Ex-Big Brother Mentor Gets 20 Years for Molesting Boys

by Jessica Heslam
Originally published by the Boston Herald, January 30, 2003

A former Big Brother mentor from Newton who used his position to prey on boys and videotape the sickening assaults was sentenced yesterday to 20 years in state prison.

Eric Hindin, a 39-year-old confessed child molester, pleaded guilty in December to more than 35 counts of rape of a child and numerous counts of indecent assault.

Judge Paul Chernoff handed down the prison sentence with lifetime parole supervision in Lowell Superior Court. Hindin was then shipped to MCI Cedar Junction in Walpole.

Two of the three victims were boys Hindin was matched up with at Jewish Big Brothers, Big Sisters of Boston, where he had volunteered for 14 years.

The rapes began shortly after he was paired up with the first boy in 1987 and carried on until 1999. One of the boy's relatives contacted police in April 2001. The assaults took place in Hindin's home.

Hindin was arrested that same month after the cops found him snoozing in a car outside a Newton hotel. With him was a suicide note in which he wrote that he tried to fight his pedophilia but "succumbed when easy opportunity was within arm's reach.''

"For me, young boys are an obsession,'' he wrote in the note to his parents.

The investigation turned up three videotapes showing Hindin having sex with two boys, one of whom was 8 years old.

Prosecutors had asked for a 40- to 60-year sentence followed by a life sentence. Hindin was indicted for 67 sex crimes in Norfolk County and 16 in Middlesex.

"Although we had asked for a longer term, we are pleased that no child will be within Mr. Hindin's reach for decades,'' Norfolk District Attorney William Keating said in a statement.