Secretly recorded call is key evidence in child sexual abuse suit against former Amherst teacher

A former Amherst teacher accused in lawsuits of sexually assaulting four middle school girls admitted in a phone call secretly recorded in 1996 that he had sex with a 13-year-old student in his classroom decades before, according to court filings.

Thomas R. Morse Jr., now 91 and long retired, was never prosecuted.

The allegations dating to the mid-1960s are at the center of three lawsuits that could leave the Amherst Central School District facing substantial additional costs.

The district and its insurers already have settled six other abuse lawsuits for more than $2 million – five involving former Amherst High School assistant principal Jack Koch and one involving former elementary school teacher Trent Hariaczyi. The district is paying about $1.5 million out of pocket, though some settlements obtained by The Buffalo News through a Freedom of Information Law request do not disclose the amount covered by insurance.

How much more the district may have to pay could hinge on a motion asking Erie County State Supreme Court Justice Deborah Chimes to dismiss the three cases involving Morse. Chimes is scheduled to hear arguments today.

At issue is whether there is enough admissible evidence that the district knew or should have known Morse posed a risk of sexual abuse.

Amherst Schools Superintendent Anthony J. Panella said in a statement that the district is trying to respond appropriately to historical allegations that are “deeply troubling” while balancing the effect on current student programming and the “overall financial burden these cases place on today’s taxpayers.”

Panella said the district has no insurance coverage for the Morse cases despite an “extensive investigation” of historical policies that included an insurance archaeologist. The district would therefore be responsible for any verdicts or settlements.

Morse is accused of taking girls into a small room inside his classroom for sex on an exercise mat, and of sexually assaulting girls in his vehicle and at a horse-riding stable in Lockport.

Three plaintiffs are identified in court papers as PB-80 DOE, PB-81 DOE and PB-82 DOE. A fourth woman, who is not suing, testified that Morse molested her in 1965 and 1966, when she was in seventh grade.

District lawyers argue the district had no reason at the time to know Morse may have been abusing children. The allegations did not surface publicly until after he retired. An attorney for the plaintiffs says district officials ignored warning signs.

If the district wins dismissal, it would avoid damages in the three cases. If the lawsuits proceed, it could face additional settlements or verdicts.

Morse has denied the allegations in legal filings.

The allegations

Four women, including three plaintiffs, offered disturbing accounts of abuse, much of it alleged to have happened in Morse’s classroom during the school day:

A 73-year-old woman who is not suing the district or Morse testified that memories of the abuse resurfaced during a therapy retreat in Toronto in the early 1990s.

She recalled lying unclothed on the floor of an enclosed room in Morse’s classroom with Morse on top of her. She could not remember whether they had intercourse but said she was forced to perform oral sex. She also recalled being abused in Morse’s car.

PB-80 DOE, 66, said Morse fondled her repeatedly in his classroom and sexually assaulted her during a horseback club outing in 1973, when she was 13.

While driving her home, she said, Morse pulled over, took off his pants and began kissing her and removing her pants. She resisted and asked him to stop. “Why are you doing this?” she recalled asking him.

“His response was, ‘Because you’re beautiful, I thought this was what you wanted, just relax, this is what we’re going to do, this is what you want to do,’” the woman testified.

“It was disgusting,” she said. “I thought I was going to die.”

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PB-81 DOE, 67, said an “overly friendly” Morse groomed her with compliments when she was an eighth grader in his English class. She said the attention progressed to kissing and fondling during study hall.

By winter, she said, Morse was taking her into a side room of his classroom, where he laid out a sheet on a mat. She said he raped her there at least 16 times during the school year.

PB-81 DOE kept a diary in which she wrote only that she “saw Mr. Morse today,” which she later testified was code for the abuse. After graduating from high school in 1977, she said she confronted Morse and told him he had ruined her life.

“He said, ‘Good luck in college,’” she recalled.

