daily News that Oliva never did anything inappropriate to him. The other alleged victim told The News he was molested by Oliva. Sanchez says he's torn. He admires Oliva but he respects Carlino, too. "Jimmy is a good guy," he says.
Carlino decided he would not go to South Carolina for that Final Four weekend. Sanchez told Oliva about the South Beach conversation, and Carlino says Oliva left several imploring messages on his voice mail, begging him to return his call. "I need to straighten you out," Oliva said in the message.
In April, Klawikofsky's law firm sent Oliva a letter offering to settle their "private matter" for $750,000 and Oliva's resignation from Christ the King. Following the letter, Oliva removed Carlino as a beneficiary of his will, replacing him with the school. Then he told Christ the King officials about the abuse allegations. Oliva and former city councilman Tom Ognibene, who serves on the school's board of trustees, have cited the letter as evidence that Carlino was trying to blackmail Oliva. Klawikofsky says that's not true. "Jimmy's main goal is to keep this predator away from kids," Klawikofsky says.
According to Bob Oliva, he's the victim of a conspiracy, led by Jimmy Carlino, to destroy his reputation. "I know who my enemies are," Oliva says. He claims that Carlino called him numerous times in recent years asking for money. The kid's life was a mess, Oliva says. Carlino told him that he owed money to bookies and he feared they would hurt him if he didn't pay up. The abuse allegations, Oliva adds, are payback for his refusal to bail Carlino out.
Oliva, however, says he can offer no proof that he is the victim of an extortion attempt. There are no e-mails or letters asking for cash, he says. There are no telephone messages seeking help. Oliva says he never told other people about the phone calls: He didn't want mutual friends to know how low Carlino had sunk.
In fact, Oliva says he told people that Jimmy was doing great down in Florida. He says he now realizes that was a mistake.
"I was so proud of him, I didn't want people to know he was a failure," Oliva says.
Carlino says his old coach is lying. He was not overwhelmed by gambling debts and he never asked Oliva for money. Two of Carlino's friends say he seemed quite prosperous at the same time Oliva claims he had hit bottom. Comiso says he borrowed tens of thousands of dollars from Carlino during that same time to get back on his feet after a painful divorce. Frank Sovero, a friend who worked with Carlino at the gambling Web site, said Carlino loaned large amounts of money to former girlfriends to buy homes.
Oliva acknowledges that he will have a difficult time restoring his reputation but he insists that won't stop him from fighting back. He is an innocent man, he says, falsely accused of a despicable crime.
"Take me to court," Oliva says. "This is all just an allegation. Sue me. Let's get this out in the open. I don't want to play this game any more."
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