ROCHESTER (NY)
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
June 5, 2020
By Steve Orr
A former Rochester schoolteacher, was allowed to remain in the classroom for years after being accused of sexually abusing a student, has been sued by the young man who accused him two decades ago.
The boy’s mother reported the alleged abuse to the administration at her son’s elementary, Henry Hudson School 28, shortly after it took place, according to news reports from that era.
The principal reportedly told her that the teacher, David Heil, would be removed from service. But he was not. School officials also failed to inform child protective services or the police, as the law may have required, according to the news reports.
The boy’s mother happened to visit another city elementary school six years later and discovered Heil was teaching there. She called police, and Heil was subsequently charged, convicted and sent to prison.
The case was one of several in which Rochester school officials have been accused of failing to act on sexual abuse allegations.
The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in state Supreme Court in Monroe County, is the 14th brought against the Rochester City School District under provisions of the Child Victims Act. The act allows the revival of old child sexual abuse claims that had been blocked by New York’s statute of limitations.
Heil, who no longer teaches in the city, is the fifth Rochester school district employee to be accused in a CVA suit.
Only New York City’s massive school district has had more employees named in CVA suits, and only New York City and a suburban Buffalo school district have been sued more often than Rochester for alleged sexual abuse of its students.
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