When A FOX 5 Reporter Was Arrested For Child Molestation And Remained On The Murdoch Payroll

There's been a lot of outrage in the news tabloids this week that the Brooklyn Tech teacher accused of sexually abusing students hasn't been fired already from his teaching job.

The Brooklyn Tech teacher currently resides in Rikers Island, so it's not like he's teaching his classes at this moment, but the usual teacher trolls want him fired immediately because taking time to investigate any allegations made against a teacher takes too long and any teacher accused of doing anything needs to be fired from their teaching job immediately, truth of the accusations or allegations be damned.

Ironically, back in 2010 FOX 5 reporter Charles Leaf was arrested for allegedly molesting a little girl and was NOT immediately fired by the NY Post's parent company, News Corp (which also owned FOX 5.)

Now if Leaf had been a teacher, the NY Post would have tried him in the court of public opinion immediately, declared him guilty before his criminal trial and called for his firing within hours of his arrest.

But that's not what News Corporation officials did at the time.

Nope - instead they suspended him, pending further investigation into the matter.

Here's my blog post at the time noting that if Leaf had been a teacher, he wouldn't have gotten the same treatment from News Corp:

Saturday, October 9, 2010

But If He Were A Teacher, They'd Say Fire Him

An employee of Rupert Murdoch's Fox 5 TV station has been arrested on child molestation charges:

Acclaimed Fox 5 reporter Charles Leaf was suspended Friday after he was accused of molesting a 4-year-girl inside his New Jersey home.

The 40-year-old Leaf was arrested Thursday at his Wyckoff home on charges of aggravated sexual assault on a minor and endangering the welfare of children, authorities said.

"Fox 5 management is aware of the matter and that Charles Leaf has been suspended pending further investigation," said a station spokeswoman.

Notice how Fox 5 management has NOT fired the employee, but is rather suspending him first and conducting an investigation next to make sure the charges are true BEFORE they fire him.

That's a kind of due process and it makes reasonable sense to, you know, look into charges before you fire somebody.

And Fox is treating Leaf like this even though when he called in sick to work on Thursday, the day he was arrested, he never mentioned the arrest.

He simply asked "for a day off to deal with family issues."

Now if Charles Leaf were a teacher, the very same Murdoch media machine would be clamoring for his immediate dismissal sans investigation.

Allegations would be reason enough to fire him.

An actual arrest would be "proof" that he needed to be fired.

Even though every once in a while, the police arrest somebody on molestation charges who is actually, uh, innocent - even in the school system that the New York tabloids like to disparage so much.

Take this man:

After days of falsely being portrayed as a child rapist, a Brooklyn school custodian broke down in tears yesterday as the charges against him were dismissed.

"Just kill me," a distraught Francis Evelyn, 58, muttered to family members who tried to soothe him as he left Brooklyn Criminal Court.

Evelyn had been led out of Public School 91 in Wingate in handcuffs on Monday and spent two days in jail at Rikers Island after an 8-year-old girl said he had repeatedly molested her in a basement bathroom between Feb. 1 and March 9.

But the Trinidad native knew he was innocent.

"I went through hell," Evelyn later told Channel 7 news.

He said he would never forget being in jail - his first time ever behind bars, the station reported.

"They were threatening me, and tell me they're going to take me out, they're gonna cut my throat," he said. "It's their sister, their niece. It was hell."

His niece Hazel Smith told the Daily News her uncle was devastated.

"He's been stripped. You don't strip a good man. It's like my uncle, he was raped also," she said. "He has neighbors, he has kids. He's good inside his heart."

But she said the family held no malice for the accuser.

"She has something going on with her life and my uncle had to pay the price for it," Smith said. "I hope the child gets the help she needs."

Questions about the case quickly surfaced after sources said the second-grader had been abused in the past and had recently accused another student.

Tuesday night, prosecutors rushed to court to request that Evelyn be released on his own recognizance after initially asking for $150,000 bail.

"People are dismissing the charges due to insufficient evidence," prosecutor Roger McCreedy told Judge William Garnett yesterday as Evelyn clasped his hands and bowed his head.

"Dismissed and sealed," Garnett responded.

School officials reinstated Evelyn to his job a few hours later.

PS 91's widely respected principal, Solomon Long, has been yanked from the post he held for 16 years for allegedly failing to report an abuse charge the child previously made against another person.

