Disturbing new claims of how a New York City public school teacher silenced and abused a third-grade student decades ago have emerged — a week after a jury awarded the victim a staggering $18 million verdict.
The victim’s lawyer detailed the sickening way the now-dead teacher held the poor child’s mouth closed while he molested him for 30 minutes inside an auditorium full of his classmates.
“He’s never come out of the auditorium,” the victim’s attorney Jeff Herman told The Post in an exclusive interview. “It took away a future for him — he always wanted to be ordinary and he struggled.”
The delayed justice come nearly five decades after parents boycotted the school for covering up the teacher’s sickening acts, court records show, and years after the sicko teacher passed away.
The courthouse win for the victim, who was then a third-grader and is only known as A.P. in court docs, marks a historic milestone as the first lawsuit under 2019’s Child Victims Act to reach a jury verdict.
“This result is a historic acknowledgment that survivors deserve justice,” Herman said.
In the early 1970s, music teacher John Clark fondled multiple young boys during class movies in the P.S. 15 auditorium in Red Hook, according to the 2021 Kings County Supreme Court lawsuit.
For A.P., a resident of the Red Hook Houses, that meant being forced by Clark to sit on his lap in the darkened room while he was forcibly assaulted on two occasions, the suit states.
During one of the sickening assaults, Clark violated the 10-year-old with his finger for 30 minutes — and when he tried to cry out and scream, Clark put his hand over his mouth to silence him and continued molesting him, said Herman.
“While he was being molested, he tried to cry out and scream, and Clark put his hand over his mouth,” Herman said, “and sort of suffocated him for a half hour…it really broke him.”
As Herman’s firm investigated the case, it discovered parents had been so outraged by the school’s failure to take action that they staged a boycott of the school months after allegations were made in December 1970.
The school’s then-principal, Edwin Gardner, transferred the alleged victim out of the music class but kept Clark at the school under supervision, according to a March 1971 New York Times article.
Gardner told parents he would supervise the pervy teacher to prevent further incidents, Herman said, “but that didn’t happen.”
Notes from a special school board meeting where parents sounded off to officials were also unearthed by Herman’s firm, as investigators discovered one attendee said the only thing the school did in response to the molestation allegations was to “slap the teacher on the hand.”
Clark was arrested, and parents demanded Gardner be suspended — but the superintendent refused, leading to a one-day boycott that was “90 per cent effective,” the Times said.
According to a Daily News article the next month, one set of parents sued the city for $2 million and Gardner suddenly died of a heart attack.
Herman said they tracked down the mother who first reported the abuse, now 89, and said she agreed to testify in the trial.
“She was bothered by the fact that the principal broke his promise, and other kids were molested.”
Clark pled to a lesser charge and ultimately only served five years probation, Herman said.
The city is now on the hook for the entire $18 million verdict because the jury ruling found officials acted with “recklessness” in their handling of the case.
“They felt the principal turned a blind eye to the safety of these kids to the point where the parents had a boycott of the school,” Herman said of the jury.
“Even though these cases are older, they’re still entitled to justice,” he added.
A city spokesperson said the administration was reviewing the verdict.