Education

Charge: Female High School Basketball Coaches Banged Underage Students For Years

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Since 2006, at least two female employees at Moore Catholic High School in the New York City borough of Staten Island have been accused of having sex with underage students.

In addition, the athletic director and chief operating officer at the 450-student school — founded by nuns in 1962 — faces a civil complaint for attempting to seduce, failing to seduce and then sacking an administrator.

The woman at the center of this sordid tale is Megan Mahoney, a former assistant girls’ basketball coach, gym teacher and assistant athletic director at Moore Catholic High, the New York Post reports.

The New York Police Department is currently investigating allegations that Mahoney, 25, engaged in a months-long sexual relationship with a 16-year-old male student.

The unidentified student told the Post that Mahoney’s initial pick-up line involved an overture to provide him with one-on-one basketball coaching.

Subsequently, the student said, Moore would pick him up, drive him to some isolated spot for sex.

“We would just drive around and [do it] in the car,” he explained to a Post reporter.

“We were never boyfriend-girlfriend,” the student added. “It was cool. I knew it wasn’t going anywhere. I told my best friend and like three kids.”

Those four or so people responded by saying things like “how awesome” and “good job,” the teenager noted.

The student’s parents said they spotted the illicit lovebirds together but assumed Mahoney was a high school student.

“She looks young,” the kid’s father told the Post. “You’d never know.”

The relationship faced a serious test in January when the student’s enraged ex-girlfriend followed the pair at a pizza joint. She called 911. Then, the cops showed up.

The quick-thinking 16-year-old male told police he was with his cousin.

Mahoney, a basketball star during her career at Wagner College on Staten Island, has denied the allegations that she had sex with the student.

A handful of unnamed sources — all affiliated in some way with Moore Catholic — say that Richard Postiglione, the school’s athletic director, has attempted to sweep a number of allegations of teacher-student sex under the rug for years. Those allegations include a charge that Mahoney had sex with a second student in 2012 and claims that another female basketball coach had sex with a female student.

“Richie knew all about it,” a source told the Post. “There was notorious gossip all over the school. These boys didn’t keep quiet.”

A second source has maintained that both the principal and the school board chairman also knew about the teacher-sex issues.

Instead of contacting police or the student’s parents, sources said, Postiglione discussed the matter with Mahoney and ordered her to stop having sex with any underage students.

After that, Mahoney resigned.

According to the student and his mother, employees of the $8,000-a-year school then retaliated against the student.

“They wanted to get rid of my son, get him out of the school,” his mother charged, according to the Post.

Amazingly, the mother claimed, someone at Moore Catholic High even filed a complaint with a local services agency alleging that she and her husband were unfit parents.

Postiglione also faces other troubles. The married, 57-year-old school official allegedly tried — in his way — to cajole a former school official, Sabrina Panfilo, to have sex with him. In a complaint, Panfilo, who says she was fired, alleges that Postiglione fondled her buttocks and wanted her to sit in his lap. He declared she had “a dancer’s body,” Panfilo claims. He said he was in love with her and that they were “soul mates.”

Once, Panfilo alleges, Postiglione bluntly said, “Let’s have an affair.” The complaint says the athletic director and Catholic school chief operating officer also suggested that Mahoney could take care of Panfilo’s infant son while they had a tryst.

Postiglione was also charged with reckless driving in 2007 for reckless driving and refused a breathalyzer test, which led to a 210-day suspension of his driver’s license.

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