Bay Shore School District reaches agreement with former teacher Thomas Bernagozzi in alleged sexual abuse case, attorney says

The Bay Shore School District has settled a lawsuit filed by a former student who claimed he was sexually abused by third-grade teacher Thomas Bernagozzi over a three-year period in the late 1980s. The lawsuit is one of 45 Child Victims Act lawsuits filed against the teacher.

The agreement, the terms of which were not publicly disclosed, was reached Friday night and announced Monday when the jury arrived in Riverhead to hear opening arguments. It is the first uninsured claim against the district to be settled.

“We were able to reach a settlement in this case,” attorney Lewis Silverman of Silverman & Associates in White Plains told state Supreme Court Justice Christopher Modelewski. “The exact terms of the settlement will be set forth in a formal document signed by both the plaintiff and the (school) board.”

Silverman, whose firm represents the district in several cases, said the Board of Education, which meets at 6 p.m. Monday, has not yet voted on the settlement.

Modelewski told the jury early Friday evening that an agreement had been reached after the parties processed final pre-trial motions. He explained that impaneling a jury often results in both parties settling a civil case before testimony begins.

“There is something special about having a jury because it allows the parties and the lawyers to focus on what is important and come to a negotiated solution, as in this case,” Modelewski said as he dismissed the eight Suffolk residents from jury duty.

Silverman said a third-party lawsuit the district filed against Bernagozzi, 75, of Babylon, was dismissed as part of the agreement.

The lawsuit was filed in July 2021 by CJ Brandl, a former Bay Shore student who claimed he was sexually abused by Bernagozzi from 1986 to 1989. The lawsuit alleges that the district was negligent in failing to protect students from abuse by Bernagozzi, despite allegations of abuse during his 30-year career that ended in 2000.

Bernagozzi taught Brandl in 1986-87 and his brother Chris the following school year. Both Brandl brothers have alleged in civil lawsuits and in interviews with Newsday that Bernagozzi sexually abused them. They said they kept the abuse secret until recently.

“For a long time I thought I had done something wrong,” CJ Brandl said earlier this year. “It’s a disgrace – I’m ashamed of it. I repressed it. I never thought I would ever talk about it.”

Brandl was not present in court on Monday. Newsday does not name victims of alleged abuse without their consent.

The Child Victims Act, which opened a temporary window for filing claims for anyone who suffered sexual abuse as a child starting in 2019, closed in August 2021. Bay Shore faces more claims than any other school district on Long Island, and all of them relate to Bernagozzi.

Of the 45 claims, six are covered by insurance policies, the district previously told residents. So far, only one insured claim has been settled, but the terms of that agreement were also not disclosed. The remaining 43 cases are in various stages of litigation, court records show, and several more are scheduled to go to trial later this year.

According to a Newsday count, school districts on Long Island have paid more than $38.2 million to settle 55 lawsuits filed by former students who claim they were sexually abused by teachers, administrators and fellow students. That number is sure to grow, as 29 more lawsuits have been settled, but Newsday has not yet received any Freedom of Information Law settlements.

A Newsday investigation published in March found that Bay Shore continued to employ Bernagozzi despite sexual abuse allegations made throughout his career. The district paid the lawyers representing him in the civil suits more than $685,000 through February, according to invoices obtained by Newsday. That figure does not include settlement amounts.

The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, which launched an investigation into the allegations against Bernagozzi in response to the civil lawsuits, has since filed charges against three of the alleged victims. Bernagozzi initially pleaded not guilty in December to one count each of sexual conduct with a child and sodomy. On June 18, he also denied five new charges alleging that he sexually assaulted a child.

Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Dana Castaldo told Acting State Supreme Court Judge Karen Wilutis that investigators found “tens of thousands” of photographs and 11,000 photo negatives during a search warrant at Bernagozzi’s Babylon home after his arrest on Dec. 21. The prosecutor said the five photos that led to new criminal charges showed an 8-year-old former student sitting naked on a bench and concrete ledge on a beach.

Suffolk prosecutors called Bernagozzi a “serial child abuser” who sexually abused “dozens of male students” between the ages of four and 12 during his three decades with the district.

Castaldo said Bernagozzi catalogued photographs and negatives of his former male students by name and age, as well as dates and locations. If convicted on all seven counts of the criminal case, Bernagozzi faces up to 70 years in prison.

Bernagozzi, who was previously free on $600,000 bail, has been held at the Suffolk County Jail in Riverhead since Wilutis increased the bail to $1.5 million cash, $2.5 million surety bond or $10 million partially secured bond on June 18. He is due back in court on July 12.

Bernagozzi’s attorney, Samuel DiMeglio Jr. of Huntington, has declined to comment on the civil and criminal cases. DiMeglio refused to leave the courtroom through the front door on Monday while media waited outside. The judge eventually gave him permission to leave through a back door, away from the cameras, court officials said.

With Jim Baumbach