It’s been over six months since the first trial in the Riverside Church child molestation scandal resulted in a settlement for former college basketball star Daryl Powell. In the immediate aftermath, hopes arose that the Powell case would lead to a quick
resolution of the remaining 25 lawsuits filed against the iconic Manhattan church over allegations of sexual abuse in its pioneering youth sports program, which put more than 60 players into the NBA.
That hasn’t happened.
Since Powell settled in January, just one additional case has been formally settled, according to state court files. In the interim, another plaintiff has died — the third former Riverside player who has died while awaiting justice under New York state’s Child Victims Act.
The plaintiff, who sued anonymously using his initials, D.N., died in February, according to a July 17 court filing from one of his attorneys at Herman Law, which said the firm was “working to establish next of kin.” (Herman Law declined to comment.) Like D.N., the other two deceased Riverside plaintiffs, Michael McDuffen and Ellis Williams, had filed lawsuits under the 2019 Child Victims Act, which allowed survivors of child sexual abuse to bypass statute of limitations laws and sue for damages for actions done to them as minors, years or decades later.
As Rolling Stone and Sportico have reported, the Riverside plaintiffs all allege that the church should have known that the multimillionaire director and coach of the church’s youth sports programs, Ernest “Ernie” Lorch, was abusing children for nearly 40 years. All the while, he built the Riverside Hawks basketball teams into a template for today’s $40 billion youth sports industry. Lorch died in 2012 at the age of 79.
While court documents show there have been settlement discussions in some of the cases, some plaintiffs’ attorneys say the pace has been agonizingly slow — or nonexistent.
“Riverside has never approached us to try to resolve this,” Jordan Merson, an attorney for a plaintiff who filed suit under the pseudonym John Doe and who alleges multiple instances of abuse by Lorch, said in an interview last month. “There’s very significant exposure to the Riverside Church. I don’t know why they haven’t approached us, but we’re getting ready for trial, and we look forward to trying the case.”
Mallory Allen represents two other Riverside clients who have chosen not to be named in their lawsuits, identified in court filing by their initials, J.M. and D.G. She says that she, too, is preparing to take the cases to trial. J.M. has a Sept. 14 trial date in New York County Supreme Court in Manhattan, and she says she’s made a motion to consolidate the D.G. case into the same trial, though the court has yet to respond to that motion.
For both of those plaintiffs, “There’s a sense of great frustration that this has taken as long as it has,” Allen says. “But they haven’t lost their resolve.”
She says she is saddened but not surprised that another plaintiff has died during the course of litigation. Allen’s Seattle-based law firm has brought multiple Child Victims Act lawsuits in addition to the Riverside cases, many tied to alleged abuse by Catholic priests. Over 14,000 lawsuits have been filed under the CVA, and she says more than a dozen of her firm’s clients in non-Riverside CVA cases have died. “It’s been a very real consequence of these cases taking as long as they have,” she says. “It’s just horrible.” (Attorneys for Riverside Church did not respond to a request for comment.)
For now, Robert Holmes, the original Riverside whistleblower, remains patient. “For a time, I was disappointed with the movement of the case,” says Holmes, who played for Riverside from 1980 to 1984 and is suing over Lorch’s abuse. “But what I have learned is that the wheels of justice move slowly. I think we will achieve a resolution to this case at some point.”
Holmes, now 58 years old, blew open the Riverside scandal in 2002, when he told the New York Daily News from a federal prison about how Lorch frequently sexually abused him as a child and then paid for his silence as an adult — after Holmes spiraled from a sixth-grade honors student into a career criminal.
Holmes’ revelations led to Lorch’s suspension and eventual removal from his unpaid position at Riverside. In 2010, a Massachusetts grand jury indicted Lorch for sexually abusing former Riverside and University of Texas-El Paso player Byron Walker in the 1970s. But by the time of his indictment, Lorch was in failing health and found incompetent to stand trial, and lawsuits against him and the church were dismissed due to statute of limitations issues.
Holmes was among the first to file suit against Riverside in 2019 during the act’s two-year “lookback window.” The lawyers suing on behalf of Holmes represent 14 other former Riverside basketball players, including Daryl Powell, whose case was the first lawsuit to go to trial under the CVA.
The Powell settlement in January created a sense of optimism that more cases would be resolved, and quickly. Court records show Powell’s attorneys, who declined to comment for this story, adjourned the scheduled February trial of one plaintiff, Bregman Jeffries, and settlement talks for Jeffries and other clients were pursued.
Since then, publicly available state court filings show that only one plaintiff, Mark Dye, has officially settled. Dye’s attorney, Mitchell Proner, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
One holdup has been sorting out which insurance companies covered Riverside for incidents that happened over decades in some cases dating back to the 1960s. Another potential snag: Church bylaws say Riverside’s annual budget — and presumably, any budget allocation for abuse settlements — must be approved by a vote of the whole congregation.
While the continued delays are disconcerting, Holmes expressed more frustration about the reaction, or lack thereof, to the revelations from former Riverside stars and the broader community.
“My disappointment shifted to the no-show, no comment, no support, no anything from some of the NBA players who have made it through this program,” Holmes said. “I haven’t heard anything from the Kenny Smiths or the Chris Mullins, the Ron Artests, the gentlemen who, if it weren’t for the Riverside program, they may not have achieved the accolades that they have now.”
Smith, a two-time NBA champion with the Houston Rockets and a longtime TV commentator now with ESPN; Mullin, a Pro Basketball Hall of Famer and NCAA and New York high-school basketball legend; and Artest (now known as Meta Santiford-Artest), whose 17-year NBA career was highlighted by a title with Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers, were among more than a dozen former Riverside stars who declined comment or did not respond to interview requests for prior Rolling Stone articles related to the abuse case.
“We grew up as kids idolizing these individuals, seeing them on the regular,” Holmes says, talking about Smith and Mullin. “And as kids, we made the decision to go to Riverside, because you could see, ‘Hey, man, there is something other than drugs and the street.’”
He believes the famous players’ silence “sends a message” that the survivors’ experiences “aren’t worthy” of acknowledgment. He hopes one day they can help the survivors, the church and the broader community confront what happened.
In the meantime, Holmes, who has waited almost a quarter century for his day in court, says he hopes his patience will be rewarded and that the once-great basketball program can regain its stature. “My personal message to Riverside is that my heart is open, my love is open, my ears are open,” he says, “and I’d like to move past this and get Riverside back to its prominence.”
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