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On September 25, 2013, Judge Sam Sferrazza issued an order granting a $750,000.00 attachment to the family of a young girl who was sexually assaulted by a school van driver.  The order was issued in the case of Doe v. King in Rockville Superior Court.  The order says that, “the plaintiff has demonstrated probable cause that a judgment will be rendered in her favor…”

In a decision released on August 6, 2013, the Connecticut Supreme Court has upheld a criminal conviction of a child sex predator.  The defendant in the case, State v. Stephen, J.R., appealed his conviction of sixteen counts of sexual assault in the first degree and risk of injury to a minor claiming the testimony of his child victim was too “generic” and “non-specific” to allow for a conviction on multiple counts.  The child had testified at trial that the defendant had sexually assaulted her “three or four times” and it was “always the same thing”.  During a previous clinical child interview at the Aetna Foundation Children’s Center at St. Francis Hospital, the child testified that the sexual assaults occurred “five to six times”.   On appeal, the defendant argued that there was insufficient evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he abused the child on four separate and distinct occasions.

NEWINGTON — A woman who worked as a special education tutor in the Newington school system has been charged with eight counts of second-degree sexual assault after engaging in a sexual relationship with a 20-year-old student.

Newington school officials notified police of the allegations on June 13 and on Monday police announced they’d arrested Amy Belliveau, 43, of New Britain. Police said she turned herself in Thursday after learning a warrant had been issued for her arrest.

It is against state law for a school employee to have sexual contact with a student, regardless of age of the student.

Belliveau has been fired from her position. The sexual contact occurred between April and June of 2013, police said. The victim was a student at the Newington Transitional Academy, police said.

Schools Superintendent William C. Collins said the district worked jointly with police after they began to suspect a sexual relationship had occurred. Collins said he was “thrilled” that an arrest was made.

The 20-year-old student was a “high-functioning” special needs student, he said.

Belliveau was placed on administrative leave as soon as the investigation began and then terminated after the arrest. Collins said she was in her first year of teaching in the district.

She posted $10,000 bail and is due back in court Oct. 9.

HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — A former Wesleyan University student who said she was sexually assaulted at a frat house known as the ‘‘rape factory’’ in 2010 has settled a lawsuit against the private liberal arts school and a chapter of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, according to court documents.

The student alleged Wesleyan officials knew that Beta House, home of the Mu Epsilon chapter of Beta Theta Pi, was a dangerous place for women because of numerous sexual assaults there but failed to protect her and other female students. The woman, who is from Maryland and known only as Jane Doe in the lawsuit, sued for $10 million last year.

U.S. District Judge Robert N. Chatigny in Hartford issued an order last month to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the parties in the case reported it had been settled. Terms were not disclosed.

Lawyers in the case and a Wesleyan spokeswoman declined to comment Tuesday.

The woman said she was a freshman at the Middletown school in October 2010 when she was locked in a room and raped during a Halloween party at Beta House. She also claimed another woman reported being raped at Beta House the same weekend.

The attacker, now serving a 15-month prison sentence, was a friend of a Beta member and didn’t attend the school, the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit said the woman had no idea there had been numerous previous assaults at Beta House, but Wesleyan officials were well aware of that history and failed to take adequate actions to fix the problem. Wesleyan did order safety changes at the frat house, but those orders were ignored, the lawsuit said.

‘‘Beta House has a long-documented history of dangerous misconduct, student injuries and numerous sexual assaults of women, resulting in Beta … gaining the reputation in the Wesleyan community as the ‘Rape Factory,’’’ the lawsuit said.

In 2005, Wesleyan revoked recognition of the fraternity as a student group after repeated misconduct and failure to comply with school rules, according to the lawsuit. Although the recognition was never regained, students have been allowed to continuing using Beta House and living there, the plaintiff said.

After numerous student injuries and hospitalizations, Wesleyan officials warned students months before the woman’s assault to stay away from Beta House because it was dangerous and the university couldn’t ensure their safety, the lawsuit alleged.

