A friend of mine was arrested on child molestation charges [View all]

I'm not going to tiptoe around it. The guy was a friend at one time. Not an acquaintance or a co-worker. I hadn't seen him in several years, though.

He was a youth coach and an umpire and referee. He also worked in the school system.

I'm not going to tiptoe around this fact either. We all knew. Everyone in his town (I didn't live there, just worked there) knew. People who liked and didn't like the guy because they thought he was a molester knew, at the very least, that there was something up with the guy. Deep down, it was hiding in plain sight. Even my boss told me he had been approached by the local police and questioned about him on an informal basis. Mind you, this was five or six years ago. He wasn't arrested until last week. If you go to the comments section of the local newspaper's website, there are literally dozens of people commenting and all saying the same thing. They knew, everyone knew.

The guy always had these boys tagging around with him. All about eight to fifteen years old. He'd introduce them as his godson, or a son of a friend (always a woman) of his. I got the impression they were all kids without a father who was around, because a lot of the back stories he'd give implied the kid's mother was working and he playing big brother or babysitting them. One time a bunch of us went to a ballgame, and he brought along one of them (along with his own biological son). It creeps me out just thinking about it now.

The last time I saw him was at the mall about seven years ago. He had a kid, a boy, a teenager (not his son), with him. He actually made a joke, directed at me to the boy, saying "Watch out, this guy used to be a priest". Because ha ha....priests molest kids who look up to them. It was at that moment, I decided I was going to avoid this guy.

I've tried so hard to limit my judgement of men who hang around kids through youth sports, boy scouts, religious groups without their own kids around and heavily involved. But this shattered it. I can't be unbiased anymore or give "the benefit of the doubt".

I'm not going anywhere with this....just had to vent.