Ex-Phillips Exeter Academy teacher faces new charges in student sex abuse case

EXETER — A former Phillips Exeter Academy math teacher is facing new charges in connection with the case alleging he groomed and sexually assaulted a female student that he once taught.

Szczesny “Jerzy” Kaminski, 61, was indicted this month on three new charges of aggravated felonious sexual assault and two counts of tampering with witnesses and informants.

The new charges handed up by a Rockingham County grand jury come after Kaminski withdrew a guilty plea in the case at the last minute in February, deciding instead to take the case to trial.

Kaminski, who served as a teacher for the private school for nearly three decades until April 2020, was arrested by Exeter police in August 2020 after the victim, now in her early 20s, came forward to police.

He was initially charged with three counts of sexual assault and three counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault. The indictments alleged he engaged in a pattern of abuse from 2014-15 against the then-sophomore student who was under the age of 16 at the time.

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At the time of his arrest, Rockingham County Attorney Patricia Conway called Kaminski a "predator" who violated the trust the student's family placed in him to look after their daughter who lived on campus.

Prosecutors allege Kaminski started grooming the then-14-year-old during her freshman year by giving her gifts, driving her to and from the Boston Conservatory for piano lessons on the weekends, and speaking on her behalf during an alleged disciplinary hearing for plagiarism.

They said he tutored her during her sophomore year when he coerced the student to engage in oral sex and sexual intercourse.

More charges filed against Kaminski

Conway said this week they decided to file additional charges after Kaminski withdrew from his plea deal, where he would have served at least 12 years in jail.

The terms of the deal called for Kaminski to receive a 12- to 30-year prison sentence for two of the aggravated felonious sexual assault charges and a 10- to 20-year suspended sentence for the third one. The sentence for the misdemeanor sexual assault was 12 months to be served concurrently, and the remaining charges against him would have been dropped. 

"The state had hoped that this case would be disposed of through a negotiated disposition," said Conway. "The agreement did not include pleas to witness tampering and/or aggravated felonious sexual assault under a different section of the statute.  Thus, the state did not seek indictment on these offenses at the time. Once the defendant decided not to enter into the plea agreement, the state was free to file the additional charges."

New indictments allege more abuse, witness tampering

The new charges of aggravated felonious sexual assault allege that Kaminski engaged in a pattern of sexual assault from 2015-16 against the victim during her junior year at the school, using his authority as a teacher, opera faculty adviser and tutor at the school, to coerce her to submit.

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The witness tampering charges stem from Kaminski contacting the victim in 2020 after Phillips Exeter Academy reopened its investigation into Kaminski.

Kaminski was initially investigated by PEA and police in 2015 after receiving reports the teacher would come and go from a female dorm at odd hours. Other faculty also expressed concerns regarding the "relationship and boundaries" between Kaminski and the student.

The case was closed after the alleged victim and family denied the abuse at the time. However, PEA put him on notice that if the boundary issues continued that he would be fired.

According to the first witness tampering indictment, Kaminski asked the victim in 2020 to withhold testimony from the school about the case, saying, "the Dean may ask if I would ever hold your hand and of course, I would never do that; hold a little girl's hand. She may ask If I ever kissed you or touched you inappropriately, which is ridiculous; I don't even kiss my wife."

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The second witness tampering indictment alleges Kaminski contacted another person and left a voice mail. He stated among other things, "PEA decided to re-open the investigation... Because Exeter has the disclosure rules so they can publicly fire me and brand me a sex offender. And that would draw you into the whole thing, into the rumor mill, and I don't think that would be great for anybody. And I think we need to regain control over the narrative of the whole thing."

Case scheduled for trial in January 2023

The victim in the case is being represented by Attorney Christine Dunn, of Sanford Heisler Sharp.

“We believe the new counts in the indictment reflect the egregious nature of the alleged crime," Dunn said.  "We are pleased at how seriously the County Attorney’s Office is taking this case.”

When interviewed by police in 2020, the victim of the alleged crimes shared text messages between her and Kaminski, many of them overtly and graphically sexual in nature.

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One of the messages between her and Kaminski included a recent one in which she tried to cut off all contact by writing, "I am burdened by memories of my high school experience. ... I realize how young I was at 15, and I cry for myself. I've cried many, many tears. You don’t realize how much shame I’ve faced."

Kaminski responded by writing, "I am so sorry."

Kaminski is scheduled to be arraigned on the new charges at Rockingham Superior Court on June 17.

The case is currently scheduled for trial in January of 2023.

If you need help

Seacoast Media Group provides the following information as a public service with no presumption of guilt or innocence in the case referenced above:

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This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Ex-Phillips Exeter Academy teacher faces new charges in sex abuse case