Philadelphia School Coach Charged With Child Abuse

ABC News’ Katie Walmsley reports:

A Philadelphia community is in shock after a popular baseball coach at a local Catholic high school was accused of having sex with a minor, and giving drugs and alcohol to another.

Louis Spadaccini, a court crier and part-time baseball coach at Neumann-Goretti High School, is behind bars after being arraigned at 3 a.m. this morning.

Spadiccini, 37, was first charged Monday after he allegedly took a 14-year-old boy, a student at Neumann-Goretti, to a South Philadelphia Holiday Inn on the pretext of watching sports on TV.  Once there, he allegedly gave the boy alcohol spiked with anti-anxiety medication.  After the boy’s parents repeatedly texted their son asking about his whereabouts, Spadinicci dropped him home.  The parents, shocked at his apparent intoxication, took him to a hospital.

Spadaccini was initially released on $15,000 bail, but upon hearing of the arrest Tuesday, a 13-year-old boy also came forward to police, alleging Spadiccini had had sexual contact with him on at least three occasions at locations including the same Holiday Inn.

Spadiccini, who has no lawyer yet, was subsequently re-arrested and is being held on $2 million bail.  The charges include two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, corruption of minors, luring a child and possession of narcotics.

A statement from the Philadelphia Archdiocese, on behalf of Neumann-Goretti, said the coach is now on administrative leave pending the investigation, which means he is “relieved of all duties within the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.”

 He has also been suspended from his job as a crier in the Common Pleas Court, pending an internal review.

Spadiccini, a Neumann-Goretti alumnus himself, had been a baseball coach at the school since 2006. The school said that all required background checks were done before employing him.  John Murawski, president of Neumann-Goretti, told the Philadelphia Inquirer the school had not received a single complaint about Spadaccini over the years.

“Coach Lou was an admired coach and an outstanding member of our community and the Neumann-Goretti family,” he told ABC News 6, Philadelphia. “We’re really sad and shocked,”

Earlier in the year, Spadaccini had been named the Catholic League Coach of the year after taking Neumann-Goretti to its first Catholic League Championship in 49 years.

Child abuse allegations in the Catholic church have been an issue in Philadelphia several times this year.  In February, the Philadelphia District Attorney charged three Catholic priests and a Catholic school teacher with raping and assaulting two boys during the course of several years.

In April, the athletic director for Archbishop Carroll High School, which is also in the Philadelphia area, was arrested and charged with seeking sexual favors from an underage boy in return for athletic equipment.

Earlier this year, a second grand jury accused the Philadelphia archdiocese of failing to stop sexual abuse against children, five years after a first grand jury reported as many as 37 Philadelphia area priests were credibly accused of sexual offenses against minors.

But Terence McKiernan, president of BishopAccountability.org, told ABC News that while a great deal of attention has been focused on Philadelphia recently, the situation there is typical rather than unusual.

McKiernan also said he believes, unfortunately, when it comes to the Catholic diocese, background checks aren’t always what they might be. ‘”It could be the first time he’s worked in a Catholic school, and he could never have offended before,” he said of Spadinicci, “but there are certainly priests and lay people who would have come under the attention of authorities but for the Catholic Church’s very well-established practice of hiding these stories.”

The diocese declined to comment beyond its statement.