Ex-Phillips Exeter Academy teacher agrees — again — to plead guilty to student sex assault

EXETER — A former Phillips Exeter Academy math teacher charged with grooming and sexually assaulting a female student he once taught at the private prep school has agreed to plead guilty to the crime for a second time.

Szczesny “Jerzy” Kaminski, 62, was scheduled to appear Thursday, Jan. 5, in Rockingham Superior Court for a final pre-trial conference with jury selection in the case starting Jan. 23.

The hearing was canceled, however, after Kaminski filed a notice to plead guilty to three counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault and one count of sexual assault as part of a negotiated plea deal that will put him behind bars for at least 12 years.

He is scheduled for a change of plea and sentencing hearing Jan. 13.

The deal comes nearly a year after he withdrew from a similar plea agreement at the last minute during a sentencing hearing on Feb. 11, 2022.

Attorney Christine Dunn, a partner at Sanford Heisler Sharp, represents the survivor in this case.

“The survivor and her family want closure in the criminal case," Dunn stated. "They thought they would get that closure back in February 2022, but then, at the last minute, Kaminski backed out of pleading guilty. The worst-case scenario for the survivor is for Kaminski to have another opportunity to back out of a plea."

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

Kaminski, who served as a teacher at Phillips Exeter Academy 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. At the time, Rockingham County Attorney Patricia Conway had called Kaminski a "predator" who violated the trust the student's family placed in him to look after their daughter who knew no one when she first arrived at the boarding school from Florida.

Court documents 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.

The abuse, according to court documents, started during that year when he coerced the student to engage in oral sex and sexual intercourse and it continued throughout her 10th-grade year.

“He groomed her very carefully so that she would depend on him for support and love while she was away from her family," Conway said at the time.

The abuse, she said, occurred “over and over and over and over again.”

What led to the latest plea deal?

Kaminski was initially charged with three counts of sexual assault and three counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault.

When he agreed to plead guilty in February 2022, prosecutors agreed to drop one count of aggravated felonious sexual assault and two counts of sexual assault. However, when he backed out of the deal, prosecutors decided to move forward with indicting him on five additional charges.

The three new counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault allege 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."

He was also charged with two counts of witness tampering. 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, Phillips Exeter Academy put him on notice that if the boundary issues continued 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."

The second witness tampering indictment alleges Kaminski contacted another person and left a voicemail. 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."

What are the terms of the plea deal?

If Kaminski pleads guilty Jan. 13, prosecutors have agreed to drop all charges except for the three counts of aggravated felonious sexual assault and one count of sexual assault.

Under the terms of the agreement, Kaminski will serve 12 to 30 years in prison for two of the aggravated felonious sexual assault charges and receive a 10- to 20-year suspended sentence for the third count. He also would be sentenced to 12 months for the sexual assault charge that would be served concurrently with the two aggravated sexual assault charges.

Kaminski will also have to complete a sexual offender program and will be ordered to have no contact with the victim or her family.

In their words:Sex abuse survivors call out Phillips Exeter Academy’s ’failure’

Dunn said her client wants closure. When Kaminski backed out of the plea deal the last time, Dunn said "the survivor and her family" felt like it was another betrayal just like she was "betrayed for years when he sexually abused her when he was her teacher at Phillips Exeter."

This time around, Dunn said her client is "hopeful that everything will proceed as expected" and "she will finally get a voice in this process when she gives her victim impact statement.”

If convicted, Kaminski would be the 12th publicly identified PEA staff member as having engaged in sexual misconduct while employed by the prep school dating back to the 1950s.

If you have been the victim of abuse, here's who you can call

If you need support Haven has trained confidential advocates available. The 24-hour hotline is (603) 994-SAFE (7233). Or to connect to the confidential online chat service Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at havennh.org.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Ex-Phillips Exeter Academy teacher agrees to plea deal for sex assault