Long remains exiled at a district office, pending an investigation. The principals union is calling for him to be returned to his post.

For his part, Evelyn has one wish for his future.

"I want my name to be cleared," Evelyn told Channel 7. "I want to walk the street with my head up."

In the Murdoch world, Evelyn's name would never be cleared.

It seems only if you're a Murdoch employee, like Charles Leaf (or Bill O'Reilly, for that matter), are you given the benefit of an investigation before they tarnish your reputation for life and call for your immediate firing.

The Leaf case has another parallel to the Brooklyn Tech case - like the Brooklyn Tech teacher who had been accused of beating a boy a few years before he was hired as a teacher by the DOE (though he was not convicted of any crime in the alleged incident), FOX 5 reporter Charles Leaf had a allegations of violence in his past:

POSTSCRIPT: Leaf sounds like a typical Murdoch creep. According to the DailyNews, this isn't the first time he has found trouble:

Known for his aggressive style, Leaf, an ex-Marine, began working for Fox 5 in 2006 and has won two Emmy awards, according to his profile on myfoxny.com.

Leaf previously worked as a TV reporter in several cities, including Denver, Detroit and Mobile, Ala.

It's not the first time Leaf's conduct has become the subject of unsavory headlines.

In November 1999, Leaf, then a reporter in Mobile, Ala., was sued by a local councilwoman who alleged that the newsman attacked her while trying to interview her for a story.

Frela Wojciechowski said in the suit that Leaf pursued her to her car after a meeting and slammed the door on her arms and legs when she refused to talk.

Leaf abruptly left the station, WPMI. The suit was later settled, and no criminal charges were filed.

I wanted to write this post about Charles Leaf (who has since been convicted of molestation and been sentenced to prison) and the Brooklyn Tech teacher to point out the hypocrisy of the tabloids in the Tech case, particularly the hypocrisy of the people at the NY Post.

When it's a teacher accused of sex crimes, they go after him with both barrels.

When it's an employee in a subsidiary news outlet of the NY Post's parent company News Corporation, they're completely silent - even as the accused was not immediately fired or dropped from the payroll.

7% Of FOX 5 NY On Air Personalities Have Been Accused Or Convicted Of Sex Crimes In Past Four Years (UPDATED - 2:00 PM)

I posted earlier about former Fox 5 NY reporter Charles Leaf getting sentenced to 26 years in prison on child molestation charges.

In the post, I wondered about the following:

Why isn't Campbell Brown screaming about the Leaf case and wondering aloud how many other Fox News employees are pedophiles?

Now Leaf is the only convicted pedophile that I know of at Rupert Murdoch's FOX News and and FOX affiliates, but he is not the only accused sex criminal at the company.

Let's not forget Ray Kelly's son, Greg, a FOX 5 anchor who was accused of rape, though police and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance declined to file charges against him.

The NY Times wrote up the story on Greg Kelly this way:

Manhattan prosecutors have decided not to file rape charges against a son of Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly after a two-week investigation of a woman’s accusation that he had attacked her late last year inside the Lower Manhattan law office where she worked, prosecutors said in a letter on Tuesday. 

The office of the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., concluded its inquiry into the accusation leveled against Mr. Kelly’s son Greg Kelly, a local television anchor, concluding that “the facts established during our investigation do not fit the definition of sexual assault crimes,” according to a brief letter to Mr. Kelly’s lawyer, Andrew M. Lankler. “Therefore, no criminal charges are appropriate.” 

...

The accusations came to light after the woman, who is in her late 20s or early 30s and whose name was not released, walked into the 13th Precinct station house on Jan. 24. She told the police that she had met Mr. Kelly, 43, on the street and had gone for drinks with him at the South Street Seaport a few days later, on Oct. 8. Afterward, she said, they returned to her office and he raped her. 

Police detectives initially interviewed the woman in the hours after she walked into the station house last month, law enforcement officials said at the time. But within hours, the Police Department had turned the investigation over to Mr. Vance’s office because of the conflict presented by the department’s looking into a sexual assault accusation against the commissioner’s son, who from the outset denied the accusations through Mr. Lankler. 

After the allegations became public, Mr. Kelly, a lieutenant colonel in the Marine Reserves, took a leave from his position as an anchor of “Good Day New York” on the Fox station WNYW (Channel 5). 

OK, so here we have two FOX 5 on air employees accused of sex crimes in the last four years, one of whom was convicted on charges, the other not charged.