PB-82 DOE, 72, also described a small room within Morse’s classroom where she said he had intercourse and oral sex with her when she was 13. She said Morse flattered her and told her he wanted to be her boyfriend during rides to horseback outings in Lockport. She said he also abused her in his van after driving onto secluded dirt roads.

Morse was never violent, she said, but warned her not to tell anyone.

“He would say that, you know, I could hurt his family, he could go to jail,” she said.

After the abuse ended, PB-82 DOE said Morse wrote her love letters, which she threw away, and later visited her at a stable where she was working, hoping to “start things up.”

“And I said absolutely not and he left.”

Secretly recorded phone call

In December 1996, PB-81 DOE called Morse and asked whether he remembered taking bed sheets from a filing cabinet and having sex with her in a back room of his classroom during study hall, according to a transcript filed in court.

Morse said he remembered and asked to meet in person rather than discuss it by phone. She pressed him, asking whether he had sought treatment so he would not hurt other girls.

“I just don’t know how it happened. Seemed like you and I were mutually attracted to one another, and it happened so fast,” Morse said.

“I was 13 years old,” she responded.

“I know. I know,” Morse said. “And I’m very sorry about it. I just don’t know. I mean, my head is just, you came in my room one day and, god, this is very difficult.”

He also told her he had gone to counseling.

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Morse did not know the call was being made from the Erie County District Attorney’s Office, where an assistant district attorney was listening. By then, the statute of limitations for prosecution had expired and Morse had retired.

The recording was sent to the state Education Department, which investigated and required Morse to surrender his teaching license. Canisius College, where he was teaching after retiring from Amherst schools, also ended his employment, according to court records.

In a 2024 deposition, Morse said he did not remember the call and denied having sexual contact with any of the women suing him. He blamed the loss of his teaching license on poor legal representation.

New York’s Child Victims Act later opened a two-year window, from 2019 to 2021, allowing people whose childhood sexual abuse claims were time-barred to file civil lawsuits.

Three decades after the call, the recording has become a key piece of evidence in the three cases involving Morse.

What did the district know?

A lawyer for the three plaintiffs argues there is ample evidence the district knew or should have known something was wrong with Morse.

PB-80 DOE told her older sister that Morse had sexually assaulted her while driving her home from a horseback-riding outing. The sister then told a middle school teacher, according to court papers.

Another teacher testified that Morse was openly “flirty” and “handsy” with female students, and that colleagues teased him about his “harem.” The district also received an anonymous report that Morse had ridden a horse naked in front of students.

“The sheer number of sexual assaults Morse perpetrated on students during the school day, on school premises, and at school sponsored outings, is stunning,” attorney Diane Paolicelli wrote in opposing the district’s motion for summary judgment.

The district counters that behaviors now recognized as warning signs of sexual grooming were not understood the same way in the 1960s and 1970s.

Elizabeth L. Jeglich, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice psychology professor who has written extensively about sexual grooming, said in a report for the district that viewing such behavior decades later is “subject to hindsight bias.”

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She also concluded that the teacher’s response after hearing PB-80 DOE’s allegation from her sister was consistent with practices at the time. The teacher confronted PB-80 DOE, who denied the allegation and said her sister had lied, then questioned Morse, who also denied it, according to court records.

Jeglich noted that teachers were not yet mandatory reporters and school districts had received no state guidance on responding to sexual abuse allegations.

The district’s lawyer argues the plaintiffs are relying on hearsay and speculation to show the district should have known about Morse’s alleged abuse. None of the plaintiffs reported the abuse directly, and several teachers and administrators cited in the plaintiffs’ arguments are now dead.

“Plaintiff’s central theory is that the ‘sheer number’ of Morse’s victims alone sufficed to put the district on notice of his propensity,” attorney Thomas P. Kawalec wrote. “The law is otherwise. Notice requires prior similar conduct known to the district; abuse that no one reported, and that the district never learned of, cannot constitute actual or constructive notice.”

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