Herricks school district ignored reports of child sex abuse against psychologist in the 1980s, lawyer says in opening statements

The Herricks Union Free School District ignored reports of child sex abuse against a school psychologist in the 1980s, exposing students to abuse, attorneys argued during opening statements in a pair of Child Victims Act trials against the district.

The cases, which are both being heard in Nassau County Supreme Court this week, are the first CVA cases against a Long Island school district to go to trial.

“This law is important for a number of reasons,” attorney Jeffrey Herman, of Herman Law Group in Manhattan, said of the 2019 law, which extended the deadline for when sexual abuse lawsuits could be filed. “One of the things that’s happening is that victims are coming forward now, decades later, and they’re exposing the institutions and the predators themselves.”

Under the act, which closed in August 2021, separate lawsuits were filed by 21 former students against the Herricks school district, alleging they were abused by then-school psychologist Vincent Festa between 1973 and 1991. While the district has paid $1.1 million to settle four of the claims, 17 cases remain open, with several more trials scheduled in the coming months.

Herman said Monday during opening statements before State Supreme Court Justice Leonard Steinman the abuse against his client, identified in court as P.H., could have been avoided if administrators investigated Festa and removed him from the district when a Herricks High School principal was first made aware of the psychologist’s alleged conduct by a pair of students who said he sexually abused them in 1980.

In the years that followed, other students and staff at the school raised concerns about the psychologist, who Herman told the jury was referred to in school as “Festa the Molester.”

The plaintiff in the trial that began Monday said he was first abused by Festa as a freshman at the high school during the 1983-84 school year. He was sent to Festa after getting into trouble for acting out in his Spanish class, said Herman, whose firm represents most of the plaintiffs in the Herricks cases.

Festa shared pornographic magazines with the student while both pleasuring himself and fondling the teen, Herman said. The abuse continued into the following school year, Herman said.

“This little boy is molested by Festa dozens and dozens of times,” Herman said of the plaintiff, who he told the jury was already suffering the psychological effects of having been abused by a neighborhood teen several years earlier.

“He goes to see Festa because he thinks he's going to get help and the opposite happens,” said Herman, who called the district’s inaction “reckless.”

The plaintiff is seeking $10 million in damages.

Attorney Jessica Palmese, of Epstein, Becker & Green of Manhattan, which is representing the Herricks school district in the case that opened Monday, said the district has never “condoned or accepted child abuse.”

“There is no more vile conduct in this society,” Palmese told the jury in her own opening statement.

But Palmese said the evidence that will be presented at the P.H. trial does not support the claim that the school district was negligent. She questioned the credibility of the witnesses, including the plaintiff, who she noted has a history of criminal conduct, including credit card fraud.

“Either these people have personal motivations for telling the facts as they do or perhaps their recollections have faded,” Palmese said. “Perhaps they’ve spoken to one another, but the stories do not line up.”

In the other Herricks trial, which opened last Thursday before acting Supreme Court Justice Felice Muraca, a plaintiff identified as J.G. is seeking $14 million in damages. The plaintiff alleges Festa abused him for eight years, beginning when he was 9 years old and a student at Herricks Middle School.

Festa was ultimately arrested by Suffolk police in 1993 after he was accused of sexually abusing six teenagers in his Ronkonkoma neighborhood. He pleaded guilty in 1995 to sodomizing the boys and was sentenced to 5 years’ probation and required to register as a sex offender. He died in 2011 at 82.

A Newsday investigation found 27 Long Island school districts have paid a combined $31.6 million to settle 42 Child Victims Act lawsuits by former students who say teachers, administrators and fellow students sexually abused them. The individual settlement amounts range from $5,000 to $8 million. Another 150 lawsuits are pending.