After Jane Doe was assaulted at the Halloween party, school officials again warned students about Beta House and prohibited students from living there or using the house for social and academic events, the plaintiff said. That sparked campus-wide ‘‘Free Beta’’ protests organized by members of Beta and Beta House residents, which caused the school to reverse the prohibitions on Beta House, the lawsuit said.

Jane Doe said protesters rallied and chanted outside her dormitory. She said she was traumatized, forced to hide in her room and missed classes.

Doe also accused Wesleyan officials of doing little to help her after the rape, so she took a medical leave and eventually transferred to another school in another state.

Edgar Gonzalez, one of two former Torrington High football players accused of sexually assaulting 13-year-old girls, was sentenced to six years in prison Friday.

The other former player, Joan Toribio, will be sentenced to 10 years, suspended after 9 months, and 10 years of probation for second-degree sexual assault, according to an agreement with prosecutors.

Gonzalez was also sentenced to 10 years parole and must register as a sex offender for 10 years. Toribio will not have to register as a sex offender. Gonzalez pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault in June.

Prosecutor Terri Sonnemann noted that Gonzalez was out on bail for a 2012 robbery charge at the time of the assault. She described how the 13-year-old victim suffered physical injuries in the encounter and how Gonzalez poured alcohol down her throat and had intercourse with the girl.

“The night took a horrific turn for this young woman,” Sonnemann said. “The encounter was rough. She suffered injuries. … This was not something this girl wanted. It was not something she sought out. … this was not by any stretch of the imagination a consensual experience for this girl.”

The girls’ parents attended and addressed the court, telling the judge that the incident changed her forever.

“He raped her,” the girl’s mother said. “She said no. Let me repeat that. She said no. He didn’t care.”

Toribio and Gonzalez were accused of sexually assaulting different 13-year-old girls on the same night in February.

Toribio’s attorney, Charles Brower, argued that what happened on Feb. 10 was not indicative of Toribio’s character.

“This is an isolated incident,” Brower said.

Toribio obtained his high school diploma and is “college material,” Brower said.

Making him register as a sex offender would hamper his ability to attend college, Brower said. The law allows exemptions to the registration requirement if the defendant is under 19 and is not viewed as a threat to public safety.

Sonnemann did not disagree with Brower.

Toribio is to be sentenced Nov. 15.

The case drew widespread attention because some friends of Gonzalez taunted the victim on social media.

Arrest warrants described a night of drinking, marijuana smoking and, ultimately, sexual contact between the high school athletes and the girls.

One of the girls was sleeping over at the other’s house. About 3 a.m. on Feb. 10, she would later tell police, they sneaked out of the house and went to Toribio’s family’s apartment. Gonzalez was there with Toribio, according to the warrant, and Toribio’s mother was asleep at the time.

Gonzalez and Toribio admitted to Torrington Det. Kevin Tieman, in separate interviews, that they had sex with the girls and that they now know it was wrong, the warrant says. They insisted the sexual contact was consensual, but they were charged with second-degree sexual assault because, under Connecticut law, a 13-year-old girl cannot consent to sexual contact.

One of the 13-year-olds, according to the arrest warrant, said she told Gonzalez “no,” but he insisted and had intercourse with her. She also said she smoked marijuana and drank vodka with Gonzalez. She said that she felt “fuzzy” from the alcohol at the time of the encounter.

The girl also told police Gonzalez told her she needed a shot of alcohol, and he pulled her head back and poured it into her mouth, the warrant states.

The girl told a forensic interviewer at Torrington’s Center for Youth and Families that at one point during the sexual contact, Gonzalez held her arm behind her back. The girl said “that she verbally told Gonzalez that she did not want to have sex, but as a result of the marijuana, alcohol and ‘entire situation,’ vaginal sex just happened anyway,” according to the arrest warrant.

Gonzalez told the detective that, at one point, the girl said, “I don’t know. … I don’t want to do this,” and they stopped, according to the warrant.

