By Michael O'Keeffe
New York Daily News
March 8, 2009
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/high_school/2009/03/07/2009-03-07 _at_nazareth_officials_face_daunting_task-2.html
Vincent Rosati has a wife he adores, four beautiful children and a job as a furniture company manager that is challenging and rewarding. Life has been good since he graduated from Nazareth Regional High School in Brooklyn more than 20 years ago.
 |
| Philip Repaci was a member of the Nazareth High baseball team in the late 1980s, coached by Robert Mistretta. Repaci came forward in December and said Mistretta sexually abused him. |
But Rosati's demons, buried decades ago, came roaring back a few weeks before Christmas when he learned that an old friend and former NYPD cop named Philip Repaci announced that he had been sexually abused by Robert Mistretta, his former baseball coach and teacher, at a press conference outside their Catholic high school. Rosati got on a computer at his Florida home, and he grew increasingly angry as he read reader forums and blogs about the press conference.
"I was furious that people were calling Phil a liar," says Rosati, 40. "I knew Phil was not lying because Mistretta did the same thing to me."
Rosati says Mistretta abused him dozens of times over a two-year period in the mid-1980s; the incidents took place at the baseball coach's homes in Brooklyn and on the Jersey shore, and in Nazareth's gym and locker room. Rosati and two other former Nazareth students who also say Mistretta abused them during the 1980s have joined Repaci to demand their alma mater take action against the coach, who resigned shortly after Repaci's Dec. 4 press conference.
"It's not fair that he's free to hurt other kids," says Chris Pachion, another alleged Mistretta victim.
But what exactly is the proper course of action for Nazareth principal Barbara Gil and other school officials? What is the appropriate response for schools and youth sports organizations when a coach is accused of sexual abuse? Sex abuse experts and victim advocates say institutions have competing responsibilities when coaches and teachers are accused of sex abuse. The safety of the children currently playing on their teams and studying at their schools is their primary responsibility, and they have to offer support and assistance to former players and students who say they were molested. They also have to give the accused an opportunity to review the allegations and present evidence that may prove their innocence.
 |
| Mistretta resigned after Repaci's (second from right) press conference. Photo by Egan-Chin |
"Doing the right thing is more of an art than a science," says Robert Hoatson, a Catholic priest who founded an organization called Road to Recovery that serves clergy abuse survivors. "But their first priority should be protecting the kids."
There are no blueprints for teams and schools that want to balance those responsibilities, only road maps for failure. The most glaring example is the Catholic Church, which tried covering up sex abuse allegations for decades and wound up paying more than $1 billion in legal settlements to sex abuse victims and a tarnished reputation that may take a generation to repair.
Mistretta has denied the sex abuse allegations, and his attorney, Mario Galluci, says the four accusers have been manipulated by a suspended lawyer named John Aretakis who has aggressively represented dozens of clients who say they were abused by clergy. Galluci says the allegations are little more than a shakedown.
"Repaci and his classmate cronies are jumping on the Lotto bandwagon," Galluci says. "The claim is completely baseless and without merit."
Experts, however, say false reports of sex abuse are extremely rare, and Repaci, Rosati, Pachion and Joe Francone, another Nazareth alumnus who says he was abused by Mistretta, say they have no plans to file a lawsuit against Nazareth or Mistretta: New York's statute of limitations would make it difficult to pursue a lawsuit anyway.
"I don't want Mistretta's money and I wouldn't want to put my family through all of that anyway," Rosati says. "I want him to acknowledge what he did to us. I want him to be accountable.
"This isn't about money," Rosati adds. "It's about justice."
***
Rosati, raised by his mother and grandmother, had few masculine role models in his life. Mistretta was his biology teacher and he organized an after-school floor hockey program. Rosati and Mistretta started spending a lot of time together during Rosati's sophomore year at Nazareth.
 |
| Robert Mistretta Photo by Egan-Chin |
"He took me to umpteen NHL games with him," laughs Rosati, a devout Rangers fan. "Unfortunately, they were Islander games."
Rosati believes Mistretta started manipulating him long before he says the abuse started.
"He would talk about girls, and he would say that God was against premarital sex, but there were ways to release the pressure," Rosati says. "Then he started talking about masturbation, and then he began touching me in the bathroom and in the showers. He showed me porno movies at his home in Mill Basin and he would abuse me at his house on the Jersey shore."
Rosati felt trapped. Mistretta was a respected teacher and coach, and Rosati was afraid nobody would believe him if he talked about what was happening to him. His mother and grandmother would be traumatized. His classmates would call him gay - a perceived slur for a Catholic schoolboy in the 1980s.
