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Man takes plea deal
He pleads guilty to committing sex acts with students
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Published: May 20, 2008
A former substitute teacher and basketball coach pleaded guilty yesterday to charges that he committed sex acts with players.
Judge William Z. Wood Jr. of Forsyth Superior Court sentenced Hubert Eugene Crosby, 47, to seven to nine years in prison as part of a plea deal with prosecutors.
Pansy Glanton, an assistant district attorney, said that Crosby would pay for players from poor families to play on his AAU basketball team, and that he had sex with two of those players.
In one case, he performed a sex act on a player and then paid him $150.
Crosby was a substitute teacher in the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School system and had the players in some classes, but he knew all of them primarily through the basketball team he ran, Glanton said.
Crosby pleaded guilty yesterday to promoting the prostitution of a minor, three counts of sex offense with a student, five counts of indecent liberties with a child and eight counts of indecent liberties with a student.
Prosecutors charged him with crimes against a child when the victim was under 16 and against a student, a lesser felony, when the victim was 16 or over.
Most of the charges stemmed from Crosby's relationship with one player, who told police that he needed the money Crosby gave him and that he wanted to stay on the AAU team, which his family couldn't afford to do.
Had Crosby not been a substitute teacher, it would have been unlikely that he could have been charged for some of the acts, Glanton said.
"He may have had a substitute position, but he was a teacher nonetheless," Glanton said.
The plea deal was that Crosby would be sentenced for the promoting prostitution charge, three counts of indecent liberties with a child and one count of indecent liberties with a student.
Crosby's sentence includes five years of probation and, after that, 10 years of wearing a monitoring bracelet that allows him to be tracked by satellite. If he violates the terms of his probation, that could trigger a sentence of three to four more years in prison.
Crosby gave a mumbling apology, mentioning that he had been going through difficult times when the incidents happened.
"People do do things wrong," he said.
His attorney, David Freedman, said that Crosby seemed mentally limited, though competent to stand trial.
Freedman said he believed that Crosby may have chosen teenagers for that reason.
"That may be his mental level," Freedman said.
Winston-Salem police began investigating Crosby on April 21, 2007, when the family of a student called police to report that Crosby had had a sexual relationship with the student over four years, beginning when the boy was 15.
The boy had been a student at Reynolds and Mount Tabor high schools when Crosby was a substitute teacher.
That report was made after the student tried to end the relationship with Crosby and vandalized Crosby's car. Crosby called police and the student then reported their relationship.
Three weeks earlier, a Reynolds student had told a teacher about Crosby offering him money if he would let Crosby rub himself against him. The student refused and told a teacher about it, then told the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office. School-system officials removed Crosby from the list of approved substitutes.
The sheriff's office investigated, but when the school-resource officer determined that the incident happened off-campus, he told the student's family to call police. That didn't happen, and the deputy didn't call police.
Maj. Brad Stanley, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, said that in similar circumstances, the sheriff's office would follow up with a phone call. But he would not say that the handling of the Crosby case was a mistake.
"No, I'm not going to say that we did something wrong because we provided the complainant the appropriate information to contact the police department."
Police later added more charges, stemming from a third victim who came forward while being held in the Forsyth County Jail.
■ Dan Galindo can be reached at 727-7377 or at dgalindo@wsjournal.com.
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