POLY SORRY
Years late, prep school apologizes for kid abuse
POLY PREP, an elite school locked for years in a legal battle over claims that a longtime football coach abused students, has finally apologized.
The mea culpa to abuse survivors and their families was signed by headmaster David Harman and board of trustees chairman Scott Smith. It was posted on the Brooklyn school’s website on Friday.
“We offer our deepest apologies to the survivors of Coach (Phil) Foglietta’s abuse,” the school said in the statement. “We also apologize to their families and to anyone else who may have suffered in some manner as the result of his horrific misconduct. We recognize that sexual abuse is, and always has been, a terrible crime that leaves permanent scars.”
Foglietta was first accused of sexually abusing a student in the late 1960s. He was the physical education teacher and football coach from 1966 until he was forced into retirement in 1991.
Poly Prep had been under intense pressure from alumni and donors to reconcile with the 10 former students and two day campers who said they were abused by Foglietta. The 12 men filed a lawsuit in 2009, claiming the sick coach abused hundreds of boys during a 25-year period, and that Poly Prep officials covered up the assaults because they feared bad publicity and a drop in donations.
The school and plaintiffs negotiated a settlement in December 2012. The lawsuit, which initially sought $20 million for each plaintiff, turned Poly Prep into an embarrassing symbol of institutional in- difference to sexual abuse in youth sports.
The case, chronicled extensively in the Daily News since December r 2011, roiled the Dyker Heights campus.
Harman and Smith - whose brother, Philip, was one of the plaintiffs and claimed he was attacked hundreds of times - acknowledged that school officials should have investigated the allegations of sexual abuse. They also said the school should not have sanctioned a lavish retirement dinner for Foglietta.
Kevin Mulhearn, the attorney who represented the abuse survi-
vors, hailed the school for taking steps to make peace with his clients.
“Poly Prep appears t to be moving in the r right direction of reco onciliation,” Mulh hearn said.
Harman and Smith said the school had instituted policies to detect and prevent sexua al abuse, as well as har rassment, hazing and bullying. They wished the private school had d done some things diffe ferently.
“The school should still have communicated more frequently, more openly, and more empathetically with our community during this period,” the school’s statement said.
Foglietta died in 1998.