Parker’s Woes Hit The Wall At Seton Hall

When he walks into a courtroom next month, Richie Parker will stand alone.

Gone is Seton Hall basketball coach George Blaney, who promised him a four-year athletic scholorship. Gone are the dozens of other Division I schools that recruited the backcourt prodigy, and the corporate sponsors who coveted his game. Gone is his high school career; Richie Parker was thrown out of school.

Parker, once the most popular 6-foot-4 jump shooter in New York City, is now a convicted felon. The 26-points-per-game scorer pleaded guilty last month to first-degree sexual abuse; he and a friend forced a classmate to perform oral sex on them in a high school stairwell in January 1994.

Almost by accident, Parker has since become the most powerful symbol of college basketball recruiting gone wrong since Lloyd Daniels arrived at UNLV in 1987 with a third-grade reading level and a drug problem.

Parker now hopes to graduate from another school and catch a college scholarship somewhere else.

His 16-year-old victim, plagued by nightmares and emotional problems, is trying to get her life together.

Seton Hall, caught in a public relations nightmare, is trying to put the whole episode in the past.

It won’t be easy. Once Parker’s Box was opened, it proved impossible to close.

“Seton Hall was so far wrong,” said Mike Francesa, a New York-based sports radio host. “It’s mindboggling, shocking and embarrassing … What kind of message are you sending? You can plead guilty and still get a free ride to a major school?”

When Seton Hall signed Parker to a letter of intent three months ago, it merited a few paragraphs in the local press. A sodomy charge hung over his head, but Parker was “a nice kid,” said local high school recruiting guru Tom Konchalski. “If you asked me ahead of time who might do something like this, he would be one of the last choices.”

The baby-faced 18-year-old was “a popular guy,” said the lawyer for his victim. “Hey, he was the star of the Manhattan Center basketball team.”

He was also a recruiting coup for a team in need of one.

The Pirates, minus former coach P.J. Carlesimo and picked last in the conference by Big East coaches, knew Parker could help turn things around.

He was one of the city’s top players, right behind Georgia Tech signee Stephon Marbury. Recruiting publications ranked him among the nation’s top 30 players.

His impending court date became a topic of conversation in the crowd at Seton Hall home games. And Parker, wearing a hooded sweat shirt, was a frequent visitor in a first-row seat beneath the basket in the Meadowlands Arena.

On Jan. 13, he moved from courtside to courtroom. In a deal with Manhattan prosecutors, Parker pleaded guilty to felony sexual assault. He accepted a sentence of five years’ probation, which will be imposed March 1.

The victim’s family, immigrants from Ghana, said they approved the deal to spare their daughter the agony of testifying.

Blaney, after the plea bargain, voiced support for Parker. The high school senior, an admitted sexual offender, was still welcome in the Seton Hall locker room.

But on Jan. 20, New York Post columnist Phil Mushnick - in a scathing column headlined “Seton Hall of Shame” - accused the Catholic university of making a deal with the devil.

Mushnick demanded an explanation from the school’s chancellor, the Rev. Thomas R. Peterson, “as to why the school is so eager to allow an academically unsound sex felon to freely walk” on its South Orange, N.J., campus. In addition to the sex charge, Parker had SAT scores too low to play as a freshman.

The prospect became a pariah. Parker, Blaney and Peterson were vilified on talk radio and in other newspapers. Three days later, Peterson responded: Richie Parker was no longer welcome at Seton Hall.

“I think he should be given a second chance, but not here,” Peterson said.

Second chance? Parker’s lawyer called it a double-cross. Seton Hall was fully aware of the impending guilty plea before Parker signed, and had promised to back him, said attorney Michael C. Miller.

The lawyer had company in blasting the Pirates. Even after rejecting Parker, the Pirates took a pounding in the press.

Francesa said the media pressure forced Peterson to turn on Parker: “They can cry holy indignation, but without the outcry, Seton Hall would have brought him in.”

The university’s defense? Not much. Peterson turned down three requests for interviews to explain what happened. Blaney, the father of two girls, still wondered why Parker wasn’t headed to the Hall.

“I’m sad for Richie,” Blaney said. “I got to like the kid. I thought he could have been a terrific player.”

Folks outside the Hall focused on the person, not the player.

Parker was quickly suspended from his high school basketball team. The city Board of Education reassigned him to a school for troublesome youths. His name disappeared from the list of seniors considered for the McDonald’s national all-star game.

The Parker incident was no aberration. Some 400 New York City public high school students, like Parker, were yanked from their schools for violent or criminal offenses last year; a study by a University of Arkansas psychology professor found that athletes are more likely than the general population to commit sexual offenses.

Those figures mean little to the troubled victim, now 16 and attending her third high school in the last 12 months.

She arrived here from Ghana in 1990, and quickly compiled a record of academic achievement. Her grades were As and Bs; she became valedictorian of her junior high school class. College - maybe medical school - were in her future.

Until she met Richie Parker in the stairwell.

Threatening phone calls were made to her home after the incident. Harassment forced her out of Manhattan Center; she transferred to another public high school, where she was again targeted by “fans of Parker, friends of Parker,” said her lawyer, Michael S. Feldman.

This year, she switched to a private school. The personal attacks have stopped, but the private agony endures.

“She has serious psychological problems as a result of this attack,” said Feldman. “You’re never the same after an incident like this.”

The family, through Feldman, declined to speak about the attack. They have turned down offers for TV appearances as they try to get the girl’s life back in order.

“Everybody is interested in this basketball player playing basketball,” Feldman mused. “What about a human being getting help for his problems?”

Will the Parker situation change things in the world of college recruiting? Three years after recruiting Daniels, UNLV coach Jerry Tarkanian was hailed when the Runnin’ Rebels won their first national championship.

Konchalski said he’s has already heard from two other schools asking about Parker, “and I guarantee a lot more than two will call.”

Why?

In the big-bucks, win-at-all-costs world of college basketball, some coaches just can’t stop themselves.

“It’s almost like there’s an electrified fence around this jewel,” Francesa said, “but the jewel is so precious that the coaches keep sticking their hand into the fence to get it.”

This time, everybody was zapped.