SYRACUSE, NEW YORK – Syracuse University has fired Bernie Fine as an assistant men’s basketball coach, the school announced Sunday night, hours after new reports arose regarding his alleged sexual abuse of boys.
“At the direction of Chancellor Cantor, Bernie Fine’s employment with Syracuse University has been terminated, effective immediately,” university Senior Vice President Kevin Quinn said in a statement, referring to Syracuse Chancellor Nancy Cantor.
Fine was placed on administrative leave earlier this month, after former Syracuse ball boy Bobby Davis and his stepbrother, Mike Lang, accused him of molesting them. The university in announcing Fine’s leave earlier this month noted it had conducted its own investigation in 2005 and was “unable to find any corroboration of the allegations.”
“The events of the past week have shaken us all,” Cantor said in a statement Sunday. “No other witnesses came forward during the university investigation (in 2005), and those who felt they knew Bernie best could not imagine what has unfolded.”
Syracuse men’s basketball head coach Jim Boeheim said in a statement Sunday night that he believed “the university took the appropriate step” in firing Fine, his assistant coach the past 35 years.
“The allegations that have come forth today are disturbing and deeply troubling. I am personally very shocked because I have never witnessed any of the activities that have been alleged,” said Boeheim, who days earlier said Fine had his “full support.” “I deeply regret any statements I made that might have inhibited that from occurring or been insensitive to victims of abuse.”
The news of Fine’s firing came the same day that the Syracuse-based Post-Standard newspaper and ESPN both reported the existence of a recording of a 2002 phone conversation that they said Davis had recorded between him and the coach’s wife.
What did Fine’s wife know?
Davis provided the recording to the Post-Standard soon after it was recorded, but the newspaper then declined to report on it because it couldn’t find “witnesses, enough corroborating evidence or a second accuser.”
The wife, Laurie Fine, at the time suggested to the Post-Standard that Davis had taped her on multiple occasions and edited the recordings to make them appear more inflammatory.
In the tape, a woman — which ESPN, citing experts, claims was Laurie Fine — said she knew “everything that went on” with her husband, adding that “he thinks he’s above the law.”
“Bernie has issues … and you trusted somebody you shouldn’t,” the woman said, speaking to Davis.
The woman appears to acknowledge an inappropriate sexual relationship between Davis and Bernie Fine, saying, “It’s just wrong and you were a kid.” She also said that her husband should “find (himself) a gay boy, get your rocks off.”
According to a transcript of the conversation on the Post-Standard’s website, the two talked about how Bernie Fine was angry at Davis for not repaying him $4,000. Davis said that the coach forced him to “grab him” after offering the loan, including at one point saying, “If you want this money, you’ll stay right here.”
Laurie Fine appears to side with Davis, and against her husband, saying: “Money isn’t the issue here. He lured you with the money. See, he knew full well what he was doing.”
Repeated calls by CNN to Laurie Fine were unanswered Sunday, and no one answered repeated knocks on the door of her house.
Cantor, the Syracuse chancellor, said the school did not know of the recording during its 2005 investigation.
Bernie Fine’s attorneys, Donald Martin and Karl Sleight, released a statement Sunday — hours before their client’s firing was announced — declining to comment on the reports.
“Any comment from (Fine) would only invite and perpetuate ancient and suspect claims,” the lawyers said. “Mr. Fine remains hopeful of a credible and expeditious review of the relevant issues by law enforcement authorities.”
The embattled coach appeared to be getting some support as evidenced by a sign outside his home that read: “We believe in your innocence Bernie. We love you!”
On Friday, the Secret Service joined local law enforcement to search Fine’s home, according to John Duncan, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in New York’s northern district.
File cabinets were among the items taken from the home after the search warrant was issued, though Duncan declined to discuss what authorities were looking for.
Duncan noted that the Secret Service’s duties include “investigations into crimes involving electronic transactions.” The Secret Service did not comment Sunday on the probe.
Davis, a former Syracuse ball boy who is now 39, told ESPN earlier this month that Fine molested him “hundreds of times” over the course of 16 years, starting from when he was in the fifth or sixth grade.
He told university officials six years ago that he informed Syracuse police that he had been “subjected to inappropriate contact by an associate men’s basketball coach” during the 1980s and 1990s, according to an earlier statement from Quinn, the school spokesman.
Police had told Davis years ago that they would not pursue the case because the statute of limitations had expired, Quinn said in a statement.
On Sunday, another man — Zachary Tomaselli, now 23 — told CNN that he also was abused by Fine while in a hotel room in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he’d gone to watch a Syracuse game.
