Man admits to student ‘contact’

MIDDLE-SCHOOL COACH ACCUSED OF MOLESTATION

What people think about Bill Giordano after Thursday may come down to what ‘‘ contact’’ means.

The attorney representing Giordano, a popular Palo Alto athletic coach and teacher accused in August of a years-long sexual relationship with a middle school student, told a San Mateo County judge that his client had ‘‘ admitted everything’’ to Menlo Park police when they questioned him.

But outside the courtroom, William Stewart said he had misspoken, that Giordano never made a full confession and that he only admitted to police that there was ‘‘ contact’’ between him and the student, now 27.

Stewart said he would not go further in defining what that contact might have been.

Giordano waived his right to a hearing and agreed to have the case sent immediately to a Superior Court judge, who will review it Jan. 10.

Giordano’s arrest, which became public the day this year’s school term started, shocked teachers and parents, who knew him as a man who’d mentored many students and whose enthusiastic support of youth athletics was tireless.

Prosecutors say that in 1991 Giordano seduced an eighthgrade member of the school volleyball team he coached. Giordano, divorced, was 46. The girl was 14.

He approached the girl to babysit his toddler son, but their interaction became weekly sexual encounters, during and after school, prosecutors say.

They also say they know of another victim, but could not prosecute because the allegations were beyond the statute of limitations, having allegedly occurred in the early 1980s.

San Mateo County prosecutors did charge Giordano with a 2003 incident in which still another student accused Giordano of improperly touching her. Palo Alto police had investigated that allegation, but Santa Clara County prosecutors chose not to charge Giordano.

But San Mateo County prosecutor Melissa McKowan asked Thursday that those molestation counts be dropped ‘‘ in the interests of justice.’’ Later, she explained that the victim’s family had asked that their daughter not be involved in the case.

McKowan said that loss would not weaken prosecutors’ case against Giordano. ‘‘ You heard what he said,’’ referring

to Stewart’s remark

about an admission.

Thursday was to have

been a preliminary hearing for Giordano, where

prosecutors were to present evidence to convince

a judge there was reasonable cause to believe he had committed the acts of which he is accused.

Instead, in the only words he spoke in court, Giordano waived his right to a hearing. In court on Jan. 10, McKowan said, ‘‘ We’ll make our offer and’’ Stewart ‘‘ will make his offer and the judge will decide.’’

Giordano remains free on $ 1 million bail. His appearance Thursday reflected that freedom: Instead of a tousle-haired man wearing a wrinkled orange jail jumpsuit, the judge saw a neatly-coiffed man whose tailored gray suit hung well on a fit body.

Stewart asked the judge to lower the bail to $250,000 but was refused. Contact S.L. Wykes at swykes@mercurynews.com or ( 650) 688- 7599