The second girl said she did not smoke marijuana or drink vodka. She was reluctant to talk to police about what happened and at one point said, “I ruined his life,” the warrant states.

Police learned of the incident after one of the girls’ relatives told one girl’s mother about what had happened. The mother then contacted police.

The Connecticut Supreme Court has affirmed the child sex abuse verdict against St. Francis Hospital.  You can read the CT Supreme Court’s opinion here: http://www.jud.ct.gov/external/supapp/Cases/AROcr/CR309/309CR219.pdf

This jury trial was handled by Attorney Doug Mahoney of Bridgeport.  The trial law firm of Kenny, O’Keefe & Usseglio, P.C.  represented more than sixty plaintiffs in the St. Francis Hospital Child Sex Abuse case.

If you have any questions regarding this matter, please e-mail us at tokeefe@kou-law.com

The University of Connecticut will pay an outside law firm to investigate its own employees’ handling of allegations the school received as early as 2006 that a music professor engaged in sexual misconduct.

The school said it is cooperating in multiple law enforcement investigations into allegations against Robert Miller, 66, a former head of the music department who has worked at UConn since 1982. Miller was placed on administrative leave June 21 and barred from campus. He could not be reached for comment Monday. He is being paid his $135,741 salary and has not been charged with any crime.

However, investigations by UConn and state police are continuing – and now UConn’s Board of Trustees has asked state Attorney General George Jepsen to solicit proposals to retain an outside law firm to investigate whether UConn officials handled the allegations properly. The firm also would represent and advise UConn in an internal probe into whether it complied with federal Title IX procedures concerning sexual abuse allegations.

Jepsen’s office, in documents released Monday, revealed that at least some UConn officials may have known since at least late 2011 about alleged misconduct by Miller. Further, Jepsen’s office states that “between 2006 and 2011, several allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct with minor children by this same faculty member were allegedly brought to the attention of University employees.”

“The investigation must be conducted in a way that is mindful of the possibility that the university may be subject to [legal] claims in the future,” Jepsen’s office states in the request for proposals. “Some of the allegations that were presented to UConn [police department] in 2013 were allegedly received by a department head in 2011 but there are questions as to whether appropriate action was taken prior to 2013.”

The current UConn administration, headed by President Susan Herbst, says that it only learned of the allegations on Feb. 14, when the new dean of the School of Fine Arts gave the school’s Title IX administrator a December 2011 letter outlining accusations against Miller. A UConn employee had brought the letter to him a day earlier.

A UConn spokeswoman said it is unfair to liken this case to the 2011 scandal at Pennsylvania State University over the mishandling of allegations of sexual abuse, which led to the conviction of assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky for abusing underage boys, and to the downfall of coach Joe Paterno for failing to pursue reports of that abuse.

“I wouldn’t want to draw parallels between this and the Penn State situation, because the situations aren’t parallel,” said UConn spokeswoman Stephanie Reitz. But, she said, UConn will ensure “transparency” and “the independence of an outside investigation” by having a law firm conduct the probe – and by creating a public website for information and updates about the investigation at http://www.uconn.edu/public-notification/.

Proposals are due July 29 from law firms seeking to conduct the probe. Jepsen’s office will select the firm to do the internal investigation of UConn, and will submit its finding to the school’s Board of Trustees, not Herbst’s office.

The school has budgeted $250,000 to pay for the investigation, but the figure could go higher “depending where the investigation goes,” Reitz said.

Some of the alleged misconduct by Miller, according to court documents and Jepsen’s office, involved claims of improper physical contact with boys at a summer camp.

A spokesman for The Hole In The Wall Gang Camp in Ashford confirmed that Miller was a volunteer at the camp from 1989 to 1992 when the improper contact was alleged to have taken place.

