Features

Teen-ager now at a
drug rehab center 

SAN FRANCISCO — Police arrested a San Francisco Chronicle reporter on suspicion of sexual and physical abuse of a minor. 

Police arrested Craig Marine on Monday. According to information given to the sexual assault and child abuse team, the victim, now 18, was Marine’s neighbor. 

Authorities said Tuesday the teen-ager’s family sent her to a drug rehabilitation center in Utah. Authorities said she told people at that facility that Marine gave her cocaine and that they had consensual as well as forced sex involving a knife. 

Authorities also said the teen-ager, now at a drug rehab center in Oregon, had cigarette burns and scars consistent with the abuse she reported. But authorities also said the teen-ager has a history of self mutilation. 

Mark MacNamara, a spokesman for the San Francisco District Attorney’s office, said Marine admitted to some of the abuse and to taking nude pictures of the teen-ager in a phone call with the teen-ager that police helped set up. 

Marine is a general assignment reporter for the Chronicle Magazine, which appears on Sundays. He has worked for the Chronicle and, before that, the San Francisco Examiner, for 20 years. 

“It’s a police matter so the newspaper as a company doesn’t have any comment on it,” said Chronicle spokesman Joe Brown.