Alleged victim details teacher's 'tickling' sessions

[Liberalism In The News]

A Wilmington Area High School graduate described in court Monday
how her former music teacher would engage her in sessions — or
what they playfully called “rehearsals” — when he would tickle
her feet.

She said their meetings at times became like play acting, and he
would duct tape her leg to the wall and act like he was a spy.
She told about one time when she had bruises on her leg from it.

“That was one of his favorites,” she said.

She also said that sometimes, she could feel that he was aroused.

The woman, who is now 25 and married, said those activities
started when she was 16 years old and continued throughout her
junior and senior years through graduation while she was still
17. They also continued into her first year of college when she
turned 18, while she was attending Youngstown State University
and was in the college choir, and Priano was attending sessions
there.

The woman was testifying in court during a pre-trial hearing for
Jonathan Anthony ‘Jonny’ Priano, 36, the district’s former choir
and band director. He is facing 26 criminal charges — 10 counts
of institutional sexual assault, two counts of unlawful contact
with minors as sexual offenses, 12 counts of corruption of
minors, and two counts of endangering the welfare of children.

The pre-trial hearing was the result of a pretrial motion filed
by Priano’s Youngstown area defense attorney, Ross Teele Smith,
contesting whether there is enough evidence in the case to
proceed to trial on the charges, explained Lawrence County
Assistant District Attorney Jonathan Miller.

Following testimony from one of Priano’s accusers, the hearing
was continued to a later date to allow for more testimony.
Miller explained there are two other victims who will testify,
and that electronic evidence also will be presented at that
future hearing.

The case is being heard in the court of Common Pleas Judge John
W. Hodge.

The reported victim, questioned by Miller, related that she had
known Priano since she was in sixth grade when he was first
hired at Wilmington. When she joined the choir in ninth grade,
he was her middle school teacher and she saw him more frequently
in high school when she was in choir.

When she was a junior, they became “super close,” after a
classmate had died and they would send text messages, she told
the court. The night of the funeral they were exchanging texts
and “he had me go over to his apartment,” she said. She said he
sent her a text to meet him in his car, and when they were in
the backseat, he instructed her to take off her shoe. He lifted
up her leg into his lap and tickled the arch of her foot, she
said.

“It was kind of uncomfortable,” she said, adding that her foot
was close to his groin area. She said they hugged and she went
home.

Those encounters continued when he would invite her to his
apartment and they would watch movies and have food, she
explained. “He did more of the tickling in his apartment,” she
said, and it started to develop into a where they started
calling it “rehearsal.”

“He created different skits,” she said, and he used different
objects to tickle her. She explained that Priano would specify
what type of shoes she should wear, such as black flats or heels.

He would act out a tickling skit using a toothbrush, a feather,
his fingers and he’d record it, she said.

She said there were a few instances where he’d put his hand up
her shirt and touch the bottom part of her bra area or her
waistline.

“We always did something every time we went to his apartment,”
she said. She said there was never any sexual activity involved.

She testified the encounters also would happen during school
hours while Priano was teaching middle school choir and she was
in high school. She would spend her study halls at a desk inside
a closet in the middle school choir room, and he would go in
there and talk to her and engage in tickling, she said. At times
he would prop her against the door and move his hands up and
down her torso under her shirt, she said, adding that the closet
encounters happened two or three times a week.

She said there were a couple of occasions at band camp, too,
when he would meet and tickle her.

She said she was introverted in school and although she was
uncomfortable with what was going on, “I didn’t want to lose our
connection.

“I felt like he made me feel kind of guilty, like I was being
coerced,” she said.

The witness said she never told anyone about the encounters, not
her parents, nor any of her friends. She decided to open up
about it when she was contacted by another former student, who
said it also happened to her, “and we found two other victims.”

When one of the others went to the district attorney’s office
about it, a detective met with her and she told her story, she
said. “That’s how it started for me.”Under cross examination by
Smith, she said she had a crush on Priano but they had never
kissed.

The Lawrence County District Attorney’s office filed the charges
against Priano in June 2020, following an investigation launched
when one of the other victims stepped forward.

Miller said the district attorney’s office had offered Priano a
plea arrangement, the terms of which called for dropping all but
two of the charges including a felony. Had he accepted it, the
plea offer carried a sentence of 6 to 23 ½ months in the county
jail, followed by two years of probation and 15 years on the
Sexual Offender Registration and Notification Act, also known as
Megan’s Law.

Priano rejected the offer, and the D.A.’s office has since
withdrawn it because the victim took the witness stand.

Priano did not go to jail upon his arrest. He was freed after
posting bail on a $30,000 jail bond and is awaiting the next
hearing and jury trial.

dwac...@ncnewsonline.com

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details-teachers-tickling-sessions/article_5083729a-9efb-11ec-
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