Riverside Church Trial: Two Ex-Players Testify to Being Sexually Abused

Two more former college basketball players testified Friday to being sexually abused as teens by the multimillionaire coach of New York’s esteemed Riverside Church basketball program, echoing the allegations of their boyhood teammate Daryl Powell, who’s suing the church in a state Supreme Court civil court trial in Manhattan.

Former Riverside players Byron Walker and Mitchell Shuler both took the stand on the trial’s second day, frequently choking up as they described their experiences with Ernest Lorch, who built the church basketball program into a model for the massive modern youth sports industry — but died in 2012 with a reputation tarnished by abuse allegations.

Walker described a pair of incidents in which he alleged Lorch forced himself on the player, ostensibly to discipline him. One of the alleged assaults Walker described, detailed in a joint Rolling Stone and Sportico investigation, resulted in a criminal indictment against Lorch in Massachusetts in 2010. (Lorch never stood trial in the case because of his failing health.) On Friday, Walker told the six jurors and three alternates that during halftime of a game in Springfield, Mass., in 1977, Lorch “tried to penetrate me,” ostensibly while punishing him for being late for the team van.

The former player also went into detail about a second allegation during a tournament in Arizona, where, Walker said, Lorch threatened to prevent him from talking to a college recruiter because he broke curfew and was drinking with teammates. After issuing that threat, Walker said on the stand, Lorch forced him to pull down his pants and sexually assaulted him. “There’s this back and forth motion,” the former point guard at the University of Texas-El Paso testified, “like I was being raped.”

Walker’s testimony followed that of Mitchell Shuler, who played on the same late-1970s Riverside elite high-school-age travel teams with Walker and Powell. Shuler, whose play with Riverside helped him gain a scholarship to the University of New Orleans, broke down several times when describing Lorch’s use of a paddle to punish him for indiscretions ranging from not working hard in practice to struggling in a high school French class. “I got down on my knees, like a dog, and got hit,” said Shuler, who last year retired as a project manager at Harlem Hospital after a 40-year career. “My bare butt was exposed.”

Shuler also described being stared at by Lorch while showering and enduring “jockstrap checks” in which the coach groped his testicles.

Both players were called as witnesses by attorneys for Powell, whose case is the first of 27 lawsuits filed against Riverside to go to trial under New York’s 2019 Child Victims Act. He alleges that Riverside was negligent in supervising Lorch over his 40-year run at the head of the basketball program, which ended in 2002 after the first public allegations of abuse by a former player.

But Shuler and Walker are also suing Riverside, which Riverside attorney Phil Semprevivo pointed out to the jury. Earlier in the day, Powell faced tough questions on cross-examination by Semprevivo, who sought to poke holes in his case against the church — including differences in the plaintiff’s trial testimony Thursday and an earlier sworn deposition in the case in 2023.

For example, Powell testified Thursday that Lorch “stroked” the player’s penis as part of jockstrap checks and inserted his finger in Powell’s anus. Semprevivo pointed out that Powell never used those terms or descriptions at any point in his earlier deposition.

He also questioned Powell’s stated rationale for quitting basketball completely after a successful junior season at Marist College in 1982. On Thursday, Powell emphasized that he quit Marist with a year left on his full scholarship because he was “fed up” with the sport after his history with Riverside. Semprevivo pointed to other deposition testimony that Powell said he quit school to be with his future wife. Under questioning Friday, Powell said both reasons factored in his decision.

The former player also said some discrepancies in his testimony were a result of his diminished hearing. But Semprevivo, pointing out several contradictions or inaccuracies on things like dates, said Powell had ample opportunity to correct the deposition record and failed to do so.

One such instance: Powell said in his deposition that he never mentioned being abused by Lorch to any Riverside assistant coaches, including Kenny “Eggman” Williamson, who died in 2012. But in his trial testimony, Powell gave a detailed account of telling Williamson that Lorch was looking down his shorts and paddling him. Powell testified that he remembered it vividly because, he said, he told Williamson on the day of the infamous, riot-plagued 1977 New York City blackout.

Powell said on Thursday that Williamson told him, “If you know what I know, you better not say anything, or you’re not playing for this team anymore.”

Powell continued: “I was devastated. I shut my mouth up. I wanted to stay on the team.”

Semprevivo pointed out on Friday that Powell signed a statement in 2024 that corrected some errors in his deposition, but never amended his statement that he’d never said anything to Williamson.