Riverside Church opened its defense against a lawsuit accusing the progressive religious institution of harboring a predatory child sex abuser running its pioneering youth basketball teams for decades, as attorneys attempted to show that the church had no notice of any wrongdoing and only knew of the program's sterling reputation.
Former Riverside Hawks player Daryl Powell, 64, is one of 27 men suing the church under New York's Child Victims Act. The one-time Marist College star alleges that the multimillionaire former coach and director of the elite travel-team program, the late Ernest Lorch, regularly molested him as a child. All the while, Powell says, the venerable upper Manhattan institution did nothing to stop the abuse, which the ex-player alleges included routine invasive “jockstrap checks,” sniffing his body, groping his genitals and paddling his bare buttocks.
Riverside's first defense witness, the Rev. Robert Polk, demonstrated via Zoom that he hired Lorch in 1961 to voluntarily direct the church's sports programs. He was impressed with the young corporate attorney's impressive resume and found him to be “an erudite, smart guy.” He said Lorch was fluent in German and French, languages he picked up when his family fled Nazi Germany and then occupied France in the 1930s. Polk testified he supervised Lorch from 1961 to 1966 in his position running youth ministries, and that Lorch quickly put the church program “on the right track” in helping with church outreach to recently opened housing projects in Manhattan's Morningside Heights neighborhood.
Polk left Riverside in 1966 but returned there to work full time in another capacity in 1970, and told the six-person jury in lower Manhattan that he never heard any complaints about Lorch's behavior with children in the basketball program. “He was very creative in athletes,” Polk testified, “and a good teacher and stalwart in social justice issues.”
He said he first heard about abuse allegations in 2002, when Lorch informed him of an imminent newspaper report accusing him of molesting a player as a child and then paying for his silence as an adult. Lorch, who died in 2012, was forced out of the program immediately after those initial accusations.
Powell and his fellow plaintiffs allege Riverside ignored nearly 40 years of abuse by Lorch, as detailed in a joint investigation by Rolling Stone and Sporty. Powell's is the first state Supreme Court lawsuit against Riverside to go to trial under New York's 2019 Child Victims Act. The act allowed accusers a two-year window to sue people and organizations, such as the Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts, for harm done to them as children—in some cases decades later.
The trial, which began last Thursday, is expected to conclude early next week. In cross-examining Polk, Powell's side attempted to show that while Polk actively oversaw Lorch and the basketball program through 1966, nobody at the church was supervising him thereafter. Powell attorney Lawrence Luttrell asked Polk, “Ernest Lorch had to answer to somebody at Riverside Church, correct?” Polk answered, “When I was there.”
Luttrell pointed out that until 1966, under Polk, children weren't allowed to participate in the basketball program without also attending the church's Sunday school. “You're checking on kids,” Luttrell told Polk. “And after you leave, you don't know if that's going on, correct?”
“Yes,” answered Polk, who said he was bequeathed $100,000 in Lorch's will but that the money didn't affect the truth of his testimony.
Later in the cross-examination, Polk offered additional information about the hiring practices in the basketball program: “There is a missing link. During Mr. Lorch's tenure, he hired coaches … I had no contact with them at all.” Luttrell piggy-backed on that statement, saying, “Riverside Church had a number of assistant coaches” and that they were “part of Riverside Church as much as this basketball program was, correct?”
Polk answered, “Yes.”
In addition to Polk, Riverside called another defense witness, Hylda Clark, a longtime member of the church council, one of the institution's governing bodies. She said she did not hear of any rumors of sexual abuse against Lorch while he was there and was unaware of his departure until years later. She said he was held “in very high esteem” and that Lorch's “high ideals” that encouraged more participation in the nearby Harlem community were in line with those of Riverside's activist pastor, the Rev. William Sloane Coffin.
Prior to Polk taking the stand, Powell's side submitted more testimony of abuse from another plaintiff, Ellis Williams. Williams, who died late last year, is one of two plaintiffs who have died before their CVA cases were adjudicated. Parts of his 2023 deposition testimony were read into the record, including an account of being digitally penetrated by Lorch.
The jury make-up changed on Wednesday after one juror was dismissed for frequently nodding off during testimony. He admitted to the court late Tuesday that he was diagnosed with mild narcolepsy and had trouble staying awake. One of the three alternate jurors replaced him on Wednesday.
The day concluded with Powell's attorneys playing videotaped deposition testimony of another former Riverside pastor, the Rev. James Forbes, who presided over the church's religious arm from 1989 to 2007. He indicated that he was not in charge of supervising Lorch or the basketball program.
Forbes said it was his understanding that, “It's the Hawks' show. They run it.”
More excerpts from his deposition will be shown to jurors on Thursday.
