Philadelphia Community Rocked as Local Baseball Coach Accused of Child Abuse

A Philadelphia community is in shock over news that the baseball coach at a local Catholic high school has been accused of sexually assaulting 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 currently behind bars after being arraigned at 3am Thursday 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 is said to have given the boy alcohol spiked with Xanax. After the boy’s parents repeatedly texted their son as to 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 on Tuesday, a 13 year old boy also came forward to police, alleging Spadiccini had had sexual conduct with him on at least 3 occasions at locations including the same Holiday Inn.

Spadiccini was subsequently re-arrested and is currently being held on $2 million bail. The District Attorney’s office said he would have to post 10% of that amount in order to be released. His charges include two counts of endangering the welfare of a child, corruption of minors, luring a child and possession of narcotics, among others.

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. Indeed 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 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 in the Catholic Church has been an issue in Philadelphia several times this year already. In February, the Philadelphia District Attorney charged 3 Catholic priests and a Catholic school teacher with raping and assaulting 2 boys over 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, 5 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, that 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 says 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.’