NEW YORK
New York Daily News
By Michael O’Keeffe / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
In a startling court order that could be a watershed moment for survivors of childhood sex abuse, a federal judge said Tuesday he will allow portions of an explosive lawsuit to proceed against Poly Prep Country Day School in Brooklyn.
U.S. District Court Judge Frederic Block wrote he would green-light the case because officials may have lied when they claimed they only learned in 1991 that a longtime football coach had allegedly molested boys for several decades.
Block said Poly Prep’s attempts to have the lawsuit dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired falls flat because administrators might have deceived 10 former students and two day campers who claimed they were sexually abused by coach Phil Foglietta.
“Central to plaintiffs’ claims in the present case are their allegations that Poly Prep engaged in an affirmative course of conduct during the period of limitations to deceive the plaintiffs into believing that they had no claim against Poly Prep because the school had no knowledge of Foglietta’s wrongdoing…Foglietta was consistently portrayed to the plaintiffs as a reputable and esteemed football coach throughout the limitations period (1966-1991),” Block wrote in Tuesday’s order.
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