A former rowing coach who founded a youth rowing program in the Bronx was arrested Thursday on City Island, accused of raping and sexually assaulting children while he coached on Cape Cod more than a decade ago, officials said.
Guy Monseair, 57, faces four aggravated statutory rape charges involving a child, plus a separate charge of indecently assaulting and battering a child younger than 14, according to police in Barnstable, Massachusetts.
Police say the alleged abuse happened from 2008 through 2011, when Monseair worked as a coach at several clubs on the Cape. Barnstable investigators first learned of the accusations last month.
NYPD officers and members of a Homeland Security Investigations human trafficking task force took him into custody at about 7 a.m. Barnstable police said he will be returned to Massachusetts, and prosecutors from the Cape and Islands district attorney's office will handle the case. Information about his lawyer was not immediately available.
NYPD officials said Monseair launched City Island Rowing sometime between 2012 and 2014, though they could not say whether he is still part of the group. The department said no accusations have come from his years in New York, and it was unclear when he moved to the Bronx.
An undated online profile describes him as the organization's head coach and executive director. It says he grew up in Zimbabwe and came to the United States to coach full time.
USRowing, the sport's national governing body, said it stripped Monseair of his membership rights as soon as it learned of the allegations Thursday, barring him from any competition or activity it oversees. The organization also referred the matter to the U.S. Center for SafeSport and encouraged other survivors of abuse to come forward.
