Former Yankee Chad Curtis comes across as a delusional monster in a Sports On Earth article that features a jailhouse interview and details of his trial last year.
Curtis has been in prison in Michigan since October serving seven to 15 years after being convicted of molesting three teenage girls at a high school where he volunteered. The 45-year-old maintained his innocence in the interview and said he wanted to speak after not testifying in the trial on the advice of his lawyers.
Curtis began volunteering and serving as a substitute teacher at Lakewood High School in 2010. Curtis lived nearby with his wife and six children. The school was happy to have Curtis, who spent 10 years in the major leagues, three with the Yankees, and was known as a devout Christian.
The article tells the story of Curtis’ crimes through the testimony of the girls at his trial. Each of them delivers an account of Curtis taking them into a trainer’s room in the school basement to help them deal with sports injuries. But a massage would end with Curtis touching their rear ends, breasts and, in one case, genitals.
One of the victims, referred to in the article by the pseudonym “Kayla,” said Curtis was helping her with a hip flexor injury she had. He began massaging her and eventually removed her shirt, leaving her in just a sports bra.
“I’m uncomfortable, but I don’t say anything ’cause in my head I’m going through all the talks that he had talked in class, and how he was such a Christian guy. And so I was like don’t — you know — don’t think there’s something happening here that’s not. You know, don’t offend him,” she testified.
Then he removed the sports bra and began massaging her bare breasts.
“I try to rationalize why he could think that it was OK to do that,” she testified. “I was trying to figure out how it could better me as an athlete, ’cause that was the idea of this massage. And I couldn’t figure out like how that could make sense. And I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t even open my mouth to say anything.”
The next day, Kayla went to confront Curtis, but he offered a semi-apology before she could. He said it would not happen again, but it did.
A few weeks later, according to testimony, he again was working on her hips when he removed her shirt and shorts, leaving her in a sports bra and spandex. Then he removed the sports bra. He kissed her breast and reached under her spandex, penetrating her vagina with one finger. She pushed him off and said, “No.”
Curtis says all he was doing was trying to help treat these girls’ sports injuries. No boy testified he ever went to the trainer’s room with Curtis.
When the interviewer asked Curtis why these girls accused him of molesting them, he said: “I’ve been really discouraged by how often and how wrong people have assumed my motivations, so I’ll extend them that same courtesy.”
Another girl, called “Jessica” in the story, exchanged 115 text messages with Curtis between February and April 2012. Jessica would tell a similar story to Kayla’s of Curtis massaging her thighs and rear end. Curtis would later say Jessica made up injuries to spend time with him.
Jessica said Curtis put a wrap on her ribs and asked her to lift up her sports bra to expose part of her breasts.
Curtis implied there is a conspiracy against him, saying the first two accusations came on his children’s birthdays and he was arrested on the day of another child’s graduation.
“Now, is that coincidental? Or is that someone looking at your personal file and deciding to mess with you?” he said.