Boy, 11, testifies of sex abuse by football coach

THE THIN 11-year-old, who looked younger than his years, swiveled back and forth in the witness-stand chair and told a Common Pleas jury yesterday that he used to sleep over some weekends in his football coach's home bedroom.

Other boys also would sleep on coach Leon Watson's bed, said the boy, who was dressed in a light-blue collared shirt and dark slacks.

"We'd be on the bed sometimes and he'd touch us on our private parts, put his mouth on our private parts," the boy said.

Watson also put his "private part" in the boy's mouth, the boy said, and sometimes "white stuff" came out. There were times when Watson put his penis into the boy's butt, the boy said, speaking at first in a calm voice, but then breaking down in tears.

Watson, 25, of North Philly, volunteered as an assistant coach with the Rhawnhurst Raiders football team and also created his own youth football team, the Little Vicks, lawyers said.

He is charged with sexually abusing five boys and a mentally disabled man.

The boy who testified yesterday said he was 9 or 10 when Watson sexually abused him. He was a player on the Little Vicks and the Rhawnhurst Raiders. In a trembling voice, he said in answer to a question by Assistant District Attorney Branwen McNabb that Watson put "lotion, Vaseline, grease" on himself before penetrating him anally.

It hurt, but he "was scared to" tell Watson, the boy said.

Asked why he didn't tell his mother what had happened, he said he felt uncomfortable because Watson's "family lived all around us."

Department of Human Services workers went to Watson's mother's house on Diamond Street near 24th on Nov. 10, 2013, looking for Watson after an anonymous call to the department's tip line.

DHS worker Najiyyah Hassan testified that when she and a colleague went to the house, Watson at first said three children were inside, then brought only two kids downstairs to the living room, contending the third had left.

Things didn't seem right, so her co-worker called the cops, she said. After police searched the house, they found two other boys inside, said Hassan, adding that she was "shocked, disgusted" by that discovery. Everyone in the house was taken to the police Special Victims Unit to be interviewed, she said.

Shantel Roberts, another DHS worker, testified that she was not working that day, but happened to be driving by the house and saw one of her co-workers outside looking distressed.

She stopped at the house and briefly spoke inside a police car to one of the two boys found in the house by cops. That boy, then 8, was "tearful and visibly shaken," she said.

He said to her, " 'Bad things happen in the home,' " Roberts said.

Assistant District Attorney Brandon Jaycox told jurors in his opening statement yesterday that the 8-year-old boy and his brother, 9, had lived with Watson for a short time because their parents couldn't take care of them.

On the surface, Watson seemed nice, but in his third-floor bedroom he molested both boys and others, the prosecutor said.

Besides the boy who testified yesterday, Watson is charged with indecently touching two other boys, then ages 8 and 10, who also played on the Little Vicks, Jaycox said. The team "was the perfect cover, the perfect way to get access to little boys," he said.

Many of the alleged victims came from broken homes, Jaycox said.

Defense attorney Catherine Berryman said Watson is "accused of crimes he did not do."

Under cross-examination, the 11-year-old boy agreed that he wanted to go to Watson's house, but added that he had friends there.

Berryman told jurors that her client had been convicted as a juvenile of raping a younger sister and younger brother and a few other minors considered cousins.

"Just because someone did a truly horrible thing in the past, doesn't mean" he did it again, she said.

Watson spent time in juvenile-placement facilities for his previous crimes until he turned 21. He then lived in a transitional home for about a year before moving into his mother's house.

At the transitional home, prosecutors contend, Watson anally raped a 21-year-old developmentally disabled man.

Watson is charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, corruption of minors, unlawful contact and sexual assault.