Ex-baseball coach at a ritzy NYC private school accused of sexually abusing 7 children — including one under 13
Updated Oct. 24, 2024, 6:43 p.m. ET
A former baseball coach at a ritzy Brooklyn private school was accused Thursday of sexually abusing seven boys, forcing players as young as 12 to expose themselves – and threatening to cut them from the team if they didn’t.
Nicolas Morton, 31, who had worked at the $60,000-a-year Packer Collegiate Institute, also groped at least three of those boys’ genitals, according to details released along with a 20-count sex crime indictment against him in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
Fed up with Morton’s alleged sick abuse, the kids, aged 12 to 14, rallied to expose their coach, said Gwen Barnes, who works in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s special victims bureau.
“Over the summer, this was finally reported, the boys then bravely came forward and stood up for themselves and each other,” Barnes told a judge during Morton’s arraignment Thursday afternoon.
All the boys played on Morton’s private travel team, NYC Freedom Baseball, which pulled kids from Packer and other schools.
Morton, who was arrested earlier Thursday, appeared handcuffed, with a bath towel draped over his wrists, in a Brooklyn courtroom for the hearing – with at least 15 of his friends and family in the audience.
The disgraced coach stood silent, head down, as Barnes revealed a laundry list of accusations against Morton, who faces charges ranging from sex abuse to sexual conduct with a child under 13 years old to forcibly touching kids’ intimate parts.