Scout Leader Hit With Sex Charges
By Barbara Ross, Daily News Staff Writer
Originally published by the Daily News, July 20, 2001
An East Side boy scout leader who ran a troop based at St. Bartholomew's Church was charged yesterday with 36 counts of sodomy.
The indictment of Jerrold Schwartz, 42, was announced by the Manhattan district attorney's office two months after a former scout filed a $50million lawsuit against him.
In that suit, the unidentified scout, now 20 years old, charged Schwartz had sex with him from the time he was 13 until he left Troop 666 at age 16.
In May, Michael Dowd, the teenager's lawyer, gave prosecutors four tapes on which Schwartz is heard admitting the sexual contact and apologizing for his actions.
The ex-scoutmaster pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Manhattan Supreme Court as his wife, an assistant school principal, watched from the gallery. Justice Micki Sherer set bail at $25,000.
Afterward, Schwartz's attorney, Charles Stillman, said: "There are people who think the world of this man."
The indictment accuses Schwartz of sodomizing the teen four times a month in his office or in an apartment on E. 80th St. from September 1996 through May 1997.
On the tapes, Schwartz tells Dowd's client: "I made a bad mistake … I took advantage of you … in a sexual way … I'm eternally ashamed."
Investigators said Schwartz was not charged for any sexual contact he had with the boy before 1996 because the statute of limitations had expired.
None of the alleged acts occurred at St. Bartholomew's, an Episcopal church located at Park Ave. and 50th St., or at Manhattan's Central Synagogue, where Schwartz was scoutmaster before Troop 666 moved to the church in 1995.
Assistant District Attorney Evan Krutoy said in court yesterday that his office is continuing to investigate reports that Schwartz had sexual contact with other scouts.
But sources familiar with those allegations said they involve contact that happened too long ago for prosecutors to bring additional criminal charges.
A spokesman for the Boy Scouts said a sexual abuse allegation was made against Schwartz when the troop was at Central Synagogue, but the NYPD determined it was unfounded. Schwartz was permitted to remain in his position at the time, but he was fired in May, when the lawsuit was filed.
Schwartz owns a bus company based in Colorado Springs that provides transportation from the airport to boy scout and other camps in the Southwest.
