Police: Clearwater wrestling coach accused of hitting students had a history of similar claims

By Laura C. Morel
Tampa Bay Times
October 22, 2014

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/clearwater-catholic-coach-accused-of-hitting-students-had-a-history-of/2203196

A wrestling coach arrested Tuesday on charges that he recently hit two students was accused of stripping a Pinellas Park High student naked in 1998 after he caught the boy smoking a cigarette, according to records.

Teachers grew concerned when the student began missing classes around Thanksgiving. When confronted, the student said he felt uncomfortable seeing Scott Stern, a wrestling team volunteer, at school.

According to police records, the boy said that after Stern caught him smoking a cigarette in a car, Stern asked him to come into the wrestling room.

"Coach Stern said he could handle the smoking situation in three ways," an officer wrote in a report. "One was to call his mother, two was the hard way, and the third was the mental way."

The boy chose the mental way. Stern forced him to strip naked and balance a ruler on his head, records show.

When confronted by school officials and police, Stern admitted to making the student balance the ruler, but denied making him take off his clothes.

"What I told him to do was something I do... to prove a point," Stern wrote in a statement. "I will have someone hold a stick, ruler, or shoe or something over their head until their arms are too tired to hold it, and then I will hold it for them and explain that we all have to try and stop things from falling on us."

The Pinellas Park Police Department forwarded their investigation to the State Attorney's Office in 1999, but prosecutors declined to file a child abuse charge against Stern.

Stern, who worked at Clearwater Central Catholic High School for 12 years, currently faces two counts of battery.

Sheriff's Office detectives received an anonymous tip Oct. 6 about Stern's unusual discipline techniques. During the investigation, they interviewed several students, including two who told them Stern had physically abused them because he suspected they were involved in drugs.

An 18-year-old student said that sometime in February, Stern forced him to take off his clothes, grabbed him by the throat and groin, and yelled at him, the Sheriff's Office said.

Another student, who is 17, said Stern abused him several times between August 2013 and May. According to the student, Stern forced him to strip naked and struck his buttocks with a ruler.

Stern, 45, of Clearwater, denied all of the allegations.