Archdiocese, New Haven Private School Settle Sex Abuse Lawsuit

By Daniel Tepfer
New Haven Register
March 24, 2020

https://www.nhregister.com/news/article/Archdiocese-New-Haven-private-school-settle-sex-15154929.php

NEW HAVEN — The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford and officials of the Hopkins School in New Haven have agreed to settle a lawsuit that claimed a decades-long coverup of sexual abuse of young boys by a teacher.

Notice that a settlement had been reached in the two-year-old civil case was filed in Superior Court in New Haven.

Details of the settlement were not disclosed in the filing.

Last October, Cindy Robinson of the Bridgeport law firm Tremont, Sheldon, Robinson and Mahoney, which represented the plaintiff in the suit, offered to settle the case against the archdiocese and the school for $7.48 million.

Robinson declined comment.

John Galayda, director of communications for Hopkins, stated in an email that the school also declined to comment.

Hopkins School officials, however, said in 2019 that the private school’s protocols were strengthened and updated following investigations into three alleged sexual assaults on its campus or involving its faculty dating back to 1970.

Officials of the archdiocese did not immediately return calls and emails Tuesday seeking comment.

In the lawsuit, filed in May 2018, a local man states he was a 12-year-old student at St. Lawrence parochial school in West Haven when he alleges he was sexually assaulted by the teacher, Glenn Goncalo, at Hopkins School in 1990 and 1991.

Goncalo was a teacher at St. Lawrence School, an archdiocese school, and an intramural director and coach at Hopkins. In 1991, he fatally shot himself after police made arrangements with him to turn himself in on an unrelated accusation of sexual assault against a child, according to the police report at the time.

The lawsuit claimed that Goncalo was allowed 24/7 access into Hopkins School, including after regular school hours and when school was not in session, and would bring minor boys, including the plaintiff, to the school under the guise of using the gym to play basketball.

“We have a preventable situation where schools allowed a school employee to have unmonitored access to children, enabling him to sexually abuse them. The effects of this kind of abuse are indelible — the loss of self-esteem, the inability to trust, the anxiety never goes away,” Robinson said at the time she filed the lawsuit.

“Hopkins first learned of the current allegations in the last few years when it received a letter from plaintiff’s lawyer,” Galayda responded at that time. “It swiftly commenced an investigation and did not sweep anything under the rug. Hopkins School has been very open and transparent about its confrontation of any sexual misconduct within its community.”

Hearst Connecticut Media later obtained a New Haven police report regarding another sexual assault claim against Goncalo.

In that report, dated Sept. 7, 1991, the father of a boy other than the plaintiff in this lawsuit alleged that his son had been sexually assaulted at Hopkins School by Goncalo.

The report states that Goncalo was the boy’s teacher at St. Lawrence and had taken the boy to Hopkins on the pretext of having him try out for the baseball team. But when they got into the school’s vacant gym, Goncalo allegedly sexually assaulted him, the report states.

The report states that another boy said he witnessed the incident.

New Haven police made arrangements with Goncalo to turn himself in, when on Sept. 29, 1991, according to the police report, he ended his own life.