Judge Orders Sex Abuse Trial for Coach

Russell Otis and his new senior shooting guard were once scheduled to spend this weekend earning victory for Compton’s Dominguez High School on the basketball court. Instead, the renowned coach and his former player squared off against each other Friday in a Compton criminal court.

Testifying during a preliminary hearing in the molestation case against Otis, the 17-year-old player accused his one-time coach of groping him, performing oral sex on him and then sodomizing him at Otis’ Carson townhouse this fall. The senior, who appeared hesitant and forgetful on the stand, said the coach lured him into the sexual contact by giving him cash, allowing him use of a car and showering him with attention.

The two-day hearing set the stage for a trial next year that promises to rivet Compton and attract attention in basketball circles across the country. Otis is known nationwide as a championship-winning coach who helps mold players from city playgrounds into polished prospects for major colleges.

“I don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” the teenager testified. The case started when he complained to sheriff’s deputies on Halloween. He has since transferred to another high school in a nearby district. “I was embarrassed and I was scared. . . . I wanted to get away from him,” the boy said.

The hearing ended Friday with Superior Court Judge Jerry E. Johnson’s ruling that there is sufficient evidence for Otis to stand trial on two felony charges of sodomy and oral copulation and a misdemeanor charge of child molestation. If convicted on all charges, he faces as much as nine years and eight months in prison.

But the testimony by the player and two other former Dominguez students who tell similar stories also provided considerable comfort to Otis and his lawyer, who say the allegations are fabricated.

The People vs. Otis is shaping up as a “he said/he said” contest. Prosecutors have been unable to produce physical evidence or identify any witnesses.

The two former students, called as corroborating witnesses to recount sexual contact with Otis more than 10 years ago, could not recall basic details of the alleged attacks. One man testified that he slept through oral sex with the coach, and the other is a convicted drug dealer.

Johnson, while moving the case forward, allowed that “there are contradictions” in the alleged victims’ testimony. Many, he noted, are common to the difficult business of sex abuse prosecution.

The teenager, for example, changed his story in various conversations with police, initially denied to his own family that he had been victimized, and gave different accounts in court of when each incident occurred.

“The truth will come out,” said Otis, who wore a Dominguez High sweat suit issued by the shoe and apparel giant Nike, which sponsors the team and continues to pay the coach a consulting contract. “I feel bad for the young man. He’s obviously been put up to doing this.”

With his mother and grandmother choking back tears in the audience, the 17-year-old senior described how he transferred to Dominguez last fall in hopes that Otis’ coaching and connections could earn him a college scholarship. Once there, the player testified, he encountered a coach eager to do favors for his players.

Players were given cash, allowed to drive the coach’s cars and taken out for meals, he said. According to the testimony, players even left campus during the school day and held practices out of season. The coach’s lawyer, backed by other Dominguez High coaches who attended the hearing, dismissed such descriptions as fantasy.

By September, the player testified, Otis was often offering to perform “pom pom,” a term that meant nothing to the teenager but was apparently a reference to oral sex. During one stop at the house, the coach, while watching a pornographic video, grabbed the boy’s crotch, the teenager said. In another, the player allowed the coach to perform oral sex on him, he testified. After five minutes, the teenager said, Otis grabbed his arms and forcibly sodomized him.

The coach’s lawyer, Leonard B. Levine, countered that such an attack was physically impossible and unsupported by any medical evidence. He suggested that greed on the part of the youth’s family was the driving force behind the allegations. He noted repeatedly that the player has a lawyer, Randy McMurray, of Johnnie L. Cochran Jr.’s law firm.

McMurray, who has said the family plans a civil suit against Otis and the Compton school district, attended the hearing and said of Otis: “I think the evidence shows this guy’s a predator.”

Testimony at the hearing indicated that Steve Moore, a guard who lived with Otis and a friend of the player, could play a key role in the trial.

Prosecutors suggested that Moore might be able to testify that the coach and player had been alone at the Carson townhouse together. Defense lawyers say the sex allegations arose because Moore beat out the accusing player for a starting spot on the team.