Youth Soccer Coach Charged With Molesting 5 Players

A Van Nuys soccer coach has been charged with sexually molesting five of his players, ranging in age from 6 to 11, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office announced Monday.

At his arraignment Monday in Van Nuys Municipal Court, Steven Crawford Smith, 46, pleaded not guilty to five counts of oral copulation, three counts of sodomy and one count of child molesting, according to a court clerk. He is being held in County Jail, with bail set at $50,000.

A preliminary hearing in the case was scheduled for April 25 in Van Nuys Municipal Court.

Smith, an unemployed laborer and coach for the California Youth Soccer Assn., was arrested Wednesday by officers from the Los Angeles Police Department’s Sexually Exploited Child Unit, said Harold Lynn, deputy district attorney.

The molestations occurred in Smith’s Van Nuys apartment between last summer and April 5, Lynn said. Investigators believe there may be more victims, he said.

Lynn said the investigation began after the parents of a 6-year-old boy called authorities to complain that their son had been molested by Smith. That child told investigators about a second victim, who told police about a third, he said.

Lynn said some of the acts were committed in the presence of other boys. It was common practice for the boys to sleep at the coach’s house, he said.

“He occupied a position of trust with the victims . . . They spent the night there often, which meant that the parents fully trusted the man,” he said.