By Kevin Manahan
The Star-Ledger
December 30, 2011
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/12/nj_educators_arrest_for_allege.html
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| A copy photo from a 2010 Bernardsville Middle School yearbook of Assistant Principal Patrick Lott. Lott is accused of secretly videotaping boys showering in the locker room at Immaculata High School in Somerville. |
For 60 years, Immaculata High School has built a reputation as a parochial school with a sound college prep curriculum, terrific student-to-teacher ratios and championship baseball, football and basketball programs that have produced Division 1 scholarship athletes.
With the arrest last week of volunteer coaching assistant Patrick Lott, however, the Somerville school of 800 students is compiling another reputation.
Lott, 54, is the third person connected with Immaculata to be arrested for sex crimes involving students over the past two decades. He faces more than 50 counts tied to allegations he surrepticiously videotaped 22 teenage boys showering at the school, where he is also a sports videographer.
Lott’s arrest comes just weeks after Pam Balogh, a former girls basketball and girls lacrosse coach at Immaculata, was paroled after serving 3 1/2 years in state prison for having a sexual relationship with one of her players, who was 15 at the time.
Balogh worked at Immaculata from 1991 until she resigned in September 2005. She pleaded guilty and, according to court documents, the sexual activity occurred after the student, a sophomore, made the varsity basketball team in the fall of 2004.
Sex crimes weren’t limited to the school’s sports program.
William "JR" Thompson coached marching band at Immaculata throughout the 1980s. According to several sources, including one law enforcement official, Thompson was terminated in 1989 after it was discovered he was having a sexual relationship with a student. According to the law enforcement source, the school didn’t report the incident.
Thompson later married a woman who, according to public records, graduated from Immaculata in 1992, three years after he was fired.
He began teaching music at nearby Somerville High School and in 2007 was convicted of multiple sexual assaults with students there. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Attempts to reach his wife were unsuccessful.
An Immaculata parent, who requested anonymity because he has children at the school and fears retribution, said the charges against Lott, along with the school’s checkered past should be a wake-up call for officials at the Diocese of Metuchen, which oversees the Catholic school.
The parent said a group of parents has banded together after individually approaching diocese officials over the past year. With alleged sexual assaults at Penn State and Syracuse universities bringing the issue to the forefront, the parent said he hopes media coverage will bolster the position that change is needed at Immaculata.
"This shows there isn’t enough oversight at the school," the parent said. "This shows that we’re not doing something right. It can’t go on like this. There are a lot of parents who are demanding change, and have been demanding change. Maybe this will finally bring it."
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