The abuse accusations continue to pile up against former teacher and coach Edwin “Ted” Gaynor as yet another plaintiff came forward with claims of sexual misconduct last week. A lawsuit filed with the Westchester County Supreme Court on June 24 alleges that Gaynor used his position as a basketball coach at Holy Rosary Elementary School in Hawthorne, New York, to molest Robert Pokorny from approximately 1961 to 1963, when the plaintiff was in the fifth and sixth grades.
Pokorny—who now resides in Kentucky— is the 21st accuser to come forward with sexual abuse allegations against the former coach since David B. Fox filed an initial lawsuit on Nov. 7, 2019. Pokorny’s allegations also appear to reinforce previous claims that Gaynor’s alleged transgressions were ignored by the Archdiocese of New York as well as Catholic schools Immaculate Heart of Mary, IHM, in Scarsdale and St. Bernard in White Plains. The Archdiocese, Holy Rosary, St. Bernard and IHM are all named as co-defendants in the lawsuit for enabling Gaynor’s alleged pattern of abuse by shuffling him to various parishes in Westchester County during a timeline of wrongdoing that stretches from 1959 to 1986.
Like other plaintiffs who have spoken out against Gaynor, Pokorny alleges that the former coach—now 85 years old—“groomed” him for abuse and leveraged his position as an authority figure into spending unsupervised time with the youth. Pokorny alleges that one incident of molestation occurred after Gaynor had asked him to stay after school in order to help line the basketball court. Gaynor drove Pokorny home afterwards and pulled the then-sixth grader onto his lap. “[Pokorny] remembers him arching and breathing and believes Gaynor may have gratified himself sexually while holding Plaintiff’s genitals while Plaintiff was on his lap,” the lawsuit reads. “Plaintiff remembers thinking this was not right, but he was too young to understand what was happening.”
According to the lawsuit, this pattern of abuse continued for roughly two years, during which time Pokorny claims Gaynor would often watch his elementary school players as they showered following games and practices.
Around 1963, Pokorny recalls that Gaynor abruptly left his post at Holy Rosary, although the lawsuit states that he and his classmates noticed the coach quickly found a landing spot at what is described in the lawsuit as “a different Catholic school in the area.”
Although no definitive timeline of Gaynor’s employment has yet been provided by any of the co-defendants, it is believed based on court documents that Gaynor’s next stop was IHM. Seventeen of the 21 current lawsuits filed against Gaynor stem from alleged misconduct at IHM, between 1963 and 1967.
Following several parental complaints about Gaynor’s behavior at IHM, as detailed in prior lawsuits filed by plaintiffs David Pisula and Quentin Durning, Gaynor was dismissed from IHM but returned to coach at Holy Rosary around 1968, where he was once again accused of sexual misconduct. A June 9 lawsuit filed by an anonymous plaintiff identified only as GCVAWCG-DOE alleges that after alerting Holy Rosary administrators to the abuse, the victim was chastised by the church’s pastor and forced to perform penance.
In a 2014 letter to one of the plaintiffs, Gaynor estimates that his teaching and coaching career lasted for 26 years—during which time he also operated a sports-themed summer camp for local boys. The current cases against Gaynor—as well as the Archdiocese and the churches and schools that employed him—have been filed under the 2019 Child Victims Act, CVA, which extended the statute of limitations for survivors of child sexual abuse. The deadline for filing new cases under the CVA was set to expire on Aug. 14 but was extended to Jan. 14, 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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