New Rap vs. Kid Molester
Guilty in '95, he's sued in B'klyn incident this month
By Nancie L. Katz Daily News Staff Writer
Originally published in the New York Daily News, March 22, 2002
A former PTA president who pleaded guilty to molesting girls in a school six years ago has been slapped with a $66 million lawsuit alleging he did it again—this time preying on a 12-year-old at a Brooklyn YMCA.
Police are investigating Gary Session, 38, for allegedly groping the girl during a March 13 coaching session at a Y on Flatbush Ave., an NYPD spokeswoman said.
"I'm outraged," the girl's mother told the Daily News. "My daughter is traumatized. She has nightmares, she is fearful of men. She's afraid to go back to the Y. It was her second home for seven years. Now, she's lost a home. They are responsible."
The lawsuit, filed by lawyer Sanford Rubenstein, charges the Flatbush Y was negligent "in the supervision, control and protection" of children in its care.
Session could not be reached for comment. A man who answered the phone at his home said, "I don't know what you are talking about."
In 1994, Session was PTA president at Public School 249 and was working elsewhere in Brooklyn's School District 17 as a teaching assistant when he was accused of sexually abusing four young girls in the school auditorium.
He pleaded guilty the next year to three counts of sexual abuse, and was sentenced to two to six years in prison by a Brooklyn Supreme Court justice.
Agnes Green, a local school board member, called the latest allegations "a horrible thing."
"If he is continuing [this behavior] and the Y did not do the check after all these years of scandal and embarrassment, shame on them," said Green.
Session was a volunteer basketball coach at the YMCA, where the girl played on a team, her family said. She told her mother that Session approached her on March 13 and asked if she wanted some private coaching.
After they played briefly, he told the girl "he would like to feel her heartbeat" and molested her, the mother said. "He said, 'If anything I'm doing is making you feel uncomfortable, let me know,'" the mother continued. "She said, 'Yes, please stop!' and he still continued."
The girl later told her mother, who said she reported the alleged incident to Y administrators and the police.
In a statement, Michael Keller, the director of the Flatbush Y, said Session "has never been a registered volunteer or paid employee."
"We take this allegation very seriously and we are cooperating fully with law enforcement authorities," he said.
