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Leaf was brought into court by his attorney, Brian Neary (above, left) and left with him minutes later after both sides agreed to postpone the proceeding.
When Leaf would be tried and where both sides are on a possible plea deal remain unknown (PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter).
Leaf, who joined Fox 5 News in July 2006, was taken into custody at his Wyckoff home in October 2010 by members of the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office Sex Crimes and Child Abuse Unit and the Wyckoff Police Department, as first reported exclusively on CLIFFVIEW PILOT.
After being interviewed by detectives at Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office in Paramus, he was charged with aggravated sexual assault and child endangerment.
Leaf, 43, spent seven weeks in jail before making $270,000 bail.
Charles Leaf at the Bergen County Courthouse this morning (CLIFFVIEW PILOT PHOTOS Mary K. Miraglia, Courthouse Reporter)
Two years ago, his wife went on TV and said that Leaf was set up by the family nanny.
Monica Leaf said the nanny got their daughter, then 4, to lie about being digitally penetrated and seeing him masturbate in front of her several times.
She said her husband passed a polygraph test, which is inadmissable in court.
A recorded interview with the youngster would be, however.
“She told me: ‘Mommy, daddy never hurt me. Daddy never touched me in a wrong way,’” Monica Leaf said at the time. “She then proceeded to tell me that our nanny had told her to say these things. Why? To this day I don’t know.”
Leaf has covered several major stories for Fox 5, including national exclusives on the Bernard Madoff scandal and the proposed development of a mosque near the World Trade Center Site.
He has also been on FOX News Channel’s “O’Reilly Factor,” “The FOX Report,” “FOX & Friends,” “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren,” “America Live with Megyn Kelly” and “Geraldo at Large.”
Before landing in New York, Leaf was an investigative reporter at KDVR-TV FOX 31 in Denver, Colorado. Before that, he worked for WJBK FOX in Detroit and WDAF-TV FOX in Kansas City, Missouri.
A graduate of Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, Leaf began his career in Yuma, Arizona. He also served five years in the U.S. Marine Corps, leaving the military with the rank of non-commissioned sergeant.
Leaf also worked for the U.S. State Department, with assignments at the American Embassy in Warsaw and Canberra, Australia, among other places.
He’s run into trouble in many of them, according to private detective Bill Warner.
While working in Mobile, Alabama a decade ago, Leaf was charged in a civil suit with a “willful physical attack” against a local councilwoman.
The case was eventually settled, but two years later, in Detroit, a man told police that Leaf shouted homophobic obscenities at him after being pelted with eggs while covering a story.
Bobbi Barrow, spokeswoman for Denver Health Medical Center, told Warner she believed Leaf misrepresented himself to get an interview with her boss, Dr. Patricia Gabow, at an event last November. “What he did was unprofessional,” Barrow told Warner.
Charles Eric Leaf said he did nothing wrong in any of the incidents.
“If what took place in Mobile hadn’t happened, you wouldn’t be talking to me about someone in Detroit throwing eggs at me,” he reportedly told Warner.
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