"He knew if I said anything, my universe would cave in," Rosati says.
Rosati kept the abuse a secret for years; he told his mother and wife about it decades after he graduated from Nazareth. But when Repaci was attacked on blogs and reader forums by Nazareth alumni after his press conference, Rosati, Pachion and Francone - say they had to speak up, too.
"What happened to us is real," Francone says.
Nazareth's response to the sex abuse allegations may not completely satisfy Rosati and the other men. But the Brooklyn Catholic school does appear to have taken many of the steps that experts and victim advocates say are necessary to balance their competing responsibilities - especially when that response is compared to that of Christ the King, whose legendary boys basketball coach, Bob Oliva, resigned earlier this year amid sex abuse accusations.
Nazareth principal Gil declined to comment for this story and referred the matter to a lawyer representing the school who asked not to be identified in this story. Nazareth officials learned about Repaci's abuse allegations the day before his press conference, when they were contacted by a Daily News reporter. The school's first step, the lawyer says, was to put Mistretta on paid leave: it's a good move, the experts and victim advocates say, because it removes an alleged predator from the school environment but doesn't leave them in financial straits or signal a presumption of guilt.
"It must be terribly hard to repair your good name if you are falsely accused, but it is much harder for a sexually abused child to repair their psyche," says David Clohessy, the executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).
Nazareth officials also didn't publicly attack Repaci or Aretakis, his attorney. Repaci, a former police union official, was accused of illegally cashing $1,000 in union checks at a Nassau County bar and indicted on grand larceny charges. He eventually pleaded guilty to misdemeanor forgery and retired from the NYPD. A week after Repaci's press conference, a state appellate court suspended Aretakis from practicing law for a year for engaging in what it termed "professional misconduct" while pursuing sexual abuse cases against the Church. Although he can't file suits on behalf of his clients, Aretakis continues to serve as a spokesman and adviser.
Christ the King officials, in contrast, allowed Oliva to retain his coaching position for months after they learned that a longtime family friend, Jimmy Carlino, had accused him of sex abuse. Thomas Ognibene, a former city councilman who serves on the Queens high school's board of trustees, accused Carlino of trying to extort money from Oliva, who has vehemently denied abusing Carlino.
"False allegations are very rare and it is very difficult for men to come forward and say they were sexually abused," says Mary Gail Frawley-O'Dea, a clinical psychologist who specializes in sexual abuse issues. "If you are in it for the money, you'd be better off trying to rob a bank."
Nazareth officials notified Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes' office shortly after learning about the abuse allegations and hired a law firm to conduct an investigation. When Mistretta was told that he had to meet with investigators from the firm, he submitted his resignation, according to the lawyer representing Nazareth. Galluci said Mistretta took advantage of a buyout that was offered to some teachers long before Repaci's press conference, but the spokesman says that is not accurate. The buyout offer requires teachers to complete the school year. "The school's position is that he is not entitled to the buyout," the spokesman said.
The law firm investigators reached out to Repaci and the other alleged victims, but Aretakis and the school's lawyers could not reach an agreement on the conditions of proposed meetings, and the four men were never interviewed. Nazareth also encouraged other former students to step forward if they had information about Mistretta, the spokesman said, although he declined to say who they contacted.
Wendy Murphy, a former prosecutor who specializes in sex crimes, says that is a good step to take to protect both the accusers and the accused. School officials who cast a wide net for information might receive additional allegations, but they might also receive information that indicates the teacher or coach is innocent.
Rosati and his schoolmates say they are unhappy that Mistretta is allowed to keep his pension. "He should not be allowed to retire, with a pension," Rosati says. "He should not be able to go away quietly."
Murphy agrees: "If you hurt a child, you should spend your retirement in a shack by the river, living in poverty."
The Nazareth spokesman, however, says Mistretta's pension is administered by his union, the Lay Faculty Association, not the school. Harry Kranepool, the union's president, told the Daily News he could not comment on Mistretta's case without consulting their attorneys first.
Galluci says Mistretta is considering filing a defamation lawsuit against Aretakis and the four Nazareth graduates. But he's also willing to sit down with them to discuss - and refute - their allegations.
"He feels compassion for Repaci," Galluci says. "He helped him get his police department job and he's seen him reach rock bottom."
Rosati and his schoolmates say they would welcome a sitdown with the man they say has left them scarred.
"He should explain himself," Rosati says. "I want this guy to acknowledge what he did. I want this guy to be accountable."
Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.