After acquittal, CH resident accuses city of targeting him in assault case

Longtime Cleveland Heights resident Ken Hadden thinks city officials targeted him for criminal prosecution, he said at the city council meeting on Aug. 15.

Hadden, who said he has lived in Cleveland Heights for more than 20 years, was acquitted on Aug. 10 after a three-day trial for charges of assault from an incident that took place at the Cleveland Heights Community Center on Nov. 13, 2010.

Working as a volunteer hockey coach, Hadden was in the locker room that evening when he heard a commotion in the next room, he said. He saw two kids fighting and broke up the scuffle by grabbing the attacker’s shoulders and pulling him away, he said. The parents of the child claimed that Hadden had strangled the youth, and Cleveland Heights Prosecutor Kim Segebarth pressed charges of assault.

“For some reason, you targeted me,” Hadden said in a public statement addressed specifically to the members of council, City Manager Robert Downey, and Law Director John Gibbon. “You came at me maliciously and with complete disregard for the truth.”

He told city officials that they did not understand “the living hell you…put my family through.” The child Hadden was accused of assaulting, he claims, had said things to his daughter like, “Her daddy is going to jail,” Hadden said.

Hadden said he knew all the people he was addressing and, as the former owner of the Heights Garden Center, had even worked in most of the officials’ homes. He said he did not know why they would have been targeting him.

Hadden accused Segebarth of directing witness testimony at the trial, but added, “the jury was able to see through the lies.” After the proceedings, Hadden said that Segebarth told him he wouldn't have pressed charges if he had known what he learned during the trial.

Gibbon denied that Hadden had been targeted. He said he had worked with Hadden and the child’s parents to try to resolve the matter out of court, but that Hadden insisted on fighting the charges.

While Gibbon recognized that Hadden was found not guilty, he disagreed that the charge had been baseless. Segebarth “fully investigated…before he brought the charges,” Gibbon said. “The parents of the child were very, very insistent.”