Small School Districts Face Costs of Settling Decades-Old Abuse Claims

It was the fall of 1978, and the 13-year-old boy was reluctant to attend his counseling session.

Vincent Festa, the school psychologist at Herricks Middle School and High School in North Hempstead, had a reputation. Around the Long Island schools, students reportedly referred to him as “Festa the Molesta.”

On his third appointment with Festa, the seventh grader’s fears came true, he said: The psychologist molested him. The boy said Festa threatened to send him to a boarding school upstate if he told anyone what happened.

“I was pretty much shocked, is the best way I can describe it,” the former student later recalled.

When the student’s older sister discovered he was being abused, the siblings told their parents, who met with the school’s assistant principal the next morning. The assistant principal said he would handle the situation internally.

“He was very defensive,” the former student, referred to as John Doe R.D. in court records, said in a deposition. “I guess, Festa was his top psychologist there and he pleaded with my father to keep it internal and not go into any type of higher-ups, whether it be administration higher up or the police.”

For the next several weeks, Festa continued to pull the student out of class to bring him to his office, until the student finally ended up in the hospital. In 1993, Festa pleaded guilty to sex crimes in a separate case involving teenage boys in his neighborhood of Ronkonkoma. He was later sentenced to five years probation. He died in 2011.

Now, more than 40 years later, John Doe R.D. is one of 21 individuals who have sued the Herricks Union Free School District alleging Festa abused them. They have filed claims under New York’s Child Victims Act, passed by the state legislature in 2019 to extend the statute of limitations for filing civil suits over alleged child sexual abuse. Nearly 11,000 claims have been filed statewide, according to Child USA, a think tank that advocates for statute of limitations reform in child abuse cases.

The claims reveal long-hidden, rampant abuse at schools, religious institutions, hospitals, youth organizations, and other sites, according to an analysis of state court records. Thousands of claims have been filed against jurisdictions of the Catholic Church. But there are also cases against other high-profile institutions like the Boy Scouts of America and Rockefeller University Hospital, where pediatric endocrinologist Reginald Archibald is accused of abusing hundreds of patients.

And hundreds of civil suits have been filed against New York public school districts over abuse by alleged perpetrators, including teachers, school administrators, teachers’ aides, guidance counselors, custodial workers, bus paraprofessionals, and other students.

School districts in every corner of the state have been affected by claims filed under the Child Victims Act.

The Kenmore-Town of Tonawanda Union Free School District, north of Buffalo, has seen the most cases of any school district outside New York City, with 47 cases filed under the CVA. Of these, 35 involve a single teacher: Arthur Werner, who taught fifth grade at Herbert Hoover Elementary School for more than 35 years until his retirement in 1993.

The plaintiffs say Werner sexually abused dozens of male students and forced other boys in the classroom to watch. The abuse allegedly took place between 1963 and 1992. (Werner did not reply to requests for comment.)

In 2022, the district chose to settle the cases involving Werner for $17.5 million — just over 10 percent of its annual budget — after considering the potential cost of 35 separate trials. The district said in a statement that it didn’t have insurance coverage for the lawsuits and would be responsible for paying the full settlement amount. Ultimately, the district decided to pay $7.5 million directly and obtained bond financing for the rest; a district spokesperson did not answer questions about how the bonds will be paid off.

The Herricks Union Free School District was similarly faced with multiple claims over alleged repeat offenders. Of 28 suits filed, 21 involved Festa. One went to trial, with a jury finding that the school district was not negligent. But the district has settled the rest of the cases out of court.

Another six claims against the Herricks Union Free School District involved allegations against Jerome Cohen, a former Denton Avenue School teacher who is accused of abusing boys in his classroom in the 1980s. After a student complained, several administrators interviewed the student, his parents, and Cohen, according to a 1982 district memo included in court filings. The then-superintendent requested that Cohen undergo a psychiatric evaluation, then determined that the allegation was unsubstantiated and that there was “no cause for taking any action.” The Cohen cases have been settled by the district for an undisclosed sum. Cohen denied the allegations in a deposition; he and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.

Throughout the 2023–2024 school year, the district’s Board of Education had to increase its allocation for Child Victims Act settlements three times using unspent money in the district’s budget. The final settlement payout was more than $48 million, according to a Newsday investigation. The Herricks school district has turned to bond financing to help cover the payout, according to board documents; the bonds are to be paid off by dipping into local property tax revenues.