Articles Posted in Sexual Crimes

Robert Oliva, 66, won five New York City championships as the coach at Christ the King Regional High School. Mr. Oliva (hereinafter, the “Defendant”) has now returned to Massachusetts. The Defendant has come back to answer charges of Boston sexual assault on children dating to the 1970s.

His answer was “guilty”.

In exchange for the Defendant’s plea, he was sentenced in Suffolk Superior Court to five years of MA probation for to two counts of child rape and one count of disseminating pornography to a minor, during a 1976 trip to Boston with a 14-year-old boy.

The statute of limitations in such matters is 10 years. However, given the state of the law, complainants may file criminal complaints up to the age of 43, sometimes even later.

As a society, we tend to try to make it as easy as possible for children to come forward to report sex crimes when they happen to them. This is a good thing.

Often, however, we stretch the rules to the extent that mere allegations are akin to criminal convictions, even years before there is ever a trial.

This is a very bad thing.
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Fritz Olmande, 50, hereinafter the “Defendant” ended his week as a convicted Massachusetts sex offender.

The Defendant was found guilty of the repeated Jamaica Plain, MA, rape of a girl over the period of 3 years when she was between 5 and 7 years old.

According to the Commonwealth, the Defendant had access to the girl because he often spent the night at the victim’s home because he was romantically involved with a family member of the victim.

According to the Commonwealth, the Defendant would abuse the girl when she was left in his care. According to the child, the Defendant told her to keep the abuse secret. Apparently, she did so until she saw the Defendant again in 2008. It was then that she told her mother of the abuse.

The Defendant was sentenced to 10 – 12 years.

Attorney Sam’s Take On False Accusations Of MA Child Rape

Accusations of raping or sexually abusing a child are among the most difficult cases to handle for a MA criminal defense attorney. While there are many courses and symposiums about defending such matters, I find that the best teacher is experience.
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Today’s blog is a reminder. It is a reminder to those of us, in and out of the trenches of criminal justice about reality. We often proclaim that facing a criminal allegation, so long as the accused does not end up spending too many years in jail,is “no harm, no foul”. We figure that simply being accused is no big deal.

That is, until it happens to us.

Let’s look at the case of former Children’s Hospital Boston pediatrician Dr. Melvin D. Levine.

Dr. Levine was a former chief of ambulatory pediatrics at the hospital.

Dr. Levine was a Rhodes scholar and a best-selling author who had appeared on “The Oprah Winfrey Show”.

Dr. Levine was then accused of molesting “thousands of his pediatric patients”. Never criminally charged…simply accused in a civil law suit.

Dr. Levine was shortly thereafter found dead in the woods near his home in North Carolina. According to authorities, he had shot himself in the forehead with a 12-gauge shotgun.

Before you take the suicide as some kind of admission of guilt, be aware that he not only left behind a suicide note, but also a journal that he had kept. To the end, Dr. Levine insisted that he was innocent.
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While it is true that the duties of a good coach exist both on the field and off, North Andover 60-year-old high school wrestling coach David Castricone (hereinafter, the “Defendant”) has learned that they do not extend to the locker room.

The locker room of the opposite sex, at least.

That’s how suspicion apparently began in the Defendant’s case. He has been One of the most successful high school wrestling coaches in Massachusetts. The only thing is, there were questions about him. For example, why was he constantly being found in the girl’s locker room?

Police say that information was received last week that prompted a search of the Defendant’s home. According to court documents, the Defendant “got nervous” as police searched his attic. He then told his daughter to leave the kitchen.
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Sometimes it seems that the criminal justice system uses the intellectual equivalent of a bazooka to tackle an issue as logically mind-bending as kindergarten mathematics. Boston’s Supreme Judicial Court, normally needed to referee issues surrounding Massachusetts Murder, Robbery or search and seizure issues has now been called upon in one of these instances.

The matter involves Mr. John Canadyan Jr. (hereinafter, the “Probationer”). The Probationer is a convicted sex offender. After pleading guilty to two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14, he was sentenced to 18 months in jail. He also received a term of probation and had to register as a Massachusetts sex offender on the appropriate registry.

The Probationer also happens to be homeless.

Now, as we have discussed in the past, being on probation is not a picnic. Generally, when a probation officer tells a probationer to “Jump!”, it is the probationer’s obligation to merely ask, “How high?”

There are, however limits.
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