SOUTH KINGSTOWN — The first question former high school basketball coach Aaron Thomas faced from a state prosecutor during his criminal trial was the same one he had asked hundreds of teen boys during his coaching career.
Assistant Attorney General Tim Healy opened his cross-examination on Wednesday with that question, describing a scene for jurors of Thomas alone in his office with a teen boy, inviting the student-athlete to take off his clothes.
The door was closed, the window was covered, and “you waited until you were alone in that room to ask that question,” Healy said to Thomas.
“I believe so,” the former North Kingstown coach said.
Over nearly three hours of questioning by the prosecutor, Thomas admitted that he never told administrators, other coaches, other teachers, the booster club, or parents that the boys were naked and alone with him in his self-designed fat tests.
Thomas admitted the parents and teens signed the consent forms he created that didn’t say anything about nudity, and that he didn’t tell the boys they would have to strip until they were alone with him in his office. Thomas claimed one father knew about the nudity, because he said joked with him about his son’s tests sometime in the 1990s; that conversation was not confirmed.
Thomas admitted, again, that he lied to then-Superintendent Phil Auger in 2018 and to North Kingstown police detectives in 2021 that the boys weren’t naked during the tests.
He admitted that he kept “fat testing” some teen athletes even when Auger told him to stop in 2018. He said he didn’t tell Monsignor Clarke School in South Kingstown that he’d been terminated over “naked fat tests” before they hired him as a middle-school teacher in 2021.
“They did their own research,” Thomas said. The Catholic school fired him as soon as it learned of the allegations.
The jury is considering two charges against Thomas: second-degree child molestation, for a player who alleged he was 13 in 2020 when he was first “fat tested,” and second-degree sexual assault, for a player who was “fat tested” between 2019 and 2020.
Thomas has testified that he self-designed his own “body fat test” and flexibility test for the male athletes, primarily his basketball players. The trial in Washington County Superior Court is the first time Thomas is admitting publicly what some former athletes said was an open secret — that the tests involved Thomas asking them to get naked, and then pressing his fingers near their groins, measuring around their buttocks, and using his hands and skinfold calipers to pinch near their groins.
Thomas testified that he relied on various books and magazines about body composition, and later drew from ideas online, to design his tests. At least one reference showed measurements being taken of a young man wearing underwear.
There were spreadsheets containing three different formulas for calculating an athlete’s body fat, based on Thomas’s measurements, and various flexibility tests. There is no mention of groin pinches or pressure.
Thomas’s spreadsheet includes calculations for pinching the abductor muscle, which is the outer thigh, when he was actually pinching the adductor muscle, the inner thigh. Thomas chalked that up to a typo that he never corrected.
Thomas said the young men who testified that he conducted “hernia checks” on their groins were confusing his tests of their “trigger points.”
Thomas was unable to explain where he got the idea to pinch and press near their naked groins. Unlike the other measurements, he didn’t have any references to show that the naked groin tests were relevant or valid, except to say the information came from the internet.
Thomas said he wanted the information from the tests to help him prevent groin injuries in players, but was unable to explain how the information was relevant.
While Thomas had said his program would help athletes “build confidence,” Healy asked if being naked and alone with the coach would have the opposite effect.
“I don’t know the answer to that,” Thomas replied. “For 28 years, the program ran very smoothly.”
Nearly all of the former athletes who’ve testified said they were embarrassed during the test, but felt compelled to participate.
One had told the jury that he got an erection when Thomas was pressing on his groin. Thomas vowed that he would have stopped the test and called the boy’s parents if it happened.
“You lied to Dr. Auger, you lied to the police, and so you would have made a call to [the mother] saying [your son] was in my office naked, and I was pressing on his groin, and he got an erection?” Healy asked, sounding incredulous.
“I didn’t do it, because there wasn’t an erection,” Thomas said.
Thomas said that having the boys naked made it easier for him to check their adductor and “trigger points” near their groin.
Some former students testified that they came forward about Thomas after seeing publicity about Dr. Larry Nassar, the disgraced gymnastics doctor convicted of sexually assaulting hundreds of female athletes under the guise of medical treatment. Former school officials testified that teachers should never be alone with students — and certainly not when they were naked.
“In all those years, did you ever see a big red stop sign saying, ‘Stop getting these kids naked,’” Healy asked.
Thomas said he was focused on the program. “I was set in my ways. I don’t want to call it arrogance, but it was working,” he said. “I wish there was a stop sign.”
Thomas said there wasn’t any “stop sign” until 2018, when Auger called a meeting to discuss a complaint from a former student about Thomas’s tests.
“And when asked, you said no kids were getting naked,” Healy said.
“Correct,” Thomas replied.
The trial continues on Thursday.
Comment count: