Five former D&C paperboys now claim sexual abuse by newspaper employee

Four more one-time Democrat and Chronicle paperboys have sued the newspaper and its corporate owners, accusing them of hiring a circulation department employee who was a persistent pederast.

The employee, Jack J. Lazeroff, was identified as a suspected molester in stories published last year by the Democrat and Chronicle and City Newspaper, and in a lawsuit filed in October by a former paperboy from Brighton.

Now four other men who delivered the D&C when they were young have filed a second lawsuit against the newspaper; its owner, Gannett Co. Inc., and related corporate entities.

The suit accuses the newspaper of being negligent in its hiring and supervision of Lazeroff, who worked for the D&C in the 1980s as a circulation district manager — a job in which he interacted daily with the young boys and girls who delivered the paper in those days.

The four men say they were sexually abused by Lazeroff between 1982 and 1985, when they were between the ages of 11 and 15. Most or all of them apparently delivered the morning D&C in Brighton neighborhoods.

The complaint paints Lazeroff as a compulsive man who groped boys over and over again in his car, at his home and theirs, at a Brighton doughnut shop and even on a customer’s front porch.