OAKLAND — A former Oakland youth swimming coach was charged last month with 30 counts of molesting a then-teenage swimmer during the earlier 2000s, crimes the District Attorney says weren’t thoroughly investigated until the victim began cooperating in 2019.
David Teel, 54, of Boston, has been out on $50,000 bail since 2020 when prosecutors charged him with 10 counts of molesting a girl whom he coached with the Oakland Barracudas, a local now-defunct youth swim team that recruited teen swimmers from around the East Bay. But when the alleged victim testified at Teel’s Aug. 9 preliminary hearing that the sexual abuse was daily and lasted more than a year, an Alameda County Superior Court judge allowed prosecutors to file 30 felony child molestation counts against the former coach.
Doe testified the abuse started with a forced kiss and escalated for forcible touching and oral copulation that would happen, “constantly.”
“Multiple times a day, up to four times a day. At least once a day, but that would be an easy day,” she said on the witness stand.
In 2012, USA Swimming, the governing body for national swimming competitions, banned Teel from coaching over the same allegations, court records show. But while the woman reported the alleged abuse to USA Swimming in 2010, she declined to cooperate with police investigators until 2019, when she testified she was able to overcome her fear of losing her anonymity during a criminal case.
Teel has pleaded not guilty. During the preliminary hearing, his attorney, Tiega-Noel Varlack, argued that Doe’s testimony had never been verified and said the 10-year delay in the case hindered Teel’s ability to defend himself against the charges. She argued Doe just began cooperate to bolster a lawsuit against USA Swimming.
“The government has dropped the ball for 10 years,” Teel’s attorney said in court. She later added, “All of the other swimmers have refuted any evidence of wrongdoing by my client.”
Doe was the only witness called at the preliminary hearing, where she described joining the Barracudas while still in elementary school, and how she viewed swimming as a means of getting into college. She described Teel as an “intimidating” and demanding coach who would “withhold coaching” when she disobeyed.
He began massaging her feet during exercise sessions when she became a teen and insisted on one-on-one meetings in his office. It was during one of those meetings that he forcibly kissed her, she testified.
“I felt like I was being preyed on, and I felt really trapped more so than ever,” she testified. “And it felt like something was happening, like something premeditated, or something was going to happen. He had just a look in his eyes that was really terrifying.”
The following day, he apologized and told her to come to his home for breakfast so he could make it up to her, she said on the stand. When she arrived, she testified he grabbed her and forcibly touched her genitals.
After that, it began happening, “all the time,” and she eventually stopped physically resisting, she said.
“There was a dynamic of ownership, like he could make me do whatever he wanted,” she testified. “For a long time, actually, I remember resisting. And then it just became routine, and I was just a robot or a sex slave, and there was no will involved anymore.”
She said years later, in 2010, she reported what happened to USA Swimming after seeing media reports about other sexual abuse within swimming clubs, and eventually sued the governing body. She said in the early 2010s, an Oakland police investigator made it sound like her identity would be made public if she cooperated, so she held back until 2019.
In a strange twist, one of the investigating officers, retired Oakland police Det. Carletta Garrett, failed to show up to court and testify about the 2010 police investigation, despite being subpoenaed. That failure prompted a judge to “issue and hold” a $50,000 arrest warrant for Garrett, giving her one last chance to appear in court if she’s subpoenaed for the trial, according to court records.
During cross-examination, Doe testified that Teel sexually abused her at her college, after she turned 18, but the defense painted those as consensual encounters and asked Doe if she became Teel’s girlfriend.
“I wouldn’t use the word girlfriend. It was more Stockholm syndrome at that point,” she testified. When pressed whether those incidents were voluntary, she said, “I did not have a gun to my head, that is correct.”
After the testimony, Varlack argued that there was evidence for one count of inappropriate touching, “at most,” but that the evidence failed to support even that. She said that prosecutors shouldn’t “get a free-for-all to just come in and throw spaghetti at the wall and hope that it will stick with respect to when this stuff happened.”
Judge Kimberly Colwell, while noting the legal standard for a preliminary hearing is far less than what jurors are given at a criminal trial, allowed prosecutors to file 30 felony charges.
“The testimony was overwhelming in terms of the number…it sounds like it was a daily, if not multiple times-a-day occurrence,” Colwell said.
Source: www.mercurynews.com