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Teacher's trial centers on runaway
By ROBERT KING, Times Staff Writer BROOKSVILLE -- A Department of Education attorney said Monday that Joseph Gatti's interference with parental rights -- particularly his dealings with a runaway student -- is the agency's central complaint against the teacher.
In fact, Horton alleged that Gatti and his friend, Peady O'Connor, purposely took the boy to the home of another teacher -- a place where no one, including police, would look. What's more, Horton said Gatti acted in several other ways that defied the child's parents -- buying the boy a pager, taking him on an overnight trip to a theme park and disregarding a mother's request that he stay away from the boy. Horton, in his opening statement to administrative law judge Diane Cleavinger, said it was this type of interference with parental rights where Gatti showed "disregard" for the standards of the Florida teaching profession. Unlike Gatti's previous legal battles, allegations that Gatti sexually molested three students were relegated to the background Monday, the opening day of a new administrative hearing that could result in sanctions against Gatti's teaching license. Horton told the judge he would "rehash" the old sexual allegations against Gatti, which could not be proved in criminal courts in 1997 and were found simply not credible by a different administrative law judge in a 1998 reinstatement hearing. When he brought Gatti to the witness stand Monday, Horton ticked off the allegations of fondling, intercourse and display of Internet pornography one by one, accepted Gatti's flat denials and quickly moved on. Most of the allegations discussed Monday relate to Coy Burge, a former Powell Middle School student who was 14 and 15 years old at the time. The incidents were alleged to have taken place in 1995 and 1996. Gatti and his attorney, Mark Herdman, fought back Monday by contending that Gatti was merely answering the calls for help from a boy whose parents were prone to be violent and abusive. In his opening, Herdman said the complaints about Gatti's involvement came when the Burge family had ceded "care, control and custody" of the boy to Gatti's close friend, Peady O'Connor. For the time Coy Burge stayed with O'Connor, the Burges didn't bother to check on him, Herdman said. The things Gatti did for the boy, such as the purchase of the pager and the overnight trip to Universal Studios, were done with O'Connor's consent. Gatti said he shared a bed with his sister at the hotel that night and that Coy shared a bed with a pal he brought along. Gatti testified Monday that he was staying at the O'Connor home when Coy Burge called in the middle of the night to say he was alone at a highway convenience store after running away. "I just wasn't going to leave him at the convenience store," Gatti said of the decision to pick him up. Herdman argued in his opening that the boy was afraid of any option that would force him to go back home because he had been brutally beaten by his father two days earlier. At that point, Herdman said, the only people Coy Burge could turn to were Gatti and O'Connor. They arranged for Burge to stay that night with another of Gatti's friends, teacher Jill Winski. That was a place, Horton argued, that Gatti knew authorities wouldn't look. But Herdman said "Peady and Joe were doing the best they could" and that Gatti's good intentions were evident by the fact that he gave the boy the phone number to a domestic abuse hotline. The only other testimony Monday came from Pamela Quinette, a teacher at Springstead High's west campus at the time and Winski's roommate. Quinette said Coy Burge's stepmother, Deborah, said during a parent conference at Springstead West, where the boy attended school as a ninth-grader, that Gatti should stay away from the boy. Gatti said the stepmother, who had invited him to the meeting, never made that comment. Whatever the case, Gatti's attorney said the point is moot because Burge willingly allowed the boy to go to O'Connor's home that night.
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