Bernie Fine’s wife admitted concerns about her husband’s molestation of a Syracuse University men’s basketball team ball boy in their home in a 2002 tape-recorded telephone conversation, according to a story and video published by ESPN on Sunday.

Bobby Davis accused Fine, a SU associate head coach, of molesting him for more than a dozen years, beginning when Davis was in the seventh grade. Davis legally recorded a phone call with Laurie Fine, Fine’s wife, on Oct. 8, 2002, according to the article.

ESPN’s ‘Outside the Lines’ obtained the recording of the phone call from Davis and hired a voice-recognition expert, who said Laurie Fine’s voice matches the voice on the tape, according to the article.

‘I know everything that went on, you know,’ she said to Davis on the phone call, according to the article. ‘… Bernie has issues, maybe that he’s not aware of, but he has issues.’

Davis, now 39, first gave the tape to ESPN in 2003, according to the article, but ESPN did not publish it because Davis’ story wasn’t corroborated. That changed when Mike Lang, Davis’ stepbrother and a former ball boy, accused Fine of molesting him.

Fine was placed on administrative leave by the university on Nov. 17, after police began a full investigation of the allegations.

The tape was shared with Syracuse police after Davis’ and Lang’s most recent accusations, according to the article.

‘Bernie is also in denial,’ Laurie Fine said on the phone call from 2002. ‘I think that he did the things he did, but he’s somehow, through his own mental telepathy, has erased them out of his mind.’

Pete Moore, Syracuse director of athletic communications, said Sunday that SU head coach Jim Boeheim would not be releasing a statement after Sunday’s news.

In the late 1990s, when Davis was 27 years old, he asked Bernie Fine for $5,000 to help pay off his student loans, according to the article.

The money was a topic of discussion in the recorded phone call.

‘When he gave you the money, what does he want for that? He wants you to grab him or he wanted to do you?’ Laurie Fine said.

‘He wanted to do me. He wanted me to touch him, too,’ Davis said. ‘He tried to make me touch him a couple of times. He’d grab my hand, and then I’d pull away, and then he’d put me in your bed, and then you know, put me down, and I’d try to go away, and he’d put his arm on top of my chest. He goes, ‘If you want this money, you’ll stay right here.”

Davis and Laurie Fine also allegedly had a sexual relationship, according to the recorded phone call, when Davis was an 18-year-old senior in high school.

But Davis told ESPN that when he talked to Bernie Fine about the relationship with Laurie, ‘it didn’t faze him one bit honestly.’

Laurie Fine also told Davis that she had let her husband know the alleged molestations of Davis may one day be out in the public, according to the article.

‘I said to him, ‘Bobby and I talked, and I know some things about you that if you keep pushing are going to be let out,” she said, according to the article.

‘He doesn’t think he can be touched,’ Davis answered.

Laurie Fine responded: ‘No … he thinks he’s above the law.’

mcooperj@syr.edu

Published on November 26, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Mark: mcooperj@syr.edu | @mark_cooperjr