The FOX 5 NY news site lists 28 current on air personalities - including Greg Kelly, who still has his job despite the rape accusation.

2 out of 28 is 7% - which means 7% of the on air personalities at FOX 5 NY have been accused or convicted of sex crimes in the past four years.

Let's imagine that 7% of teachers working in NYCDOE schools were accused or convicted of sex crimes in the past four years (that would be about 5,600 teachers.)

How do you think Rupert Murdoch's FOX 5 NY affiliate would handle that story?

How would Murdoch's tabloids, the NY Post or the Wall Street Journal, handle that story?

What would frequent FOX News guest Campbell Brown say about those kinds of statistics?

And yet, here we have 7% of the on air personalities at FOX 5 NY accused or convicted of sex crimes in the last four years, one of whom has been imprisoned for child molestation, and we get silence from the FOXies over the sleaze at their station.

Silence too from professional teacher troll Campbell Brown.

It's amazing when you think about, really, because similar statistics for teachers would send both the FOXies and professional teacher trolls like Brown apoplectic about the dangers of teachers, but the reality is, you're far more endangered by FOX 5 NY on air personalities than you are by teachers.

And yeah, I know I'm stretching the Kelly sex crime thing and stretching the stats too - there have been more than 28 on air FOX 5 NY personalities in the past four years.

But this is just the kind of "stretching" that Murdoch media entities engage in when smearing teachers and the teaching profession. 

And the point I want to make in this post still stands regardless - you're far more endangered by FOX 5 NY on air personalities than NYC teachers.

The statistics bear this out.

UPDATED - 2:00 PM: The Daily News reports Greg Kelly is as sleazy as ever:

There is a time and a place for most things — but admiring your co-worker's body live on TV is neither of those.

An excited Greg Kelly could not contain his enthusiasm when colleague Anna Gilligan reported live from the newly renovated Action Park in New Jersey in a bikini.

Gilligan was there to show how the park had been transformed.

But if she thought the hardest part of her broadcast was going on one of the rides and then swimming live on TV, she was wrong.

After getting out of the water, a self-conscious Gilligan, who admitted it was "scary" that she had to strip to a two-piece on air, was subjected to some awkward comments from Kelly.

As she started the Tarzan ride, Kelly exclaimed: "Wow! here she goes, in a two-piece!"
 
And he couldn't contain himself.

As Gilligan climbs out of the water, he tells her: "First of all, nice bathing suit."

She ignores the remark, but Kelly's co-host Rosanna Scotto warns him to "stay appropriate."
He does not heed the advice and continues with his cringey remarks.

When Gilligan says she is about to go and put some clothes on, Kelly tells her "Hold on a second, no, not so fast Anna."

He then stutters to find a question to keep the presenter on air and receives another telling off from Scotto who even slaps him on the arm and tells him to "be nice and stop milking this shot."

Even then, he does not pick up on the clues and continues with the awkwardness.

The camera operator even gets involved by sparing Gilligan's blushed and cutting to a shot of the pool rather than the presenter in her two-piece.

When it goes back to the Fox 5 studio, a suitably embarrassed Kelly tells Scotto, "don't be so frowning at me."

Former Marine Kelly, the son of NYPD Commissioner Raymond Kelly, was cleared of a rape allegation back in 2012 and thanked Scotto then for her support.

He has been hosting the breakfast program since 2008.

Greg Kelly, keeping it classy as always.

Same goes for FOX 5 NY - great idea to put the female reporter in a bathing suit so that Greg Kelly could ogle her publicly on air.

Fox 5 Reporter Sentenced To 26 Years In Prison For Child Molestation

But Charles Leaf, the former Fox 5 reporter sentenced to 26 years in prison for child molestation and child porn, continues to deny the charges:

The former television reporter convicted of molesting a 4-year-old girl defiantly maintained his innocence for nearly half an hour in a packed courtroom before a judge sentenced him to 26 years in prison on Friday.

“I can’t stand before you and say I’m sorry for something I didn’t do,” the journalist, Charles Leaf, handcuffed and wearing an orange inmate’s jump suit, told Superior Court Judge James J. Guida in Hackensack. “Those who prey upon children are the worst kind of criminals. I am not one of them,” he declared “I am innocent, 100 percent innocent.”

