Ex-Bay Shore teacher Thomas Bernagozzi guilty of sexually abusing students, jury finds

Thomas Bernagozzi, who for decades taught children in Bay Shore elementary schools, was convicted Friday of sexually abusing three of them, including one who testified he was four years old when the abuse began.

A Riverhead jury of five men and seven women found him guilty of five felony sex crimes in a trial that rocked generations of Bay Shore students and their families. Former students filed at least 45 related civil suits against the district for failing to protect them from Bernagozzi’s abuse, costing Bay Shore schools at least $75 million in settlements.

Jurors found the 77-year-old former third grade teacher guilty of one count each of sodomy and sexual conduct against a child, and three of five counts of possession of sexual performance of a child, all felonies. The first two convictions alone carry sentences of up to 25 years in prison. Sentencing was scheduled for April 15.

When the jury forewoman announced the verdict around 2 p.m. Friday, midway through the second day of deliberation, about half a dozen spectators in the courtroom — some of them said they were parents of victims or victims themselves — wept and exchanged hugs and handshakes.

Bernagozzi, white-haired, wearing the same blue blazer and cream sweater he wore at trial earlier in the week, did not appear to react. His lawyer, Steven Politi, asked the jury to be polled individually and patted his client gently on the back.

Soon after, acting Supreme Court Justice Karen Wilutis addressed Bernagozzi directly: "I certify you as a sex offender." Court officers cuffed his hands behind his back and led him shuffling out of sight through a side courtroom door.

"Finally," said one of the spectators, who said she was the mother of a victim, outside the courtroom. "It’s been decades since I told the principal and I told the superintendent and I called the police." Initially, she said, "the school did nothing. Police did nothing." She called the victims who had testified against Bernagozzi "brave guys." She began to cry. "I’m relieved and I’m sad that it happened," she said. "He interfered with so many lives, individual boys and the families of the boys."

A 52-year-old man who was a plaintiff in one of the civil suits, said the verdict had brought "justice" after "decades of being ignored, unbelieved, shamed."

In an interview earlier, the man said that Bernagozzi had molested him for several years starting in third grade — the level he primarily taught between 1970 and 2000 — at Bay Shore’s Mary G. Clarkson Elementary, but that the abuse had taken place too long ago to be criminally prosecutable.

Suffolk District Attorney Raymond Tierney, who attended the trial Friday with several senior prosecutors from his office, said in a press conference following the verdict that sentences could run consecutively.

Tierney called Bernagozzi "one of the most prolific and reprehensible sexual predators in Suffolk County history." For decades, Tierney said, Bernagozzi had avoided the "consequences of his actions ... That all ends today."

Prosecutors began the trial by alleging that Bernagozzi took advantage of the "blind trust" of parents when he abused students for his own sexual gratification. A popular teacher in the district's elementary schools for 30 years, Bernagozzi created extracurricular programs to form "twisted and manipulative" relationships with young boys, Assistant Suffolk County District Attorney MacDonald Drane told the jury.

The sports and theater programs placed the students alone with the teacher, who Drane said created a "ruse" to change their clothes and apply talcum powder to their bodies, which he touched with his hands and mouth to "fulfill his sexual desires."

One former student told the jury he was sexually abused by Bernagozzi starting at the age of 4 when he would accompany his older brother on outings with the educator.

That witness, whom Newsday is not naming because he is the victim of a sex crime, was the second student to testify at the trial. He said the abuse occurred when he was showered and changed by Bernagozzi, who would apply baby powder to his private parts on trips to a local fitness club, beaches and a public pool.

"He would kneel down when he would apply the powder and for some reason he would blow it off," the former student testified. "He would give it a little kiss down there."

The witness said the abuse began when his brother was a third grade student and he was in pre-K in 1989 and it continued until the summer of 1992. It happened multiple times at various locations, he testified.

In the trial’s closing days, Assistant District Attorney Dana Castaldo showed jurors a succession of images taken by Bernagozzi of young boys, sometimes shirtless, sometimes in their underwear, sometimes in classrooms, hammering home to jurors that white powder could be spotted on many of the boys.

Castaldo also brought back to the witness stand, with Wilutis’ permission, the brother of a victim, who told jurors that he had also been abused sometimes along with his brother, and that because of his shame, for years he’d told no one.

Politi had defended the thousands of images taken by his client as clean fun and sought to portray the witnesses as untrustworthy and motivated by the prospect of money damages.

Outside the courtroom Friday, he said those beliefs had not changed. Bernagozzi "knows he’s not guilty of anything. He knows he’s innocent. He knows this was a ploy for money," Politi said. 

Politi said that Wilutis’ decision to permit the government to return witnesses to the stand, along with Castaldo’s summation, "all had the effect of prejudicing my client in front of this jury."

He said he intends to appeal the verdict.

By Nicholas Spangler

nicholas.spangler@newsday.comspanglernewsday

Nicholas Spangler is a general assignment reporter and has worked at Newsday since 2010.