Principal's trial ready for jury

By PETER POCHNA
STAFF WRITER

A prosecutor wrapped up her case against a popular Teaneck school administrator Wednesday by calling him a child molester who cooked up a series of lies to try to save his career.

"Why would he do such a thing? He thought he'd never get caught,'' Bergen County Assistant Prosecutor Patricia Baglivi told jurors in Hackensack in the molestation trial of Teaneck High School Principal Joseph White.

White's lawyer, in turn, called the teenage accuser a dog and a monster - and even compared the youth with Judas Iscariot betraying Jesus Christ.

"He cast in his soul for money and turned over a very, very, very good man,'' said lawyer William Ware, building a theory that the boy accused White in hopes of winning a lucrative civil lawsuit.

White, his face stern but otherwise emotionless, slumped in his chair next to Ware. The teenager sat in the audience, crying, his face buried in his hands.

Jurors today will begin deciding whom to believe - White, who adamantly denied the accusations, or the youth, who described having his buttocks and genitals fondled, and Teaneck detectives who said White confessed to the crime.