Ex-Teacher Charged in Sex Abuse
By Sean Gardiner, Staff Writer
Originally published in Newsday, January 19, 2001
A former teacher arrested on Long Island last week for sending pornographic pictures to young girls has been charged with statutory rape in New York City after detectives discovered a videotape that shows him having sex two years ago in the classroom of a Manhattan high school with a pair of 14-year-old girls, police said Friday.
Anthony Correnti, 26, who taught in Manhattan until 1999, was arrested by Suffolk County police on Jan. 18 in his West Islip home after the parents of a 13-year-old girl showed detectives an e-mail of nude young women that he allegedly sent to their daughter. Suffolk police said he also met the girl two times and that he sexually abused her.
On that day, Suffolk police raided Correnti's Kurzon Road home and found, among other things, the videotape. City police sources said Friday that when confronted by the Suffolk Police Department with the videotape, Correnti said the activity shown on it took place two years ago in New York City. He is being held in lieu of $150,000 bail in Suffolk County on charges of sexual abuse and disseminating indecent material to a minor and endangering the welfare of a child, the 13-year-old.
In the Manhattan case, NYPD investigators later found the two girls, who were 14 at the time the video was made, and who are now 16. They admitted having sex with Correnti, who at the time was their journalism teacher at the Environmental Studies High School at 444 W. 56th St. in Manhattan, police said.
In the summer of 1999, Special Commissioner of Investigations Ed Stancik's office had started an investigation into Correnti after students accused Correnti of harassment.
According to a letter forwarded by Stancik's office to then-Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew, in February, 1999, two girl students of Correnti's were talking with him about Internet pornography when one of the girls jokingly said she and her boyfriend made a homemade video of their having sex. The students later told investigators that Correnti then offered that he had naked pictures of himself, according to the letter.
The student said that on at least five occasions over the next month, Correnti approached her and asked about her homemade videotape and offered her a grade of 100 if she let him watch it, according to the letter.
Fed up with his continual requests, the student then took an audiotape recorder and tried recording her conversation with Correnti. Correnti saw the recorder in the student's bag, grabbed it and tried to record over the tape, according to the letter.
Another student witnessed Correnti grab the tape. A portion of the tape, in which Correnti asked the student if she had "watched it," wasn't taped over, according to the letter.
Stancik's investigators interviewed Correnti, who admitted to having a conversation about Internet pornography and talking with the student about a nude video she had of herself. Although he admitted his conduct was improper, Correnti said his conversations with the girl were meant only as a "joke," according to the letter.
Stancik's office wrote of Correnti, "it is clear that he does not know how to conduct himself when interacting with students," and recommended that he be fired but didn't find any criminal wrongdoing. When called in to face the allegations, Correnti resigned by telephone from that school on Sept. 7, 1999. Later that month he was hired by the Seaford school system as a music teacher after the principal at the Environmental Studies High School called him "brilliant" in a letter of recommendation, Seaford school officials said.
Correnti resigned in March, 2000, from the Seaford schools.
