NYC teacher sexually abused student in school ‘escape room’: probe
A Queens public high school teacher created a terrifying “escape room” where he allegedly sexually assaulted a female student, according to a disturbing new report.
Investigators allege Scott Pesky, a music teacher at Jamaica Gateway Science High School, also invited the girl to his home — calling it a “bat cave” — to have sex when his wife and two children were not home.
Pesce, 50, He began “grooming” the student When she was fourteen years old, a sophomore, and the matter culminated when she was a senior in a “sexual relationship,” Charges a report By the Special Investigating Commissioner for City Schools.
The 25-year-old former student told investigators in 2022: “I now understand that these strange hugs were actually just touching. “He was touching me for sexual pleasure without my consent.”
Pesci arranged “makeshift partitions and old desks” in his music classroom and office, and invited students to spend time in his “escape room.”
Pesci touched the student’s breasts and tried to kiss her, causing the girl to pull away and leave “immediately,” the report says.
Pesci will also invite the girl to his house to play board games with other children. At one point, she arrived to find she was the only student there, the report says.
Pesci also gave the girl lavish gifts, such as a flute he was only supposed to loan to students, his favorite childhood book, new clothes and money, including $200 to buy Ugg boots, she says.
SCI found he messaged the teen nearly 700 times, 82 times during school.
Pesci asked the girl to save his number under a fake name — “Arthur Dent” — “so as not to arouse suspicion,” she told investigators. Another student told SCI he believed the alias was “Harvey Dent,” a Batman villain whose alter ego was “two-faced.”
Pesky forcibly kissed and groped the student in his school office and forced her to touch his erect penis, telling her, “This is what you make me feel,” according to court documents and the SCI report.
Pesci assigned the student to play principal flute in the school band, gave her solos and wrote her “wonderful” college letters of recommendation, she said.
“These were things he did as part of the grooming process,” she said.
Once she graduated, Pesci would “harass” her to come to his house when his wife and two children went to engage in sex acts, she told investigators.
The deviant texts continued.
“No Halloween party? No slut costume?” He texted her during her first year in college. “No, I’m the little bitch in red.”
On another occasion, he wrote: “I risked everything for you. practical. my house. My children. “Everything.”
The student told investigators she was “disgusted” by his behavior because she saw Pesci as a “father figure.”
The NYPD closed a criminal case against Pesci because the student said the sexual contact was consensual and occurred after she turned 17, but the teacher’s behavior was “egregious, manipulative and predatory,” the SSC charged.
After the student applied in June 2022 to the city’s Department of Education Remove pesky from the portal, But he remained on the city’s payroll until last year, collecting $99,578 in fiscal year 2024, records show.
An Energy Department spokeswoman said he “irreversibly resigned.”
Besides recommending Pesci’s termination, SCI called on the Department of Education to amend its guidelines on teachers using private phone numbers to send text messages to children.
Her spinal cord injury Repeatedly urged the Department of Energy Prevent staff from contacting students’ cell phones and social media accounts. In the past five years, it has found at least 89 cases of Education Department employees having inappropriate conversations with students via text messages and online.
Last year, the 25-year-old former student filed a lawsuit accusing Pesce of sexual harassment and assault. In June, Pesci filed a lawsuit against the Department of Energy to deny him legal representation.
Pesky’s lawyers did not respond to inquiries.