The incident happened about a decade ago, when he traveled by himself a few months after he’d met Fine, Tomaselli said.
He claimed that the coach “put his hand down my shorts” as he was watching TV, adding Fine allegedly did so “four or five times.”
Tomaselli himself is facing gross sexual assault charges related to a 2009 incident, according to information from the Maine State Bureau of Investigation.
The accuser’s father, Fred Tomaselli, claimed that while he and his son had sat in “nose-bleed” seats during Syracuse games, they’d never met Fine. Moreover, he said the boy never stayed overnight in a hotel room with Fine, nor had he ever been brought to Pittsburgh or gone to a game there.
The father said that Zachary Tomaselli’s allegation is completely “100% false,” suggesting that his son needed help and calling him a “master manipulator.” The father and son are estranged.
Davis’ stepbrother, Mike Lang, 45, has also accused Fine of sexual abuse. Lang told ESPN earlier this month that Fine molested him “15 to 20 times,” and confirmed the abuse to CNN in a phone interview Sunday.
While he said that he often found himself “pushing (Fine’s) hand away,” Lang said that his stepbrother suffered much more than he did.
He described Bernie Fine as “like a father figure” to both he and Bobby Davis, noting the two then-teenagers attended Bernie’s wedding to Laurie 26 years ago.
Lang said his “hands started shaking” when he heard the apparent voice of Laurie Fine — as broadcast this weekend on ESPN — talking to his stepbrother about the alleged abuse.
Thirty minutes after the story broke earlier this fall about former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, who is accused of sexually abusing boys over a span of 14 years, Bobby Davis texted his stepbrother. Lang said the text read: “‘This is what happened to me.’”
Lang’s accusation, made after the Sandusky scandal broke, kick-started the reopened police investigation November 17.
Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick has harshly criticized Syracuse Police Chief Frank Fowler and Deputy Chief Sean Broton over the handling of a 2002 probe of Fine that began with Davis’ allegation.
Fitzpatrick filed subpoenas for records in the 2002 and current investigations that he said he should readily have access to.
A 1967 graduate of Syracuse, where he’d been a student manager for the basketball team, Fine rejoined the program nine years later as an assistant coach under Boeheim.
Prior to his dismissal, he’d been with the Orange ever since — the longest such streak for an assistant coach in Division I basketball, the school said.
According to his official biography, which was taken down from Syracuse’s website on Sunday night, Fine “has been a tremendous advocate for SU alumni who want to play professional basketball” and “an active member of the Syracuse community.”
Besides his wife, Laurie, he has a son and two daughters, the profile stated.
from CNN
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Related Post:

‘I Shouldn’t Have Showered With Those Kids’

Fran Drescher & Peter Marc Jacobson

‘Being Wendy’ is a delightful children’s book all about a little girl named Wendy who doesn’t fit in with everyone else in her hometown. It’s written by Fran Drescher, who said she based the fable on her childhood growing up in Flushing, Queens.
The sitcom star also has a new show on TV Land called ‘Happily Divorced’ that’s also based on Drescher’s personal life. In it she plays a florist named (what else?) Fran, who juggles the dating scene after finding out that her husband of 18 years is gay.
The show is co-produced by Peter Marc Jacobson, Drescher’s ex-husband of 21 years, who is also gay.
FOX411: So why write a children’s book?
Fran Drescher: ‘The Nanny,’ the T.V. series I starred in, seems to be more popular than it’s ever been and it has a huge audience of children that weren’t even alive when I was shooting it. So I wanted to leverage that leadership that I have with that generation by offering them a children’s book that I felt would have an empowering message. Something that I think informs a little bit about the way I grew up and the encouragement I got from my parents. Growing up in a provincial town, but ultimately rising above that and carving my own path and finding myself with all of my diverse interests, and so that’s kind of what ‘Being Wendy’ is all about.
FOX411: Did you really feel very different growing up?
Drescher: Absolutely. I wanted to be a writer, a hairdresser, an actress, a mediator, a journalist. I wanted to do everything and what tends to happen very often in provincial places is that becomes threatening to people and they put you down a little bit like, ‘Oh right you’re going to be a famous actress,’ that sort of thing. I just never felt like I could plant my roots in the place I grew up, although it was a great place to come from, and I outgrew it very quickly.
FOX411: But you grew up in Queens; that’s very close to New York City.
Drescher: Did you ever see ‘Saturday Night Fever?’ They lived just across from the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a world away from the sophistication and diversity of Manhattan. Particularly when I was growing up in the 60s, Queens was very much like that as well. It might as well have been in the middle of Nebraska, it was that far removed from being a place that offered diverse people or thinking or culture.
