file photo by Boyd Loving
December 14,2016
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, A former gymnastics coach has been arrested and charged with sexually assaulting one of his athletes when she was under the age of 13 multiple times in the late 1980s and early 1990s, acting Union County Prosecutor Grace H. Park and Cranford Police Chief James Wozniak jointly announced Tuesday.
Thomas Waddell, 54, of Ridgewood, was arrested at his home without incident on Friday.
The arrest was the result of a nine-month investigation initiated by the Cranford Police Department and jointly involving the Prosecutor’s Office’s Special Victims Unit, according to Union County Assistant Prosecutor Michael Sheets, who is prosecuting the case.
The investigation was launched when the victim wrote a letter to the New Jersey State Police describing the crimes committed against her, Sheets said.
According to the investigation, Waddell was working at the defunct Eastern Gymnastics Academy in Cranford in 1989 when he first started coaching the victim, then a Cranford resident.
Bail for Waddell was set at $75,000 with no cash allowance, and he was ordered not to contact the victim and to surrender his passport as conditions of his bail.
Anyone with information about Waddell’s activities is being urged to contact Special Victims Unit Detective Brian O’Malley at 908-220- 4323 or Cranford Police Detective Spencer Durkin at 908-709- 7346.
Statue of limitations…?
The statue of limitations is next to the statue of libertarian. It hasa cousin caleed an escape goat.
There is no statue of limitations with respect to the sexual assault of a minor.
The victim is now 42 years old. How terrible it must have been living with such pain for that many years.
This is the second Ridgewood resident to get busted for sexual assault on a minor while employed as a sports coach/teacher.
There is a statute of limitations for civil cases involving abuse of a minor but no limitation for criminal. Civil in NJ I believe is 10 years from when you turn 18. Thats why we have not had a lot of Catholic church cases although there have been a handful. Those cases concentrate in states where the statute of limitations allows civil suits to proceed regardless of when they are filed since these are more valuable to lawyers.
I will caution everyone that you should really wait for the outcome of this case before judging anyone involved. Allegations in these types of cases, especially after this many years, can raise significant questions. Sometimes a victim has taken this long to recognize the abuse, often in therapy. Other times there may be mistaken recollections that are disproved by evidence. For instance, specific times and places may discount the plausibility of the claims. Let the prosecutors do their work and see what happens.
In other words, a good defense lawyer can help you get off.
Painful. Reading about the soccer coach in the UK?
Waddell photo here (but is that fair until more is proved?):
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/crime/2016/12/14/ridgewood-man-charged-sexual-assault-underage-girl/95421178/