WARWICK, R.I. — Following a two-week trial, a jury began deliberations on Thursday to decide whether a former theology teacher at a prominent Rhode Island all-boys Catholic high school was defamed and wrongfully terminated after he made a website claiming school administrators covered up another teacher’s use of a classroom computer to solicit sexual encounters, including with younger men.
In closing arguments inside Kent County District Court in Warwick on Thursday, an attorney for former Bishop Hendricken High School administrators touted how the terminated teacher, David Marsocci, failed to call any witnesses to the stand to bolster his allegations.
“What evidence did he bring you? Not one witness in support of his claims. Not one person to collaborate his version of events, and there are so many possible witnesses he could have brought,” attorney Paul F. Galamaga said.
Marsocci, who testified for several days, never brought his concerns to the police, nor did he confront the teacher in question, Galamaga said.
But Robert E. Savage, an attorney representing Marsocci, reminded jurors the defense also did not bring in others to testify.
Other than Marsocci, the only individuals who testified during the trial were former school administrators named in the lawsuit, he noted.
“They came here alone,” Savage said.
Marsocci has said he was terminated in May 2017 for insubordination, when school officials discovered a website he created.
The site featureds photos of former principal Joseph Brennan, assistant principal David Flanagan, and president John A. Jackson, claiming they lied about a “potential predator;” videos Marsocci secretly recorded; and screenshots of sexually suggestive emails he found on the classroom computer, including some responding to Craigslist ads for “Dad/Son Play.”
Brennan was also seen in another, secretly-recorded video — shared anonymously with WPRI-TV — that showed Brennan using racist and antisemitic slurs.
Marsocci also alleges the three men defamed him in letters to the school community, and interfered with his ability to get hired at other Catholic schools in the state. Savage told the jury on Thursday Marsocci has been working in construction and is now “poverty-stricken.”
But Marsocci also faces counter-claims accusing him of making libelous and slanderous statements. In addition, Brennan is accusing him of violating his rights by surreptitiously filming him in his office and giving “selective false and fictitious information” to the media.
In testimony at trial, Marsocci said he told Brennan and the school chaplain in 2014 about finding the emails on the computer, which students also used. The teacher was allegedly seeking sexual encounters with younger men on Craigslist, and sent a photo of himself with students.
Brennan testified he investigated the allegations by talking to the teacher, who denied writing the emails.
But Marsocci said he continued finding explicit emails, so he took screenshots of them and started building the website. He also said he used a hidden camera to record his conversations with Brennan and other school officials “because of the history of events with the Catholic Church.”
Brennan testified he did not know Marsocci was still probing the incident.
In May 2017, Brennan and Flanagan learned of Marsocci’s “Hawk Outsider” website when the webpage was left open in a faculty room. The website was not yet public, but Marsocci refused to take it down when confronted by administrators and was fired.
Warwick police spoke with Marsocci and the Hendricken administrators, looked at the screenshots of the email, and determined the situation was a civil matter.
Galamaga said Marsocci’s primary goal “was to take down” Brennan, Flanagan, and Jackson.
“Mr. Marsocci wants you to believe that Bishop Hendricken has a teacher on the campus that is acting as a sexual predator, and he claims the evidence of this was easily accessible to anyone on that computer,” Galamaga told jurors on Thursday. “Yet, curiously, nobody else ever found this easy-to-access evidence except Mr. Marsocci.”
Galamaga pointed to how eight years have passed since those allegations became public.
“Wouldn’t you expect one person to come forward by now to corroborate his stories?” Galamaga said.
“Nobody has ever come forward with such an allegation,” he added.
Todd D. White, an attorney representing Brennan, said Marsocci is responsible for his own termination.
“Mr. Marsocci conducted a witch hunt against a colleague,” White said in his closing statement on Wednesday.
Savage maintained on Thursday that Marsocci, who worked at the school for more than 23 years, was not insubordinate. He said whistleblower laws exist for employees to raise alarm if they believe, in good faith, a law was broken.
“He lost everything — absolutely everything,” Savage said.
Material from a previous Globe story was used in this report.
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