WARWICK, R.I. — A jury in Kent County Superior Court decided Friday that a former teacher at Bishop Hendricken High School defamed and violated the privacy of three school administrators when he created a website accusing them of covering up another teacher’s alleged use of a classroom computer to solicit sex with younger men.
The jury rejected David Marsocci’s whistle-blower and defamation claims against the school, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence, and the school administration. Instead, the jurors ordered Marsocci to pay a total of more than $1 million in damages to the defendants.
Former principal Joseph Brennan, former assistant principal David Flanagan, and former president John A. Jackson were visibly relieved, hugging and thanking their lawyers after the verdict was read.
“I’m so happy for the verdict,” Brennan said outside the courtroom. “I feel as though justice has been served, and I thank God.”
Marsocci maintained that he had been acting in the best interests of students.
“I told the truth,” he said. “I have to face the fact that the jury did not believe me.”
Marsocci had filed this whistle-blower claim in 2018, a year after being fired after 23 years as a theology teacher at Bishop Hendricken, a prep school that counts Boston Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla and former US congressman James Langevin among its alumni.
Marsocci was fired in May 2017 after school administrators discovered that he had created a website, Hawk Outsider, that accused them of failing to investigate another teacher’s use of a classroom computer to solicit sex.
The website featured photos of top administrators claiming they lied about a “potential predator,” videos secretly recorded by Marsocci, and screenshots of the sexually suggestive emails he found on the classroom computer, including some responding to Craigslist ads for “Dad/Son Play.”
Another secretly recorded video, which was later shared anonymously with WPRI-TV and the Providence branch of the NAACP, showed then-principal Brennan using racist and antisemitic slurs. The video cost Brennan his job.
Marsocci had testified that he made the website because the administrators had failed to investigate the teacher’s use of the classroom computer since he first brought it to their attention in 2014.
Marsocci testified that the teacher was allegedly responding to ads on Craigslist seeking sexual encounters with younger men and, in one instance, sent a photo of himself with students.
Brennan testified that the other teacher denied writing the emails and, because the computer was used by other people, there was no way to prove it was him.
Brennan said that Marsocci was terminated for being insubordinate and that the accused teacher did not put any students in danger.
After a two-week trial in Kent County Superior Court, the jury deliberated for five hours on Thursday and Friday, and rejected all of Marsocci’s claims.
Marsocci was ordered to pay compensatory damages of $250,000 each to Brennan, Flanagan, and Jackson. He was also ordered to pay punitive damages: $250,000 to Brennan; $225,000 to Flanagan; $200,000 to Jackson; and $50,000 each to the school and Diocese.
Brennan’s lawyers, Todd D. White and Lucas Spremulli, a 2014 Hendricken graduate, called the three administrators good men who had done the right thing for the school.
“I wanted them to know … they did everything they should have done and needed to do to take care of the kids at Bishop Hendricken High School,” White said.
Lawyer Paul Galamaga, a 1987 Hendricken graduate, who represented Jackson and Flanagan, said they were “fine men” who would not have done the things they were accused of.
Since being fired, Marsocci said, he has been unable to find another teaching job, and has spent the last several years working low-paying construction jobs. The assessment of damages leaves him impoverished.
“I refuse to be part of another Catholic Church coverup,” Marsocci said outside the courthouse Friday afternoon. “They set out to destroy me, and they have.”
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