Courtroom applauds as New Jersey man admits fatally stabbing Boy Scout leader he says molested him

CBS NY

Applause erupted in a New Jersey courtroom Wednesday, after emotional remarks from a man who pleaded guilty to stabbing and killing the man he says molested him as a child.

As CBS2’s Dave Carlin reported, Clark Fredericks, 49, admitted to the stabbing that killed Dennis Pegg, who was his Boy Scout leader and a family friend decades ago.

The case has many asking whether Fredericks was right or wrong.

“From the time I was 8 years old until I was 12 years old, I was sexually assaulted and raped by Dennis Pegg,” Fredericks said in the Sussex County courtroom.

The confessed killer delivered a detailed, gut-wrenching account of what he said happened to him as a child, and what he did about it more than three decades later.[...]

Friends in the courtroom sobbed as Fredericks talked about Pegg torturing and killing animals, threatening do the same to him if he “told anyone about our secret.” He said for many years, he would deny it whenever his mother and father asked if Pegg had hurt him even though they suspected it.

But Fredericks said because Pegg was a “respected law enforcement officer,” an “expert with guns,” and a leader in the Boy Scouts, he was “untouchable.”

“No one would believe my word over his,” he said. [...]