April 13 (Reuters) – A man who last fall accused former
Syracuse University assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine of
molesting him as a child now says he made up the whole story.
Zach Tomaselli, reached by telephone on Friday evening at
his home in Lewiston, Maine, said he lied about being abused by
Fine, who was fired from his job as an assistant to legendary
coach Jim Boeheim.
He first recanted his accusations in a phone call to the
Syracuse Post-Standard on Thursday night, hours after his own
sentencing on child abuse charges.
“I’m just ready to step forward and admit that I fabricated
the Bernie Fine story,” Tomaselli said in a recorded call on the
Post-Standard’s website. The audio was posted on Friday after
the paper said it had confirmed Tomaselli made the call.
Separately, in an email to a reporter for Syracuse-area news
website cnycentral.com, Tomaselli said: “I made the ENTIRE thing
up. I have never met Bernie in my life.”
Asked by Reuters on Friday if those reports were accurate,
he said: “Yeah, that’s correct.”
Tomaselli, 23, was one of three men who accused Fine of
abuse. His was the only accusation recent enough to fall within
the statute of limitations for prosecution, and federal
authorities were investigating his claim that Fine molested him
in a Pittsburgh hotel room in 2002.
The others accusers were former ball boys for the basketball
team Bobby Davis and Mike Lang, who have since sued the
university and Boeheim for calling them liars when they accused
Fine of abusing them for years as children.
The university, located in Syracuse, New York, has one of
the most prominent college basketball programs in the United
States.
Tomaselli was sentenced on Thursday to more than three years
in prison for molesting a 13-year-old boy at a Maine camp where
he worked as a counselor. He is due to begin that prison term on
Wednesday, he said.
In the recorded call to the newspaper, Tomaselli said he saw
a news report last fall about Davis and Lang’s claims and
started to make up his own story.
“I told a friend from New York to see if he would believe it
when I grew up with him. I said, ‘Bernie Fine abused me, Oh my
God.’ You know kind of like a joke at first. He was like
‘Really?’ and I’m like well if I can get him to believe it…,”
Tomaselli said.
“One lie led to another. It grew and grew and grew and it
was amazing to see it grow,” he said of the media cascade
touched off by the scandal.
Tomaselli said his lie was motivated in part by a “hatred”
of Syracuse because he is a fan of a rival basketball team.
Syracuse University spokesman Kevin Quinn declined comment.
Assistant U.S. Attorney John Duncan, whose office was
investigating the Tomaselli’s claim over the winter, did not
immediately return a call for comment.
(Reporting By Barbara Goldberg and Dan Burns; Editing by Eric
Beech)
