Ex-Ken-Ton teacher, a Boy Scout leader, and a priest are the latest accused in Child Victims Act cases

BUFFALO (NY)
WGRZ

August 30, 2019

By Dave McKinley

https://www.wgrz.com/article/news/local/ex-ken-ton-teacher-and-a-boy-scout-leader-are-the-latest-accused-in-local-child-victims-act-cases/71-d42c1b02-f6c0-4b02-a88a-ab4d50cc059d

Four complaints have been filed involving the same teacher regarding abuse alleged more than 40 years ago

A former teacher in the Kenmore Tonawanda School District and a man who served as a Boy Scout leader are among those named in the latest cases filed under the Child Victims Act in Erie County.

The cases were filed in New York State Supreme Court.

Four accuse former Ken-Ton teacher

In all four cases — all filed on Friday morning — men now in their 50’s alleged that they were “sexually assaulted, abused, and/or groped” by Arthur Werner, when he was their teacher at Hoover Elementary School in the 1970s.

The complaints are nearly identical in their claims as well, that each was forced to watch Werner “regularly and repeatedly sexually assault other boys in this classroom at Hoover Elementary.”

The Kenmore Tonawanda School district is named as the defendant in the case, due to what the complaint alleges was “negligence, carelessness, lack of supervision and lack of appropriate policies,” according to attorney Christopher O’Brien of the O’Brien and Ford law firm who is representing all four plaintiffs.

“This teacher would call children up to the front of the room, particularly boys, to discipline them perhaps after yelling at them,” O’Brien told WGRZ-TV. “He would bring them around the desk, and draw them closely to him with one arm, holding them tightly. He would whisper in their ear that they had to be disciplined and had to learn… while using his other hand to fondle them. And the whole time he’s fondling them the rest of the class could see this.”

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