Syracuse fired assistant coach Bernie Fine Sunday over child molestation allegations after a 2002 phone recording emerged in which Fine's wife told his accuser she was well aware that her husband had molested him.
The tape had been in ESPN's possession 2003, the year after former Syracuse ball boy Bobby Davis legally recorded it, but the network said it didn't air it until Sunday because it didn't have corroboration.
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Two other men have come forward to say Fine molested them since Davis first accused Fine. One of them came forward over the weekend. ESPN news director Vince Doria said Monday that the additional corroboration gave the network the confidence to air the phone call.
The accusations against Fine became public after Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was fired amid allegations he sexually abused young boys.
"Convince yourself. You did nothing wrong. You did nothing wrong, and you were a child, and he took advantage of that," Laurie Fine told Davis during the recorded call. At another point she recalled her husband trying to be alone with Davis: "And then he’d come down to where you were every night. And he’d say to me, 'Go check (the Fines' son).' Or ... Go lay with him. Go upstairs.’ Anything to get me out of the room. And I knew."
Davis, 39, alleges Fine molested him for roughly 15 years, beginning when he was about 11. Davis said he began a sexual relationship with Laurie Fine when he was in high school, which might explain their intimate tone during the conversation.
"You trusted somebody you shouldn't have trusted," she said on the tape.
ESPN said it hired a voice-recognition expert who confirmed the voice on the recording matches Laurie Fine's. Doria said the network initially could not confirm the voice on the tape was hers, but that it recently discovered it had video of her that allowed for an audio comparison.
Davis made the recording after a brief talk with police in 2002 and turned it over to ESPN. His allegations, which he brought to ESPN and the Syracuse Post-Standard at the time, created a journalistic conundrum for both: They didn't know whether to report accusations that could be incredibly damaging to Fine, or to risk not exposing a child molester. Both news outlets opted not to report on the allegations, they said, because they couldn't find anyone to support Davis' account.
Neither Davis nor ESPN passed on the tape to Syracuse University officials for an internal investigation of Fine in 2005. Syracuse chancellor Nancy Cantor noted in a statement Sunday that university officials did not have the tape at the time.
"That is true. They did not have that tape in 2005," ESPN's Mark Schwarz reported Sunday night. "Bobby Davis did not know what to do with that tape.
