Former Bay Shore teacher Thomas Bernagozzi denies sex abuse allegations as accuser calls him a ‘monster’ from the witness stand

A retired Bay Shore third-grade teacher accused of sexually abusing dozens of students denied the charges Monday, hours before a jury heard the accuser accuse the district of failing to prevent the alleged abuse. He said the teacher was “a monster” who touched him more than a dozen times a week.

Thomas Bernagozzi, 75, of Babylon, told the jury before Suffolk Superior Court Judge Christopher Modelewski in Riverhead that he never molested his students or tried to mislead parents through the after-school sports, plays and outings he led during have been with the district for thirty years. . Those programs, he said, were intended to enrich the lives of students. Monday’s testimony marked the first time the former teacher spoke about the allegations.

“I made no effort for the parents,” Bernagozzi said from a room in the Suffolk County Jail, where he awaits trial on charges of sodomy, sexual conduct against a child and possession of child sexual abuse material in a separate criminal case. case. “I did everything I did for the kids.” He has denied being guilty of the criminal charges.

The testimony came on the same day that the accuser, identified only as PL in the Child Victims Act lawsuit, gave his account of the alleged abuse he said he suffered as an eight- to nine-year-old student in Bernagozzi’s third-grade class at Gardiner Manor. Primary school during the 1990-1991 school year. It is one of 45 Child Victims Act claims against the county involving Bernagozzi, and the first to go to trial.

The accuser, who at times trembled as he spoke, testified about instances in which Bernagozzi allegedly sexually assaulted him in the classroom, a gym locker room, a private health club, a public park and on the beach. He said Bernagozzi fondled him while applying powder to his pants after sports after school or while sitting on the teacher’s lap during class, with a stuffed animal blocking other students’ view of the alleged abuse. Bernagozzi touched his genitals 10 to 20 times a week in class and more than twice a week after school, he told jurors.

“The man was a monster,” the prosecutor said. Newsday is not releasing the identities of the victims of alleged sexual abuse.

Bernagozzi, his hair white since he was in jail, leaned against the computer as he strained to hear questions asked of him by attorneys for the plaintiff and the district, which has filed a third-party claim against the teacher.

“For what reason would I do that?,” Bernagozzi said when asked if he ever applied powder to the accuser. “I didn’t have any powder.”

“To fondle him?” school officer Jeffrey Herman of Herman Law in Manhattan asked in a follow-up question.

“Of course not,” Bernagozzi said.

The ex-teacher also denied ever having students sit on his lap.

“That’s just common sense,” Bernagozzi said. “No kids fell over me. We’re in a classroom.”

Bernagozzi acknowledged taking the students on trips to the local health club, Jones Beach and New York City, where he said they interviewed famous people for Newsday’s former Kidsday section. The accuser said he was never abused in New York City.

The ex-teacher said the outings usually involved male students and were done with parental consent. He acknowledged that he was usually alone with the boys during these activities.

When asked by Herman if he “loved children,” Bernagozzi said he enjoyed “working” with them.

“It was a great experience,” Bernagozzi told the jury. “It was tiring and a lot of work, but I tried to do everything I could to expose the class to all kinds of ideas.”

“I wanted them to know why they were learning things,” he continued. “I enjoyed watching the kids grow and gain self-confidence.”

But the accuser testified that the enjoyment he received from Bernagozzi’s lesson was short-lived, saying the alleged abuse began almost immediately.

When defense attorney Lewis Silverman, of Silverman and Associates in White Plains, pressed inconsistencies between his accounts of the abuse at trial and in his deposition years earlier, the plaintiff said he “spent many years trying to forget what (Mr. Bernagozzi) did to me.”

A female classmate, Kristen Fraccalvieri Nicklas, also took the stand, saying the accuser told her about the powder when they were in school and made a comment suggesting Bernagozzi was a “child molester” when she was at the were in high school. Nicklas also talked about Bernagozzi sitting male students on his lap.

Bernagozzi said if there had ever been allegations of abuse against him while he worked as a teacher, a note would have been kept in his file.

And at one point, as tensions ran high and legal arguments piled up on the third day of the trial, Silverman requested a mistrial, saying Herman referred to a report from the early 1970s that had been deleted from the teacher’s file, an allegation made in a memo that was not allowed into evidence. The judge instructed the jury to ignore the comment.

The question of whether the Bay Shore School District was actually notified of the teacher’s abuse before the alleged abuse in 1990-1991 is at the heart of the case. On Friday, the jury heard from the mother of an anonymous accuser in another Child Victims Act claim against the district, who said she told the principal that her son had been molested by Bernagozzi in 1987. Two other parents said they raised concerns halfway through. 1980s about the extra attention Bernagozzi gave to their sons, but that they were not aware of actual abuse.

Robby Hubbard, 60, who was in third grade at Bernagozzi in Bay Shore in 1972-73, said the district was made aware of an incident in the late 1980s when he saw Bernagozzi at an event where he worked security and shouted at him. he called him a ‘pedophile’. Hubbard, who has also filed a Child Victims Act lawsuit against Bay Shore, also claims Bernagozzi sexually assaulted him.

“I went crazy,” Hubbard said of that night. “I wanted to kill him.”

Bernagozzi denied the incident ever happened.

Hubbard said the district’s then-chief of security, John Thomas, who has since died, assured him he would inform the administration of the allegations. But he said he never heard from the district.

Bernagozzi wore a green v-neck sweater from the Suffolk County Correctional Facility during his testimony Monday. His attorney, Samuel DiMeglio of Huntington, objected to his client’s attire and the room where he was placed in jail, saying he asked the judge to order Bernagozzi to change into street clothes and walk out of the chapel of the prison to testify, so as not to be forbidden. biased. Modelewski said that while he filed the order, he “has no control over what the sheriff’s department does.”

A sheriff’s deputy told Modelewski that as a matter of policy the former teacher, who has not posted the $1 million bond imposed by the judge overseeing his criminal case, should not be placed in street clothes provided by his attorneys . A sheriff’s deputy eventually showed an artificial background that looked like an office space behind Bernagozzi, to make it less obvious to the jury that he was testifying from jail.

Testimony is expected to end Tuesday. The defense will call current Bay Shore Superintendent Steven Maloney.