A fourth man has accused Bernie Fine of sexually abusing him over the course of four decades.
Floyd VanHooser, the accuser, said the abuse started in 1969 when he was allegedly taken in by Fine as an orphan, according to an interview VanHooser gave to The Post-Standard [6]. At the time, Fine was not yet working for Syracuse University.
VanHooser told police about three different incidents -- in 1998, 2001, and 2011 -- in which Fine paid him for oral sex. The most recent occasion is alleged to have taken place in Fine's Manley Field House office on the university's South Campus.
VanHooser is now 56 years old and is living in Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, NY where he is serving a 16-years-to-life sentence for repeated counts of burglary and petit larceny.
In a press conference last week, Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick maintained that there was no fourth accuser as far as he was concerned.
As per The Post-Standard, VanHooser was on a list of potential victims that Bobby Davis gave to the paper [6]in 2002. He is also said to have lived with Fine off and on for the past 40 years.
As with Davis before him, VanHooser was supposedly helped by Fine at various points in his life. In VanHooser's case, often putting him up at his house and getting him a job, including one at an SU fraternity house for which Fine serves as an adviser, according to the Post-Standard article. VanHooser claims to have continued writing letters to Fine throughout his various jail prison sentences, writing to him as recently as last week.
A former girlfriend of VanHooser's, Cindy Clarke, told the Post-Standard that VanHooser told her about the alleged sexual abuse shortly before she and VanHooser broke up.
Charges have yet to be filed against Fine.
