High School Basketball Coach Defends Indecent Assault Charges
A high school basketball coach retained the LLF Law Firm's Criminal Defense Team to defend indecent assault charges. The charges alleged that our client, a male coach of a girl's junior varsity team, had inappropriately touched several players during team practices. Our client acknowledged that he had treated the girl players pretty much as he had been accustomed to treating the boy players whom he had coached on middle school and intramural teams. Our client would slap the players on the butt or back in encouragement, give them high fives, and embrace them in congratulatory or consoling hugs. Our client did not remember rubbing any girl player's shoulders or taking and holding their hands, which were other allegations that the girls' parents had made leading to the charges. When our client had learned of the girls' objections through the complaint of their parents, he had tried to apologize for and justify his actions, but his efforts had instead enraged the parents, leaving the prosecutor with little choice but to issue charges after school officials declined to get involved. Our client expressed the goal of just leaving the whole matter behind, as the school administration's lack of support encouraged him to resign from coaching and take a teaching job at another school contingent on his acquittal on the charges. Working with a parent representative, we negotiated parent support for that resolution, which the prosecutor approved. The court entered the dismissal, and our client took the new employment with a clean criminal record.
Social Worker Retains License After Defeating Indecent Exposure Charges
A licensed social worker retained the LLF Law Firm's Criminal Defense Team after his arrest on indecent exposure charges. Our client had suffered leg and back injuries in a motor vehicle accident for which physicians ordered physical therapy and massage therapy. Our client had developed a friendship with one of the massage therapists, in which they went out to lunch on occasion around the therapy sessions. Our client had misconstrued the therapist's social friendship as a romantic interest. In the final therapy session, our client further misconstrued the therapist's massage as expressing a desire for intimacy. The massage therapist had fled the therapy room and complained to the program director when our client made an unclothed advance. The director had insisted on pressing charges, which the prosecutor filed as indecent exposure. Our strategic approach was to show the misunderstanding that our client had of the therapist's desires, consent, and intentions. We further developed the proof of our client's good character and professionalism. Our client's goal was to avoid a sex-crime conviction to retain his social work license and practice. The prosecutor abandoned the charge in favor of the court's dismissal after the complaining massage therapist expressed her reluctance to testify
