After a trial that lasted a month, the jury deliberated a little over 8 hours before finding a former North Kingstown High School boys basketball coach not guilty of two felonies — second degree child molestation and second degree sexual assault.
But the same jury found Aaron Thomas guilty of two misdemeanors — two counts of simple battery.
For 30 years, the former coach got his students to strip naked behind closed doors in his office, so that he could take precise measurements of the fat content of their thighs.
During the trial, several of his former students choked back tears as they described what that experience did to them.
“I was fifteen years old!” one former student testified. “It has been just the hardest thing to just go through and deal with for what was supposed to be four years of my life that I really looked forward to.”
Coach Thomas lost his job four years ago, after several former students complained. Special Assistant Attorney General Meagan Thomson said the issue was serious enough to warrant criminal charges.
“He’s someone who used somewhat legitimate testing as a cover to administer his own perverted test for his own sexual gratification,” she said.
When it was his turn to take the stand, the former coach apologized. But Thomas defended the so-called “naked fat tests.”
“It was never my intent to ever hurt or embarrass any of the student athletes. But when I look back now I see how it could be — how it is — construed. I take full responsibility for it. It was a foolish thing,” Thomas said.
Thomas’s defense team insisted the tests, while invasive, were done in the name of science.
“If being naked and alone behind closed doors with a student was equal to committing a sexual assault there would be no trial,” said defense attorney John Calcagni in closing arguments.
Outside the Washington County courthouse Thomas’s other defense attorney John McDonald expressed relief at the jury’s verdict.
“We are very satisfied that the jury saw the case as we did: no sexual intent whatsoever,” McDonald said.
But the Rhode Island attorney general suggested the prosecution’s case might have been stronger if more alleged victims had been able to press charges.
The coach conducted the naked fat tests for decades, but the statute of limitations on the two sex crimes was just three years.
Attorney General Neronha said, “Despite what the defendant and his defense would have you believe, pseudo-science is not an excuse for abuse, nor is winning more important than well-being. We believe that what took place here was not just bad judgment, it was, and always has been, criminal conduct.”
As is, the two misdemeanors carry a possible penalty of a thousand dollar fine and/or one year in prison. Sentencing is set for next month.