Leaf, the son of a police officer, steadfastly maintained that he never abused the girl — who recanted the story of abuse that she told her baby sitter and then authorities in 2010. He accused state child-protection workers of conducting a witch hunt against him and destroying his family because his wife stood by him. Leaf, who lived in Wyckoff until his conviction, has two children.

Anyone can be falsely accused and then encounter so much “prejudice and scorn” that it will ruin his life and the lives of those around him, he said.

Glancing at handwritten notes and sometimes tearing up as he spoke, Leaf said he had passed a polygraph exam and a psychosexual evaluation administered by a leader in the field.

“I have led a life of honor, integrity, courage and commitment,” he declared, referring to his military service in the U.S. Marines. And as an investigative reporter at Fox News 5, he said, his job was to hold the powerful accountable.

A jury found Leaf guilty in February of eight charges, including aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault, child endangerment, hindering apprehension by intimidating the victim, possession of child pornography on a computer and evidence tampering for destroying a hard drive. He was convicted of touching the girl’s private parts and instructing her to touch him in a sexual manner. He also warned her not to tell anyone, but the girl told her baby sitter in October 2010, leading to Leaf’s arrest, the prosecution said.

 The prosecution also called an expert who testified about the pressure some children undergo that leads them to recant testimony about crimes in some circumstances. The victim’s identity is being withheld by The Record because she is a minor.

Testifying in his own defense, Leaf vigorously denied the charges. The girl, now 8, recanted her story and testified that Leaf never touched her in a sexual manner. Leaf’s father-in-law also testified, saying he had downloaded and watched child pornography on a family computer in Leaf’s home.

Leaf can maintain his innocence and claim he has led a "life of honor and integrity," but the record shows otherwise.

First, a family member in the past had accused him of sexual misconduct:

A sister of troubled Fox 5 reporter Charles Leaf says the Emmy-award winning newsman has molested young girls before.

Susan Gaudet told the Daily News her younger brother, busted Thursday on sex assault charges, abused two of his relatives in the 1980s.

"I'd like to see them put him away for the rest of his life," fumed Gaudet, one of Leaf's three sisters, from Jacksonville, N.C. "I am so full of rage. If I had the opportunity to spit in his face and hurt him, I would do it."

Leaf, 40, was charged this week with molesting a 4-year-old girl inside his Wyckoff, N.J., home. The married father of two is being held at Bergen County Jail on $250,000 bail.

It was 25 years ago when Gaudet found out Leaf abused two young female relatives multiple times at their grandparents' home in Trucksville, Pa.

The abuse started when Leaf was just 9years old and his first victim was 3, Gaudet said.
Over the next six years, Leaf repeatedly molested the girl and her sister, who is two years younger, said Gaudet, 53.

Leaf was eventually confronted, and he immediately confessed to the sordid acts, Gaudet said.

"He said, 'Mom, I did it,'" Gaudet recalled. "Just like that. And he's never denied it. He probably wanted help, but he never got it."

Leaf was never prosecuted, Gaudet said. The incident divided the family, but Leaf's sister started talking to him again in recent years.

She remained concerned that he might molest another young girl.

"He continually reassured me we had nothing to worry about," said Gaudet, a mother of two. "I kind of resolved myself to the fact that this was something in the past, but now we know it wasn't."

Gaudet said she revealed her brother's dark past to his wife, Monika, for the first time on Friday. The couple has a 7-year-old son and a 4-year-old daughter.

"She said, 'I don't know what to believe. I don't know what to do,'" Gaudet recounted.

In recent years, Leaf, an ex-Marine who has won two Emmy Awards, battled depression and often threatened suicide, his sister said.

"He's tormented," Gaudet said. "Little did we know how tormented he really was."

Leaf had a reputation as a bully and a liar when he worked for FOX News - this is a piece describing Leaf's reporting style that was written one month before he was arrested on molestation charges in October 2010:

Fox News has launched the careers of some of the most ignorant, unethical, anti-journalists, ever to fondle a microphone. Some have had great success like Glenn Beck. Others have disappeared into media black holes likes Jesse Watters.

Following in the footsteps of Watters is a reporter for the Fox affiliate in New York (WNYW), Charles Leaf. With an obnoxious bearing and a devotion to dishonesty, Leaf has been falling all over himself to fabricate a story where none exists. It’s no wonder that he has found himself promoted to numerous segments on the Fox News Channel. He has been featured with Fox & Friends and Greta Van Susteren. And Megyn Kelly has virtually adopted him and moved him into her den.

