According to a law enforcement official, Mr. Hartshorn was convicted in 1989 on charges of sodomy, promoting sexual performance by a child under 16, and promoting obscene sexual performance by a child under 16. He served three years of probation.
A convicted sex offender who had risen up through the ranks at his local Little League was arraigned Wednesday on new sex offense charges, the Queens district attorney, Richard A. Brown, announced.
The defendant, David C. Hartshorn, 52, has been accused of using his post with the Rochdale Village Little League — where, according to the league’s Facebook page, he was its commissioner — to sexually assault three boys at his home over a six-month period ending in January 2010.
A onetime Little League Coach of the Year, Mr. Hartshorn is charged with showing child pornography to the boys, two of whom were 14 and one 13, and coercing them into performing sex acts, which he filmed. Additionally, according to the charges, Mr. Hartshorn hosted a game of poker for six boys in which the loser was made to perform a sex act on one of the others. Mr. Hartshorn also captured video of that instance of abuse, the authorities said.The allegations surfaced after one of the boys reported the abuse to his mother, who called the police, the district attorney said. Upon searching Mr. Hartshorn’s home, the police discovered a cache of child pornography videos, some featuring children younger than 10, Mr. Brown said.
Mr. Hartshorn has been charged with first- and second-degree criminal sexual acts, the use of a child in a sexual performance, second-degree sexual abuse, and endangering the welfare of a child. He would face as much as 25 years in prison if convicted, and is being held without bail.
Mr. Hartshorn was convicted in 1989 on charges of sodomy, promoting sexual performance by a child under 16, and promoting obscene sexual performance by a child under 16. He served three years of probation, though no other details were immediately available.
A message left on Mr. Hartshorn’s voice mail on Wednesday afternoon was not returned. Several calls to the Rochdale Village Little League also went unreturned; the organization’s policy on vetting potential coaches could not be determined.
News of Mr. Hartshorn’s arrest, and the revelation of his previous conviction, shocked people in his neighborhood, where residents said he had lived alone in a two-story house since his parents died.
“I am totally shocked,” said Wanda Harris, a next-door neighbor. “Because you would never know it. These kids come and they’re fighting to get into the house.”
“I’ve never heard or seen anything” bad, Ms. Harris said, adding that during her 11 years on the block, even her grown children had played in the street with Mr. Hartshorn, his nephews and the boys on his baseball teams.
Ms. Harris said she saw children at her neighbor’s house every day, especially in the summertime.
“You’d never know this was going on,” she said. “He was just a mild-mannered man.”
.........Sarah Tofte
"On average most sex offenders are never caught again for a new sex offense, after five years, between 10 and 15 percent of sex offenders are detected, often convicted, of committing a new sex offense. If you follow them for ten years the rates go up somewhat, if you follow them as long as we’ve been able to follow them, which is about 20 years, the rates go up to somewhere between 30 to 40 percent of the total sample will eventually be caught for a new sex offense."Dr. R. Karl Hansen
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