Former Coach Held in Death Threats

A former Burbank High School football coach was charged Monday with making death threats against another coach who exposed the Salle Dumm sex scandal, police said.

John Greaves, 32, who served as assistant varsity football coach from 1994-95, was arrested at his Granada Hills home and booked in Burbank on misdemeanor charges of failing to report child abuse, making terrorist threats and making annoying phone calls. If convicted, he faces up to 2 1/2 years in Los Angeles County Jail and a $1,000 fine.

Police say Greaves had known about an alleged July 14 sexual encounter between Dumm, president of the Burbank Educational Foundation, and a 17-year-old football player since just days after it took place but failed to notify district administrators or authorities.

After head Coach John Hazelton reported the incident in November to the district superintendent, police allege that Greaves harassed Hazelton with a series of phone calls, threatening on more than one occasion to hurt or kill him.

“We believe that at least a part of his motivation [for the threats] was that once this incident became known, it opened him up to be criminally charged for failing to report it,” Burbank Police Lt. Larry Koch said.

The November arrest of Dumm, a prominent fund-raiser and school booster, has rocked the Burbank High football program and the school board. Earlier this month, the scandal led directly to the resignation of former board President Joe Hooven, who admitted he knew about the sexual allegations but failed to report them.

Greaves, as an employee of the district, was required by state law to tell police about any child abuse reported to him. Hooven, as an elected official, was not bound by the same law, district officials have said.

“This whole aftermath [of the Dumm case] is very sad,” said board member Denise Lioy Wilcox. “That people would get involved in this kind of trouble over a football program is very scary.”

Hazelton, who has been at the center of the controversy as Hooven’s chief accuser, brought Greaves aboard as assistant coach when he was appointed head coach at the start of the 1994 football season. Greaves left the school at the end of the 1995 season when his year-to-year contract was not renewed, district officials said. The two men had a long-standing relationship as coaches, but that relationship deteriorated after the Dumm incident, sources said.

Koch said the Dumm investigation is ongoing.

Police said testimony in Dumm’s preliminary hearing in a Burbank courtroom last week had no bearing on Greaves’ arrest. At the hearing, a former Burbank school counselor testified that on the morning after the alleged sexual incident, she telephoned Greaves and asked what to do. The counselor said Greaves threatened her to keep the information secret.

Greaves was being held in lieu of $150,000 bail.