RI – Accused pedophile’s trial starts

Article
10/19/2006
By: Kevin O’Connor , Times staff writer

PROVIDENCE – A sexual relationship between a man and boy that took place a generation ago is at the center of a trial that began Thursday.
A Superior Court jury must determine if Gerald Lynch, a longtime East Providence politician and a fixture at the Boys and Girls Club, broke the law when he had sex with a teenager whom he employed in the mid-1980s.
Lynch, 61, of Morra Way, East Providence, began a trial before Superior Court Judge Edward Clifton on charges that he had sex with a man, now 37, beginning when the man was 13 and continuing until he was 15.
Lynch pleaded innocent. His lawyer, C. Leonard O’Brien, told the jury Thursday that the complaintant in this case was confused.
“There was a consensual sexual relationship,” O’Brien told the jury. “What we will contest is when it happened.
“We are saying the sexual activity occurred in the late 1980s.” That time frame would have made the complainant 18 or 19 at the time of the affair.
Lynch was arrested on Jan. 9, 2004, after the complaintant, who was born and raised in East Providence, went to the police and told Detective William Magill that Lynch had sex with him repeatedly when he was working for Lynch at Blease Florist, 390 Newport Ave., Pawtucket.
At the time he was arrested, Lynch was the executive director of the East Providence Boys and Girls Club. Prior that that he had been the assistant director of the Pawtucket Boys and Girls Club. He was elected to the East Providence city council in 1982 and served in that capacity for 16 years.
He has been rarely seen since. His lawyers have routinely declined comment on the case.
Prosecutor Maureen Keough told the jury in her opening argument that they would hear of the complaintant of a promising life that became unraveled. The complaintant came from a close family and was educated in Catholic schools before enlisting in the Coast Guard. He married his high school sweetheart and started his own business.
Then it fell apart in fighting, drinking and drugs. The man has been marginally employed for several years.
“We are left to wonder, what happened,” Keough said. “What happened to this promising future?
“The answer is, that from the ages of 13 to 15, he was sexually abused. He was sexually abused by that man, right there, Gerald Lynch.”
She said the jury would also hear the tape of a telephone call the complaintant made to Lynch at the urging of Detective Magill in January of 2004.
“You wil hear the victim confront the defendant for the first time in 20 years,” Keough said. “What you will not hear is a denial.”
The complainant began his testimony Thursday. (The Times does not use the names or otherwise identify complainants in sexual assault cases.)
Keough lead him through a recitation of his life, one that displayed a steady downward spiral from running his own business selling office furniture to occasional work on a fishing boat. The assaults by Lynch, the man said, was the cause of his troubles.
“It was something I carried around for a long time,” the man said. “I never forgot what happened. I’d always had nightmares about it.”
The final straw came during the holidays in 2003 to 2004 which he spent with his parents.
“I woke up from a dream. I woke up crying. I just couldn’t take it anymore,” the man said.
The first sexual contact, the man said, came when he was 13, while returning from South County with Lynch after helping Lynch plant a garden for a client over the Memorial Day week end.
Lynch, the man said, stopped in Wakefield and bought beer, which he shared with the 13-year-old.
While they were drinking beer, the man said, Lynch reached into his swim trunks to fondle him.
“I didn’t know what to do,” the man said. “I was afraid and I didn’t know what to do.
“He was a father figure, basically the same age as my Dad. He was bigger than me. I’d never had anything like that happen to me.
“I was embarassed.”
The case is to continue today and is expected to continue next week.