Yonkers approved settlements to victims of alleged sexual abuse by teachers
The Yonkers City Council on Tuesday approved settlements totaling $2 million to four former students who alleged they were sexually assaulted or abused by teachers during the 1970s and 1980s.
Three of the complaints filed against the city and school district involved allegations of sexual assault during the 1970s and 1980s by a shop teacher at Emerson Middle School who took students on trips and invited them to his home after school.
A fourth complaint involved a teacher at School 23 who'd come to the Yonkers public schools after his dismissal from a Catholic school run by the Archdiocese of New York for having sexual contact with underage boys, according to court papers.
The complaints were filed in June 2021 under the New York Child Victims Act, which waived the statute of limitations on such claims. The window for making those claims closed in August 2021.
The awards in Yonkers settled cases dating back more than 40 years, as new allegations of sexual misconduct by Hudson Valley teachers haved surfaced in the Yorktown and Lakeland districts.
More: Lakeland teacher resigned after sex abuse allegations, then got hired in Monroe-Woodbury
City, schools fought the claims
The former Yonkers students alleged that as a result of the sexual assaults, they've endured a lifetime of suffering, with permanent psychological, emotional and physical injuries, shame, humiliation and the inability to live a normal life.
The city of Yonkers and its school district fought the claims, using a common legal defense that any damages suffered by the students, who were as young as 10 years old, should be discounted because the students were at least partially culpable for the assaults.
The city and school district argued that the students failed to mitigate the damages, which were made worse by how they responded to their teachers' advances.
“Any damages allegedly suffered by plaintiff were caused in whole or in part by the culpable conduct of the plaintiff,” wrote the district's legal counsel Dennis Lynch in response to allegations by each of the four students. “The plaintiff’s claims are therefore barred or diminished in the proportion that such culpable conduct of the plaintiff bears to the total culpable conduct causing the damages.”
Lynch referred questions about the city’s stance on the students’ culpability for the sexual assaults to the city’s corporation counsel. Yonkers spokeswoman Christina Gilmartin said the city's response was standard legal strategy in the early pleadings of a case.
Gilmartin said the city plans to borrow $2 million in the municipal bond market to pay for the awards. The city also backs a bill pending in the state Legislature to establish the Child Victims Act Fund, with an appropriation of $200 million, to provide funding to public school districts named as defendants in Child Victims Act cases that are not covered by a school district's insurance policy.
The bill, which was filed in both the state Assembly and Senate in 2023, did not advance in the 2023 session.
Allegations made against former shop teacher
Two former Yonkers public school students were awarded $450,000, a third was awarded $500,000, and the fourth received $600,000.
Three of the alleged victims were students of shop teacher Daniel Vassello at Emerson Middle School, now called Cross Hill Academy.
The largest award went to a man who was 13 when he was in Vassello's seventh-grade class. The complaint said sexual abuse occurred when the student visited his teacher’s apartment after school and during out-of-town trips. The student’s contact with his seventh-grade teacher went on for three years, during which time he was forced to perform sex acts with his teacher, the complaint stated.
The complaint said that the school principal and its art teacher knew that students would go to their teacher’s apartment, but the school never investigated the issue.
More: Former Yorktown educator charged with possession and distribution of child pornography
According to the complaint of a then-seventh-grader, the teacher from 1973 to 1975 would invite the student to his classroom or apartment after school. He would also take him on out-of-town trips, buy him clothes, cigarettes, alcohol, and marijuana.
At his apartment, Vassello would provide pornographic magazines and show movies and, the complaint alleges, fondle the student’s genitals.
Another former student alleged that the shop teacher performed a sex act on him when he was 13 and in sixth grade.
Former fourth-grade teacher also accused
The fourth plaintiff, who was a fourth-grader at School 23 in 1980, alleged that his homeroom teacher, Martin O’Keefe, abused him when he was 10 years old. O’Keefe, the complaint stated, was hired by the Yonkers schools after he was dismissed from the Archdiocese of New York for inappropriate sexual conduct with underage boys.
O’Keefe would force the young boys to masturbate while he watched.
“O’Keefe would invite plaintiff and other students to stay after school to help clean up, and in exchange, O’Keefe gave the boys money and treats,” the complaint stated.
The cases was filed by attorney Jeff Herman, of Herman Law, whose national law firm deals exclusively with cases involving sexual assault. Herman did not return messages seeking comment.
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David McKay Wilson writes about tax issues and government accountability. Follow him on Twitter @davidmckay415 or email him at dwilson3@lohud.com.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Yonkers NY school sex-abuse victims settlements approved
