Abuse Allegations Against Track Coach Increase in Pasadena

A renowned Pasadena track coach was arrested Wednesday on suspicion of “annoying or molesting” a second minor and bail was set at $1 million, one day after he had posted bail in a similar case, police said Wednesday.

Clyde Ezra Turner was booked on two charges including, “annoying or molesting a child under 18,” police said.

Turner was arrested Wednesday after several other young men told detectives they were sexually abused by him when they were teenagers. The allegations came after his arrest Monday on suspicion of molesting a 15-year-old boy.

Details of the second arrest were not immediately available Wednesday night. But earlier in the day, Pasadena Police Lt. Keith Jones said authorities had received “several phone calls--some of them relating experiences from a long time ago--allegations similar to the original incident.”

Several of the callers said “they were duped by Mr. Turner,” the police lieutenant said. “They lived with it a long time. They now realize they are not the only one this happened to.”

Turner, who has denied allegations that he molested the 15-year-old boy, could not be reached for comment. But in an interview published Wednesday, Turner denied the charges, saying that “those who know me and know what I’m about know that this is not me.

“All I’ve been trying to do is help people,” the coach told the Pasadena Star-News. “Now I need support from whoever in the community can help me.”

Jones said that all those who have come forward thus far are athletes who, at some point, were associated with the track or football teams at Pasadena’s John Muir High School.

Turner, a onetime national track coach of the year at Muir, also helped coach the school’s football team. Several men now playing in the National Football League call him for advice, the coach told a Times reporter last year.

The coach was arrested Monday after parents complained to school authorities that he had molested their son. Turner had been released Tuesday on $100,000 bail in the first case, and was scheduled for a May 28 arraignment on charges of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor and exhibiting harmful material with intent to seduce a minor.

Turner, a 19-year employee of the Pasadena Unified School District, also works as a truant officer at Charles W. Eliot Middle School in Altadena. He has been placed on administrative leave from both jobs.

In a police report filed Monday, Turner acknowledged inviting the 15-year-old boy to his home last week, but said it was at the boy’s suggestion--not his--that they watch a pornographic video together.

Turner said he “might have rubbed up against the victim a couple of times, which might have given the victim the wrong idea,” according to the report.