Former Wayne coach found guilty
By Andrew Bell
Published in News on August 25, 2006 2:02 PM
KINSTON -- The basketball coach who led Goldsboro High School to its only state championship was found guilty of sexual assault on two female students and sentenced to six to eight months in prison.
Charlie Stevens' sentence was suspended by Judge Kenneth Crow. Stevens was ordered to spend 60 days in prison and pay $1,500 in fines and serve 150 hours of community service.
Stevens, 51, was found guilty on three felony counts of taking indecent liberties with a student and misdemeanor sexual battery. The incidents reportedly occurred in the winter and spring of 2004. Stevens, a special education teacher, resigned from North Lenoir High School in October 2004 amid a Lenoir County Sheriff's Office investigation into the allegations.
Wayne County school officials said Stevens worked in the school system from 1998 to 2002 at Southern Wayne, Eastern Wayne and Goldsboro high schools and at Goldsboro Middle School.
A jury of mostly women found Stevens guilty of inappropriately fondling two former North Lenoir female students, making sexual remarks to those students and offering one of the girls money for sex, Lenoir County Clerk of Court Dawn Stroud said.
Stevens must surrender his teaching certificate, register as a sex offender, provide a DNA sample for law enforcement records, take a psychiatric examination and have the consent of a probation officer before entering the same room of a girl under the age of 18, Ms. Stroud said.
The trial began Monday in Lenoir Superior Court. Stevens refused an offer from prosecutors to plead to a lesser charge.
Stevens also had taught at Princeton, West Brunswick and Havelock high schools in addition to his tenures in Wayne and Lenoir.