My step son played football for Christ the King from 1998 to 2001. So I’m very familiar with the high school. Let me tell you something, I have nothing good to say about that school, and it has nothing to do with this story which I knew nothing about.
Christ the King High School only cares about their sports programs. Academically, the school is a joke and their curriculum is sub par to say the least. In addition to all this, CTK was filled with gang-bangers the school administration let attend because of the athletic prowess.
So when this story broke about famed basketball coach Bob Oliva involved with sex abuse of male students, I wasn’t too much shocked considering the atmosphere of the school I personally witnessed.
New York Post reports that a famed New York Catholic hoops coach pleaded guilty yesterday to raping a 14-year-old boy during a trip to a Yankee doubleheader in Boston in 1976 -- as the victim revealed a $20 million lawsuit against the former Christ the King legend and the Diocese of Brooklyn.
And right after Bob Oliva's guilty plea -- which netted him just five years' probation -- ex-Yankee and Met pitcher Allen Watson accused Oliva of victimizing him while Watson was a Christ the King HS student.
"Bob Oliva is a monster," Watson, 40, told reporters after the Boston court hearing. "I'm ashamed to be a CK alumnus, especially ashamed of the people who defended and protected this monster.
"Bob Oliva never touched me. He took me to prostitutes at 14, 15, 16 years old and watched me. He showed me pornography, and he masturbated. I was young, and I thought every coach did that," said Watson, who testified before the Boston grand jury that indicted Oliva.
"I know there's more victims out there."
Oliva, 66, who coached future NBA stars Lamar Odom and Jayson Williams, won 549 games at Christ the King in Middle Village, Queens. He retired months after being accused in 2009 of abusing Jimmy Carlino, whom he coached in a Catholic youth basketball league in the 1970s.
In a searing victim-impact statement yesterday, Carlino said Oliva began molesting him at age 12 and continued doing so on more than 100 occasions over four years in Queens, other states and Quebec. The rape and pornography-dissemination charges Oliva pleaded to were for his attack on Carlino during a trip to Boston.
"I lost my childhood to Bob Oliva," Carlino tearfully told a judge as Oliva watched stone-faced. "These days of teaching me basketball, playing stickball and softball, going to baseball games or taking me for rides in his cool car on trips were all for one reason: I was his sex toy or his sex trophy.
"You are a sick, disgusting person . . . and a poor example of a human being who took advantage of your position and power in life."
Oliva, now living in Myrtle Beach, SC, is barred from coaching and being around children under the age of 18 without supervision. He also was ordered to wear a GPS tracking device.
He now faces Carlino's Queens Supreme Court civil lawsuit, filed Friday, which also names the Diocese of Brooklyn.