FOX411: Your new show is based on your life. You say you had no idea that your ex-husband was gay. You had a happy marriage and fulfilling love life.
Drescher: We were best friends in high school. We had a happy marriage and we had a very active sex life. Because of my lack of experience with other men I thought he was metrosexual and didn’t look beyond that. Maybe also I didn’t want to look beyond that because at the end of the day I was afraid to be alone and afraid to admit that I’d made a mistake.
At the time I think that kept me in the relationship longer, but quite honestly ‘The Nanny’ was a huge distraction for Peter and me. By then I was already saying to him, ‘If we can’t fix what’s wrong in our relationship I’m going to want a divorce,’ and even though I never did that because he would always convince me that things would change or things happened in our lives that distracted us. Ultimately I did divorce him and it was not because he was gay, because he hadn’t come out, it was because he was way too controlling.
I had a very clichéd midlife crisis and I didn’t know who I was and I had never even bought a chair without saying, ‘What do you think honey?’ so I really felt like although I had great success from T.V. and I had reached a level of wealth that someone from my humble beginnings had never, ever imagined, I was not really happy. So I knew I had to break away from this very suffocating relationship. I had to find my own voice and become centered with who I was outside of the relationship.
He begged me not to leave and he was extremely angry for doing so. For me, who had never put myself over anyone else’s needs especially when it meant hurting someone, it was like walking through fire. He didn’t talk to me, and when the show ended, he moved to New York.
A year after the show ended our manager called and told him, ‘Fran has cancer,’ and he immediately burst into tears and in that moment his anger melted away and all that was left was the love. That was one of the silver linings of the cancer because from that point forward we began to rebuild all we had.
One and a half years after that my book, ‘Cancer Schmancer’ was coming out and I was going on a book tour. At that point he told me that he had been dating men and he didn’t want me to be shocked if for some reason it came out in the press because he was now living as a gay man.
FOX411: Were you shocked?
Drescher: About two thirds of the way through our marriage he started therapy and he realized that he was bisexual but choosing to live his life with me, so I had already known that he had feelings but had never acted upon them, and really didn’t want to lose me. I was still at that place where I didn’t really absorb how that made me feel, only that he must really  love me if he’s not only being honest with me but choosing to live his life with me and so we stayed the course.
So when he finally came out it was a huge relief for me because I had harbored so much guilt for having hurt him by abandoning him and divorcing him. I just felt like it took a load off my shoulders. That the divorce he so adamantly didn’t want at the time gave him the opportunity to explore his authentic self. I was a little ahead of him in realizing something was wrong.
FOX411: Are you dating now?
Drescher: I date a few men now. There’s one person I love very much who loves me but we are on a different page in the book of life and he is finding himself. So he can only take our intimacy so far. I understand that because I’ve been there so I say to him, ‘I love you, you love me. Let’s enjoy what we can together and understand I need to be free to continue to be open to meeting other people, maybe as connected as we are but also on the same page in the book of life.’ He respects that and that keeps me from feeling trapped. I have the best of all possible worlds. In the past I have been drawn to very complex men that have a kind of dark side like a moth to a flame. Now through therapy I’m actually not drawn to it but repelled by it, and much more open to men who are more joyful or light hearted. That’s the trajectory I’m on now. To find that person and no longer find that kind of person boring.
from Fox News
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Let’s just say they went gaga.
Students cheered and clapped when a personal video from Lady Gaga was shown at an anti-bullying assembly at Etobicoke School of the Arts on Friday. Up until then, students had no idea she had recorded a message and thank you to them.
Student council president Jacques St. Pierre had to keep a poker face since October, after receiving an email from Lady Gaga’s staff with a link to the video. He decided to keep it a surprise until the assembly.
“I’ve seen it over 300 times,” gushed St. Pierre, a huge fan of the mega pop star, in an interview before the Friday event.
In August, the Grade 12 student wrote to several celebrities — including talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, singer Katy Perry and Tim Gunn from Project Runway — hoping a message from one of them would have a big impact on students as the school launched an anti-bullying campaign.
“Sometimes schools talk about bullying but never make changes,” he said. “I thought if I could get someone as influential as Lady Gaga to speak to students, that would make a change.”
Lady Gaga has been an outspoken anti-bullying crusader in the U.S., outraged over the recent suicide of a gay Buffalo teen who had been targeted. She has been lobbying U.S. politicians — including President Barack Obama — to have bullying made illegal.
Etobicoke School of the Arts students are trying to combat homophobia, racism, sexism and body image issues through performance and plan to take their message to other schools in the Toronto District School Board, said St. Pierre.
