A retired Bay Shore third-grade teacher accused of sexually abusing dozens of students denied the allegations Monday, hours before a jury heard the plaintiff sue the district for failing to prevent the alleged abuse, saying the teacher was “a monster” who touched him more than a dozen times a week.

Thomas Bernagozzi, 75, of Babylon, told the jury before Suffolk Superior Court Judge Christopher Modelewski of Riverhead that he never molested his students or tried to deceive their parents through after-school sports, plays and outings he led during his three decades in the district. . These programs, he said, were designed to enrich students’ lives. Monday’s testimony was the first time the former teacher spoke about the allegations.

“I didn’t give my all for my parents,” Bernagozzi said from a cell at the Suffolk County Jail, where he is awaiting trial on sodomy, sexual conduct against a child and possession of child sexual abuse material in a separate felony count . case. “I did everything I did for the kids.” He pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges.

The testimony came the same day the plaintiff, identified only as PL in the Child Victims Act lawsuit, gave his account of the alleged abuse he said he endured as an 8- to 9-year-old student in Bernagozzi’s third-grade class at Gardiner Manor. Elementary school in the 1990-91 school year. It is one of 45 Child Victims Act complaints against the district involving Bernagozzi, and the first to go to trial.

The plaintiff, shaking at times as he spoke, testified to instances in which Bernagozzi allegedly sexually abused him in the classroom, in a gym locker room, in a private health club, in a public park, and on beach. He said Bernagozzi fondled him as he powdered his pants after after-school sports or sat on the teacher’s lap during class, a stuffed animal that blocked other students’ view of the alleged abuse. Bernagozzi touched his staff 10 to 20 times a week during classes and more than twice a week after school, he told jurors.

“The man was a monster,” the plaintiff said. Newsday is not releasing the identities of the victims of the alleged sexual assaults.

Bernagozzi, graying since his time in prison, hunched over his computer as he struggled to hear questions from attorneys for the plaintiff and the district, which has filed a grievance against the teacher.

“For what reason would I do that?” Bernagozzi said when asked if he ever applied powder to the plaintiff. – I had no powder.

“Coddle him?” school prosecutor Jeffrey Herman, of Herman Law in Manhattan, asked in a follow-up question.

“Of course not,” said Bernagozzi.

The former teacher also denied allowing students to sit on his lap.

“It’s just common sense,” Bernagozzi said. “I didn’t have kids falling on top of me. We’re in a classroom.”

Bernagozzi admitted to taking the students on field trips to the local health club, Jones Beach and New York City, where he said they interviewed famous people for Newsday’s former Kidsday section. Complainant said he was never abused in New York City.

The former teacher said the outings usually involved male students and were done with parental permission. He admitted that he was usually alone with the boys during these activities.

Asked by Herman if he “loved children,” Bernagozzi said he enjoyed “working” with them.

“It was a great experience,” Bernagozzi told the jury. “It was tiring and a lot of work, but I tried to do as much as I could to expose the class to all kinds of ideas.”

“I wanted them to know why they were learning things,” he continued. “I enjoyed watching the children grow up and become confident in themselves.”

But the plaintiff testified that the pleasure he got from Bernagozzi’s class was short-lived, saying the alleged abuse began almost immediately.

When pressed by attorney Lewis Silverman, of Silverman and Associates in White Plains, about the inconsistencies between his accounts of the abuse at trial and in his deposition years earlier, the plaintiff said he “spent many years trying to forget what (Mr. Bernagozzi) did to me”.

A classmate, Kristen Fraccalvieri Nicklas, also took the stand, saying the plaintiff told her about the powder while they were students in school and made a comment suggesting Bernagozzi was a “child abuser” when they were in high school. Nicklas also talked about Bernagozzi holding students.

Bernagozzi said if there had ever been allegations of abuse against him while he was employed as a teacher, a record would have been kept in his file.

And at one point, as tensions rose and legal arguments piled up in the trial’s third day, Silverman motioned for a mistrial, saying Herman had referenced a report from the early 1970s that was expunged from the teacher’s file, an allegation raised in a memo that was inadmissible into the record. The judge instructed the jury to disregard the comment.

The issue of whether the Bay Shore School District was effectively notified of the teacher’s abuse prior to the alleged abuse in 1990-1991 is central to the case. On Friday, the jury heard from the mother of an anonymous plaintiff in a separate Child Victims Act claim against the district, who said she told a principal her son was molested by Bernagozzi in 1987. Two other parents said they reported concerns in the mid-1980s about the extra attention Bernagozzi paid to their sons, but that they were unaware of the actual abuse.

Robby Hubbard, 60, who was in Bernagozzi’s third grade class in Bay Shore in 1972-73, said the district was made aware of an incident in the late 1980s when he saw Bernagozzi at an event where he was working to security and yelled at him calling him a “pedophile”. Hubbard, who also filed a Child Victims’ lawsuit against Bay Shore, also claims Bernagozzi sexually abused him.

“I lost my mind,” Hubbard said of that night. “I wanted to kill him.”

Bernagozzi denied that the incident ever took place.

Hubbard said he was assured by the security district chief at the time, John Thomas, who is now deceased, that he would inform the administration of the allegations. But he said he never heard from the district.

Bernagozzi wore a green Suffolk County Corrections V-neck sweater during his testimony Monday. His attorney, Samuel DiMeglio of Huntington, objected to his client’s attire and the jail cell he was placed in, saying he asked the judge to order Bernagozzi to be dressed in street clothes and testify from inside the jail chapel, as not be harmed. Modelewski said that while he passed on the order, he “can’t control what the sheriff’s department does.”

A sheriff’s deputy told Modelewski that the former teacher, who failed to post the $1 million bond set by the judge overseeing his criminal case, could not be placed in street clothes provided by his attorneys as a matter of policy. A sheriff’s deputy eventually displayed an artificial background showing what appeared to be an office space behind Bernagozzi to make it less obvious to the jury that he was testifying from jail.

Witness testimony is expected to end on Tuesday. The defense will call current Bay Shore Superintendent Steven Maloney.

Grant Parpan covers Suffolk County and federal courts for Newsday. A native of Long Island, he joined Newsday in 2022.