"Hewitt must pay $1.2m in Mass. sex abuse case" by Bob Hohler Globe Staff October 02, 2015
Disgraced tennis great and convicted child molester Bob Hewitt has been ordered to pay $1.2 million to Heather Crowe Conner, a Massachusetts woman he is accused of repeatedly sexually abusing in the 1970s while she was an elite high school tennis player and he was her coach.
US District Judge Denise J. Casper, in the first use of a broader Massachusetts statute of limitations law enacted last year, gave Hewitt until Nov. 2 to show why he should not pay the default judgment. Hewitt, 75, currently is confined to his home in South Africa as he appeals a six-year prison sentence for raping two South African girls and indecently assaulting another he coached in the 1980s and ’90s.
“The damage and loss he inflicted on me isn’t about money,’’ said Conner, of West Newbury. “But I’m thankful the judge recognized the harm and is holding him responsible.’’
Casper said the assaults began in 1975 when Conner was 14 and lasted until about 1979. Casper ordered Hewitt to pay Conner $1 million for her emotional distress and $200,000 for her past and future mental health care.
“There is no amount of money he could give me that would repair, replace, or remove what he did to me for all those years,’’ Conner said Thursday.
The convictions in South Africa stem from a Globe investigation that Conner triggered in 2011 as she sought criminal charges in Massachusetts against Hewitt.
For Conner, the decision represented a milestone in her arduous effort to receive a measure of justice for an ordeal that has long haunted her. Essex County prosecutors, while describing her allegations as credible, declined to seek an indictment against Hewitt in 2010, saying they were stymied by the lapsed time since the episode, the lack of additional evidence, and Hewitt’s location outside the United States.
She was a Girl Scout and tennis prodigy at Masconomet Regional High School when Hewitt, a former star with the Boston Lobsters, first offered to coach her for free in 1975....
I had to stop reading at that point.
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Also see:
Sunday Globe Special: Serving You
Horton Hears a Hewitt
Just doing my best to serve you, readers.