On Friday, students took a pledge to “make it better” — an extension of the “it gets better” campaign.
St. Pierre, 17, was bullied in elementary school by students who called him a fag for being interested in theatre and drama.
However, he said his high school has been “amazing and accepting.”
But there’s still work to be done; comments like “don’t be a fag” or “that’s so gay” are still common among teens. And, earlier this year, a private webpage was set up where fellow students posted anonymous comments about one another.
In his letter to Lady Gaga, St. Pierre told her who he is and about the school’s campaign.
“And then I talked about why it would be amazing to hear from her.”
In the video, Lady Gaga says hello to St. Pierre, the school and “talks about how proud she is” of their efforts.
She also implores students to “treat each other with kindness, love, and to accept everyone . . . and that she’s doing her best to make bullying a hate crime.”
She then sends her love and tells them to have a “wonderful day at school and to love each other.”
The video, which runs about one minute, 15 seconds, was the edge of glory for St. Pierre.
“When I showed it to the student council, they all cheered and screamed and freaked out . . . she’s talking directly to (students).”
from The Star
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Jennifer Elia & Chaz Bono

Prior to the premiere of OWN’s one-hour special Being Chaz, viewers can get a sneak peek as Chaz Bono brings his relationship with Jennifer Elia to the next level.
Standing atop the Seattle space needle, the former Dancing With the Stars contestant offers Elia an engagement ring as a birthday present. “Wow, it’s gorgeous. Thank you so much,” Elia replies.
“Heavy shit man,” she adds with a laugh.
Being Chaz — the follow-up to Emmy-nominated documentary Becoming Chaz — will air on OWN Sunday, Nov. 27 at 8 p.m. Following the broadcast, the network will air the documentary special I Am Jazz: A Family in Transition, which follows an 11-year-old transgendered girl named Jazz.
Becoming Chaz was the first selection in the OWN Documentary Club. Its May premiere attracted an average of 705,000 viewers, ranked fifth in its time period for ad-supported cable channels, and gave the network a 162% increase in key demos versus the year before when it was known as Discovery Health.
from The Hollywood Reporter

T.I. on being skeptical of Bin Laden’s death
The conversation shifts from Muammar Gaddafi’s death—which occurred five days prior—to Osama Bin Laden’s assassination to both Eastern giant’s once empowered relationship with the U.S. government. “It’s like everybody that the U.S. was besties with, years later they’re the worst person in the world,” says Tip. “My question is what character traits do they possess now that they didn’t possess when y’all were besties? What made it go astray, and who’s to say they were on the dishonest end of that?”The politic’n doesn’t stop there. Before an article can be selected from the “Osama Bin Laden killed” search, T.I. twists his lips in sarcastic fashion and shoots, “If that really happened.”
VIBE:  So you’re skeptical about the legitimacy of Osama’s death?
T.I.: Man, I’m a conspiracy theorist by nature. You can’t experience the federal penal system and not be somewhat skeptical.
T.I. on all Americans having equal rights
Man, I will say this, the funniest joke I ever heard Tracy say during a stand-up was, ‘C’mon man, I think gay people are too sensitive. If you can take a dick, you can take a joke.’ [Cracks up laughing.] That shit was funny to me. And it’s kind of true.’ While T.I. makes clear that he supports anyone’s sexual preference, he then connects, in his opinion, a current oversensitivity among gay people with a consequential and ironic offense of the First Amendment. “They’re like,‘If you have an opinion against us, we’re gonna shut you down.’ … That’s not American. If you’re gay you should have the right to be gay in peace, and if you’re against it you should have the right to be against it in peace.’
T.I. on people criticizing Tiny for not taking the drug charge
“I’ma tell you, 50 Cent and anybody else, we not gonn’a  have no discussion about what my ole lady should’a, would’a, couda done for anything as it pertains to me,” begins his rant. “We ain’t gonn’a do that. I’m the only one in my family that’s gonna take a lick when it pertains to the legal system. Since me, none of my other family members have seen a jail cell. Nobody. I’m the last one. The buck stops here. I feel that a person that stands behind [his woman for a criminal charge] is a coward anyway.”
VIBE: I doubt she would have gotten any time.
T.I.: She wasn’t gonna catch it period, ’cause I’m there. That wasn’t even a consideration. Even if she asked me to I would’ve been like, “Nah, you trippin’. “
So you didn’t feel you were more valuable to your family, employees and business partners on the street?
That’s a discussion between me and another man. Not with the mother of my children. Not with the nurturer of my household.
from Vibe
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