Former Bay Shore teacher sentenced to up to 50 years for child sex crimes

A Suffolk County judge sentenced Thomas Bernagozzi, a retired Bay Shore elementary school teacher, to 33 1/3 to 50 years in state prison after prosecutors said he spent decades abusing children who should have been protected in school.

Bernagozzi, 77, of Babylon, was convicted of course of sexual conduct against a child in the first degree, sodomy in the first degree, and three counts of possessing a sexual performance by a child. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office said the case involved two former students whom he sexually abused, along with sexually explicit images of a former student. News 12 Long Island reported that the abuse began when the victims were 4 and 8 years old.

The sentence lands after a career that put Bernagozzi in Bay Shore elementary schools for about 30 years, giving him repeated access to young children inside a system that, civil jurors later found, failed to respond appropriately to warnings about him. Prosecutors described him as one of the most prolific child predators Suffolk County has ever seen, a label that reflects both the scale of the abuse and the length of time it went unchecked.

The district attorney’s office said survivors came forward to help hold him accountable. Bernagozzi’s lawyer said he intends to appeal and denied the allegations. The case now stands as both a criminal conviction and a warning about how long abuse can continue when adults, schools and other gatekeepers do not stop it early enough.

The fallout has already reached the Bay Shore Union Free School District. A Suffolk County jury previously found the district negligent for ignoring allegations against Bernagozzi and awarded a former student $25 million in damages, although later court action sought to reduce or retry that award. For Bay Shore families, the verdict underscored a central failure in this case: a teacher was allowed to keep his access to children even as accusations built around him.