A trusted Queens little league coach was arrested and charged with sexually abusing the teenage members of his team.
David Hartshorn, 52, the league commissioner and former coach of the year for the Rochdale Village Little League in Springfield Gardens, collapsed as the charges were read to him in Queens Criminal Court on Wednesday, February 9.
The court charged Hartshorn with having sexual contact with three boys, ages 13 and 14, at his Rochdale Village home between July 2009 and January 2011. He was also accused of showing child pornography to the minors and getting them to engage in sex acts, which he then filmed.
“The defendant is accused of taking advantage of his position as a little league baseball coach to sexually abuse innocent young boys,” said Queens district attorney Richard A. Brown. “The consequences of his alleged actions for the victims are profound and can well result in emotional trauma from which they may never recover. Such alleged conduct cannot go unpunished.”
Hartshorn was arraigned on charges of first- and second-degree criminal sexual act, use of a child in a sexual performance, second-degree sexual abuse and endangering the welfare of a child. He faces 25 years in prison if convicted and was ordered held without bail and is due back in court on February 28.
According to the criminal charges, Hartshorn would frequently have members of his team at his residence. There, he showed them pornographic material and even allegedly had poker tournaments where they loser was forced to perform a sex act on another boy while Hartshorn filmed it.
The allegations came to light when one of the boys told his mother, who then contacted the police.
A search warrant of Hartshorn’s home allegedly yielded many movies, on both DVD and VHS, showing young boys engaging in sexual acts and also a stash of child pornography with images of small children less than 10 years old engaged in similar activities.
This isn’t Hartshorn’s first time in trouble with the law. According to published reports, he 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.
The Rochdale Little League did not return repeated requests for comment on their vetting process for new hires.
The district attorney’s office urges any other individuals who believe they may also have been victimized by Hartshorn to call NYPD Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS.