The story Leaf has been investigating is related to the controversial non-mosque that is not at ground zero. His premise is that persons associated with the project are either corrupt or connected to terrorists. However, his reports haven’t even provided enough evidence to start a rumor.

First Leaf conducted an ambush interview on real estate developer, Sharif El-Gamal, that yielded nothing to support his contention that El-Gamal was corrupt. Leaf merely insinuated that something must be wrong because El-Gamal was a waiter eight years prior to investing in the Park51 project. The implication being that anyone who starts a small business, works hard for nearly a decade, and achieves success, is deserving of suspicion.

Then Leaf turned his focus to investor Hisham Elzanaty. Again, Leaf ambushed Elzanaty without acquiring any usable information. The only purpose for Leaf’s ambushes is to suggest something sinister when the target declines to talk to him. To that end Leaf made wild accusations about Elzanaty’s contribution to a Muslim charity. As it turns out, the charity, the Holy Land Foundation, was later investigated for ties to Hamas. But that wasn’t until two years after Elzanaty’s donation, and the feds acknowledged that contributors would not have known about the organization’s relationship with Hamas as it was deliberately concealed.

Both of these reports failed completely to produce evidence of any wrongdoing. They were exercises in insipidness and their only purpose was to insinuate and intimidate. They were utterly unprofessional and potentially libelous. Yet Leaf exalted himself as if he had exposed Watergate. And Fox News (particularly Megyn Kelly) went along by broadcasting Leaf’s empty innuendos and affirming the unsupported conclusions.

The most recent edition of this phony story shows Leaf continuing to ambush unsuspecting figures with highly-charged questions that have no basis in fact. In a new segment broadcast on Fox News by Megyn Kelly, Leaf approached both New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand at separate events and asked a loaded question to the effect of: Do you still support the right to build the mosque now that you know it’s developer contributed to a terrorist organization?

What a dishonest piece of tabloid excrement Leaf is. First of all, neither Bloomberg nor Gillibrand “knew” of the allegations prior to Leaf making them. And there was certainly no reason to take his word for it based on his shoddy reputation. Secondly, Leaf outright lied by asserting that Elzanaty contributed to a terrorist organization. The HLF was a credentialed charity at the time of the donation and there is no evidence that he had any knowledge of any untoward activities. In fact, the evidence is to the contrary.

Charles Leaf is on the fast track to Fox News stardom. He is demonstrating the skill set so admired by Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes, its executive masters: dishonesty, partisanship, sensationalism, and aggression. He has a gift for innuendo and for advancing false premises. He expertly exploits the ignorance of his audience who are not likely to research the subject matter themselves. And he will barge into any affair and assert his bogus inquisitions without embarrassment.

Yes, Charles Leaf will go far in that environment. And we need to be aware of him as he climbs the Fox ladder of propaganda. We need to watch as this slimeball advances to the mothership and spreads his brand of sophistry and deceit. He is the embodiment of the Fox ethic and the quintessential Fox blowhard. Remember his name.

Update: Megyn Kelly hosted Charles Leaf again today, even though he had nothing new to add. He just repeated his slanderous accusation that Elzanaty had contributed to a terrorist organization. Leaf is an irredeemable liar, and Kelly is his enabler.

Before Leaf got to Fox 5, when he was working at a smaller affiliate in the south, he was accused of assaulting a councilwoman in Alabama and getting into a fight with his cameraman:

Earlier in his career, Leaf was a reporter in Mobile, Ala., for WPMI, where he became known for his “in-your-face” style, according to the Mobile Register.

In 1999, he left the station abruptly following a well publicized incident with a local councilwoman, who sued him for allegedly assaulting her while attempting to interview her for a story, according to the newspaper.

The suit claimed he slammed a car door on her arms and legs as she tried to get into a car and leave. No criminal charges were filed, and Leaf called the suit “baseless,” the paper reported.

A year earlier, police responded to the television station to investigate a reported fight between Leaf and a cameraman. Again, no criminal charges were filed, and Leaf said the incident was blown out of proportion, according to the paper.

There's your "life of honor and integrity," Mr. Leaf.

The only question I have about all of this is, why isn't Campbell Brown screaming about the Leaf case and wondering aloud how many other Fox News employees are pedophiles?