“These events date back more than 20 years. At that time, the camp immediately removed Mr. Miller from his position,” Ryan Thompson, the organization’s senior development officer, said in an emailed statement. “When the current investigation began several months ago, it was unclear whether the matter was reported to the appropriate authorities at that time. Therefore, the camp immediately made a report to the Connecticut Department of Children and Families and has continued to cooperate fully with authorities.”

The camp’s lawyer told police that one of the boys had “confided in his parent” about “inappropriate incidents” in 1992.

Authorities also are investigating a statement that a student made to a UConn faculty member soon after news of Miller’s suspension last month “that the student was not surprised to hear” of the investigation “because the faculty member was known to have visited freshman dorms, provided drugs to students and had sex with students.”

The latter statement appears in Jepsen’s 40-page request for law firms’ proposals to do the investigation. It also says that the faculty member who reported the student’s comment “also indicated that the faculty member now being investigated was known to have a history of having sex with boys.”

The statute of limitations has expired for any crimes that might have occurred in Connecticut, but one person claimed he had been assaulted in Virginia, where the statute of limitations has not expired, according to court documents. Miller began his music teaching career in Fairfax County, Va., public schools before coming to UConn three decades ago, according to his biography on UConn’s website.

In order to corroborate one victim’s memory, police took pictures inside of Miller’s Mansfield house in order to “determine his credibility as a misconduct witness against Miller,” according to a search warrant affidavit.

On June 20, authorities searched Miller’s house in Mansfield, and UConn seized his university computers. He was put on administrative leave the next day.

“It is important to note that no one has been charged with a crime in relation to these allegations, and the university has not made any final determination regarding the status of an employee,” Herbst said in a statement released early Monday. “Yet any accusation of sexual misconduct by faculty, staff or students is among the gravest issues that any institution must face.”

Reitz said the school expects the outside investigation to answer who at UConn knew about the allegations and what action was taken between 2006 and 2011.

“This will be the central focus of the self-initiated retrospective review, expected to be undertaken by an investigatory firm selected through the RFP [request for proposal] process,” Reitz said. “The same questions that others are asking are being asked by the board of trustees and this administration and will be the driving focus of the outside law firm’s review.”

“The [current] administration became aware of this on Feb. 13 of this year,” Reitz said. As to what action was taken by previous administrators on the allegations, Reitz said, “Those will be reviewed as part of the independent counsel study.”

Richard Kenny, a lawyer who represented 40 victims in the recent sexual abuse case against Dr. George Reardon, a now-dead endocrinologist at St. Francis Hospital and Medical Center, said he gives credit to Herbst, who began as president in June 2011, “for stepping up and taking an aggressive position.”

But, he said, if any suggestion was made to university officials as early as 2006 of the possibility that Miller was abusing children, “They should have at that point worked from the premise that this was happening and we need to take it seriously and move forward.”

Kenny said the university should have done this even if the allegation regarding Miller was only “kind of having an idea. That’s good enough …. You can’t work with the benefit of the doubt going to the supposed perpetrator. You need to go the other way when it comes to children. ”

Kenny said that if university officials had any inkling that Miller was abusing children, they should have involved police immediately. “I’m not talking about anything more than getting the police involved from day one and letting them do their job,” said Kenny. “You cannot take the position that it will be embarrassing to the school if this is let out. You need to take the position that the police are better suited to investigate this.”

The UConn police investigation opened in February after receiving the December 2011 letter, which had been sent to a department head whom UConn would not identify Monday.

State police are asking anyone with information on the case to call major crime squad detectives at the Tolland state police barracks at 860-896-3200.

SOUTHINGTON — A 50-year-old man was arrested Monday on charges that he committed sexual assault over a two week period.

Roland Garneau, of 1845 Meriden–Waterbury Trpke., is charged with first-degree sexual assault, sexual assault in a cohabiting relationship, unlawful restraint, third-degree assault and second-degree breach of peace.

He is in custody with bail set at $250,000. The sexual assault took place from about June 22 until July 6, police said.

Police are releasing no other details of the alleged crimes because an arrest warrant for Garneau is sealed.