Philadelphia columnist retires amid abuse allegations

Sportswriter Bill Conlin of the Philadelphia Daily News speaks after being honored with the J.G. Taylor Spink Award for Journalists for his more than 45 years of baseball coverage at the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, July 23, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Mike Segar

By Dave Warner

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Award-winning sports columnist Bill Conlin retired abruptly from the Philadelphia Daily News on Tuesday, the newspaper said, as a rival newspaper published an article accusing him of child sex abuse.

The Philadelphia Inquirer, in an article posted online on Tuesday, said three women and a man claim they were molested as children by Conlin in the 1970s.

One of them, Conlin's niece Kelley Blanchet, was quoted by the Inquirer as saying: "People have kept his secret.

"There were so many people who knew about this and did nothing," she said.

Conlin offered to retire on Tuesday afternoon, said Daily News editor Larry Platt at a news conference.

"I immediately accepted," said Platt. "It was a painful conversation."

Conlin, visited at his condominium in a gated development in Largo, Florida, by a Reuters reporter, said, "I have nothing to say" and provided contact details for his attorney before closing the door.

The condominium is about a mile from beaches on the Gulf of Mexico, and not far from the spring training camp of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team in Clearwater.

Conlin's attorney, George Bochetto, was not immediately available for comment. But he said in the newspaper that the columnist is "obviously floored by these accusations, which supposedly happened 40 years ago."

Prosecutors also could not be immediately reached for comment. A detective with the Gloucester, New Jersey prosecutor's office said in the Inquirer that criminal charges could not be pursued due to the state's statute of limitations.

According to the Inquirer, the four adults said Conlin groped and fondled them and touched their genitals when they were ages 7 to 12.

Blanchet, now a prosecutor in Atlantic City, New Jersey, told the Inquirer she and the others decided to speak out after the child sex abuse scandal at Pennsylvania State University brought back painful memories.

At Penn State, former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky faces 52 counts of child sex abuse stemming from accusations from 10 adult men who say he abused them as children.

Also, at Syracuse University, a former basketball coach was accused by at least three men of abuse, and the former president of the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) is under investigation over allegations of abuse from former youth basketball players.

Both Philadelphia newspapers are owned by Philadelphia Media Network Inc.

"I am sickened by these allegations," said Greg Osberg, publisher of the Inquirer and Daily News, at the news conference in the Daily News' lobby.

"There were several very specific claims from multiple victims and their families to support our decision to publish this article," he said.

Platt said in the Daily News newsroom, there was "a sense of shock, outrage, a sense of sadness for the victims."

Conlin started in 1965 at the Daily News, where he wrote about Penn State and other college football, professional boxing, baseball, the Olympics and tennis.

He was named to the Baseball Hall of Fame this year.

(Additional reporting by Robert Green; Writing by Ellen Wulfhorst; Editing by Greg McCune and Jerry Norton)

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Hotlines, lawyers' phones ringing in wake of Sandusky abuse case

Former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky arrives for a preliminary hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to hold him for trial on charges of sexually abusing boys, at the Centre County Courthouse in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, December 13, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst

By Ian Simpson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Child molestation charges against a former Penn State coach have sparked an unprecedented awareness of sexual abuse marked by a sharp upturn in calls to abuse hotlines and lawyers, attorneys and counselors said on Wednesday.

More allegations of sexual abuse and a growing number of lawsuits are likely in coming months as victims are emboldened to speak out by the blaze of publicity about Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach, and other alleged molesters, they said.

"It's a watershed moment for child sex abuse victims, and I cringe as I say that because too often we equate public awareness with reform," said David Clohessy, a spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, a support group.

The Sandusky case had one of its highest-profile ripple effects on Tuesday. Sports columnist Bill Conlin abruptly retired from the Philadelphia Daily News after a rival paper published a report accusing him of child sexual abuse.

A man and three women, including Conlin's niece, alleged he molested them as children. The niece said she and the others decided to speak out when reports about Sandusky awakened painful memories.

Conlin was "floored" by the story, his lawyer said.

"There have definitely been a lot more (abuse) survivors coming out that were triggered by Sandusky," said Marci Hamilton, one of the lawyers who filed the first civil suit against the former coach, Penn State and the Second Mile, a charity Sandusky founded.

MORE HOTLINE HELP

Sandusky, 67, faces 52 counts of sexually abusing 10 boys he met through the Second Mile. In the wake of the Sandusky charges, allegations of sexual abuse have been made against a Syracuse assistant basketball coach, a former Citadel student and the head of the Amateur Athletic Union.

Jennifer Marsh, hotline director at the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, said she had had to add more counselors to handle the growing call load. Online text contacts, which guarantee more anonymity, have rocketed 54 percent.

Many callers mention Penn State and Syracuse and they often seek advice on how to report potential molesters or stop abuse, Marsh said.

"We haven't seen anything like this before in terms of response on the hotlines," she said.

Calls to the Childhelp national child sexual abuse hotline are up about 20 percent since charges were filed against Sandusky at the start of November, said Michelle Fingerman, the hotline's director.

Calls by adults who were victimized as children are up by almost a third, she said.

"We're just picking up the phone more often, and the calls are longer. They are really more intense," Fingerman said.

"FOOTBALL IS PART OF AMERICA"

The National Crime Victim Bar Association, which helps crime victims with civil suits, has seen a tripling of calls on child sexual abuse since the Sandusky case broke, said director Jeff Dion.

He and Hamilton, the lawyer, said they expected to see an upsurge in child sexual abuse civil cases. The number will depend on statutes of limitations, which in most states expire generally by the time the victims are in their early 20s.

The Sandusky case had had a much bigger impact with sexual abuse victims than the scandal involving Catholic priests since Sandusky had been a well-respected coach at a high-profile college program, Childhelp's Fingerman said.

"Football is part of America, really, and people are seeing that this can happen in any type of situation. It's not a certain demographic or socioeconomic class," she said.

(Reporting By Ian Simpson; Editing by Jerry Norton)

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