News R Us

Among the many functions of the Wormlips Scrapbook is to keep track of events in my tiny life. Most recently, one facet of that has involved Bill Bricker. My allegations have finally hit the news. From the Chicago Tribune, December 11:

Ex-Winnetka teacher accused of molesting third child at camp
Bill Bricker engaged in ‘immoral act’ with 3rd child at camp, Wyoming prosecutors say

Authorities have filed a third felony charge against former Winnetka teacher Bill Bricker after a woman reported that he molested her as a child on an overnight camping trip in Wyoming in 1968, court records show.

Bricker, 94, who spent decades as a gym teacher and Boy Scout leader in Winnetka, has been fighting extradition to Wyoming after being charged in September with taking “immoral and indecent liberties” with two boys in 1962 and 1985 at a summer camp where he where he worked as a counselor

Records show a third person has recently told authorities that he fondled her at the camp. The woman reported to authorities Nov. 4 that she recalled Bricker kissing her and fondling her breasts while she was in her sleeping bag during a backpacking trip in 1968 at Grand Teton National Park,according to Wyoming court records.

The woman, who said she was 14 at the time, told officials that “she laid there in ‘a state of shock,’ ” according to the criminal complaint filed in the Circuit Court of the Ninth Judicial District in Teton County, Wyo.

Since the initial charges were filed, at least 10 other people have told the Tribune or reported to authorities that Bricker also had inappropriate contact with them as children. Many of the claims were said to have occurred during camping trips with Winnetka Boy Scout Troop 18 or at Hubbard Woods School, where Bricker taught from 1949 to 1985. The claims span from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Illinois’ statute of limitations on filing charges has long run out. Wyoming has no statute of limitations on these types of crimes.

While awaiting a decision on whether he will be sent to Wyoming to stand trial, Bricker is confined to his Michigan home, both by the courts and, his lawyer said, by serious illness that has necessitated hospice care.

Michael Lewis, Bricker’s attorney in Michigan, said Wednesday that he was unaware that a third charge had been filed against his client by authorities in Wyoming.

But Lewis said the new charge will likely not affect Wyoming’s extradition request, which has been delayed to allow time for Bricker to be evaluated with a forensic psychiatric exam intended to assess his mental competency.

“I went to see Mr. Bricker this morning, and he seemed weaker and he is still sleeping most of the time,” said Lewis.

Winnetka School District 36 officials released records in October that show that school officials became aware of complaints about Bricker in 1968, but apparently took little action and employed him another 17 years. In the 1970s, an unnamed school official met with Bricker to discuss complaints of excessive “physical contact” with students, including kisses and lap-sitting, according to a district document.

School officials received two more written complaints, in 1993 and 1997, by people indentifying themselves as former students claiming that Bricker, by then retired, had molested them, according to District 36 records. It’s unclear if the letters were written by the same person.

Don Monroe, who retired as superintendent in 1994, said in October that he visited the Cook County state’s attorney’s office shortly after the 1993 complaint but that nothing came of it, in part because the alleged victim did not want to pursue charges. The prosecutor’s office has said it has no record indicating its office ever investigated Bricker.

Wyoming officials began their investigation in February, after receiving a packet of information from the Boy Scouts of America that included allegations that Bricker had molested “multiple victims” in the late 1960s and early 1970s at the Wyoming camp, according to court records.

And then there’s this: http://www.jhnewsandguide.com/news/cops_courts/third-victim-alleged-in-molestation-inquiry/article_4c5ce320-efa1-5e82-a6a7-81596a7a0e46.html.