Former E.O. Smith Coach Pleads Not Guilty in Lewd-Video Case

Jeffrey Sirois, the former girls’ soccer coach accused of sending lewd videos to teenagers when he was soccer coach of the E.O. Smith High School team, pleaded not guilty Tuesday in state Superior Court in Rockville.

“My client is profoundly remorseful that this is alleged to have occurred and we’re gonna get to the bottom of this and he hopes to get back to his first love in life which is soccer,” his defense attorney, John O’Brien, said Tuesday, according to a report on NBC Connecticut, a TV station website.

The television station also reported that according to a police arrest warrant affidavit, team members said the 57-year-old coach, who lives in Lebanon, would sometimes make inappropriate comments to team members about the size of their breasts or rear ends, making the girls uncomfortable.

When one was ”fooling around” and dancing one day at practice, according to the TV report, the coach said that all she needed was a pole (apparently referring to the kind of pole that strippers use).

Sirois has said, according to other published reports, that on Sept. 25 he sent a short video of himself masturbating through the Snapchat application on his cell phone, meaning to send it to his girlfriend but instead sending it to everyone on his list of connections for Snapchat. As soon as he discovered the mistake, he removed the video, but by then several members of the soccer team had seen it, some of them while having a pizza together.

Arrested Oct. 3, Sirois was released on $100,000 bond. He is charged with risk of injury to a minor, a felony, and the misdemeanor charges of two counts of committing an obscene act and two counts of second-degree breach of peace. He is next due in court on Dec. 10, according to the Connecticut Judicial Branch website.

For more details about this story, see the NBC Connecticut report.