By:Scott Brinton
Konezny, a Kennedy senior at the time of the assault, remembers getting punched at least eight times before he blacked out in the driver's seat of his car, which was parked in Kennedy's lot. He believes the assailants kept hitting him even after he lost consciousness.
No doubt, the attack was terrifying. Konezny could neither escape nor fight back. His seatbelt held him down.
Feb. 28 will be two years to the day since between five and 10 of Konezny's fellow Kennedy students beat him, he says, "nearly to death."
The attack occurred at around 9:30 p.m., just after Kennedy's annual Class Night, an evening of fun and games that Konezny had attended for the first time as a senior. The air was cold that night. Streetlights illuminated the Kennedy parking lot. According to Konezny, teachers stood in a group by the high school's entrance, while dozens of students milled about in the lot, chatting among themselves before heading home or to a local diner to hang out.
Suddenly, one student yelled out that a bunch of kids were beating Konezny. According to Konezny's Bellmore attorney, Eric Sachs, the student screamed more than once to catch teachers' attention.
Nassau County Legislator David Denenberg (D-Merrick) has followed the case and at times acted as an advocate for the Konezny family. He said the county wanted to award a citation to the student who intervened, but he declined the honor, and later he would not tell authorities what he saw. Konezny believes the young man was too frightened to talk.
A Kennedy administrator reportedly sent home the many students who had gathered near Konezny's car, including the alleged perpetrators. Konezny awoke a short while later, with Kennedy guidance counselors or teachers or both pressing ice packs to his battered face and a woman, possibly the school nurse, passing smelling salts under his bloodied nose to revive him. Police and Konezny's mother, Lorette, arrived sometime after the attack, but it's unclear exactly when.
With his head and upper body riddled with bruises, Konezny was semi-lucid as he was rushed by ambulance to Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, where he was released later that night.
Konezny, now 21, is suing the Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District, two of its administrators, one of his assailants and the assailant's parents in New York State Supreme Court for $10 million. Konezny, of Bellmore, said he isn't looking to get rich, but he needs money to pay his medical bills and other related expenses. He claims the Central District failed to provide adequate security in the parking lot.
Six months after the beating, three of Konezny's classmates were arrested and charged with the crime. Konezny said there were more perpetrators, but he couldn't identify them.
According to Sachs, all three alleged assailants were granted what's called "youthful offender status," meaning that under the law they would be treated as juveniles. Their records -- and their identities -- were sealed from the public. None served jail time, Sachs said.
Denenberg said the three offenders were likely 17 years old at the time, and under New York State Law, a 17-year-old can be charged as an adult or a juvenile. In deciding how to charge them, the Nassau County District Attorney's Office used its "prosecutorial discretion," Denenberg was told by officials there.
Calls to the Nassau County Police Department and District Attorney's Office last week turned up no files on the three alleged perpetrators. Rick Hinshaw, the DA's spokesman, said that's because they were treated as juveniles, or charges against them might have been dropped. "It's a sealed file. That's all I can tell you," said Hinshaw.
Sachs said all three pleaded to a violation, roughly the equivalent of a parking infraction. Two of the assailants, Sachs said, have paid out-of-court settlements to Konezny. The third alleged assailant, however, will not settle.
Sachs said he would not offer information about the two alleged assailants who settled because of an agreement Konezny has with them. The third is named in Konezny's lawsuit, but the Herald is not identifying him here so as not to single him out for the crime.
Subhed: Little to no support
Over the past six months, Konezny has watched carefully as the Mepham High School football sex-abuse case has unfolded, with many people from throughout Bellmore-Merrick fighting last fall to have the three assailants in that case tried as adults. Konezny also recognizes the outpouring of support the three ninth-grade Mepham victims have received. But after he was beaten, he said, "Nobody was in support of me. I was a nobody."
A brief scuffle between Konezny and another Kennedy student during Class Night apparently led to the assault. At the event, for which students take part in kids' games like Twinkie-eating contests and tug-of-war matches, another senior grabbed Konezny in the chest in full view of 400 people in the gym.
Konezny, who was then 19, was overweight because of medication he took to control Tourette's syndrome, which causes uncontrollable tics and often inappropriate utterances. Konezny was heavy enough that he had developed breasts. Having a classmate grope him in public was thus terribly humiliating for the already self-conscious teenager.
Konezny put the young man in a headlock. Students yelled, "Fight! Fight!" Teachers hurried over and separated the two, who were taken to separate halls outside the gym and spoken to.
After Class Night, Konezny was supposed to take a couple of friends to a Bellmore diner for a meal, but because he was detained, they went ahead without him. Then, when Konezny got into his car, the assailants piled in behind him and started throwing punches. According to Konezny's mother, the young man who fondled him was the first to strike her son.
The next six months were an awful blur for Konezny. A week after the beating, he had his nose reconstructed by a Garden City plastic surgeon. On many mornings he felt too much pain to get out of bed. Other days he was afraid to go to school, because the three alleged assailants were allowed to continue attending classes.
Lorette Konezny, a single mother and a children's book publisher with an office in Merrick, would not allow her son to be cross-examined without an attorney during a superintendent's hearing to suspend the three alleged assailants. They thus could not be removed from school, according to education law, Lorette said Central District officials told her.
Konezny asked that a teacher or administrator escort him between classes. District officials said that wasn't possible, Lorette Konezny said. A friend was allowed to be late to classes so he could walk with Scott, but after two days, the young man said he couldn't escort him anymore. Scott didn't say why.
Later that spring, Konezny had a mastectomy to reduce the size of his breasts. It was a horrifying ordeal, he said. After the painful operation, Konezny had a giant bandage strapped across his upper body and two bulbous containers under his shirt to catch fluid that was draining from wounds on each side of his chest.
Konezny missed so much school that he couldn't graduate with his class that June. He instead had to go to summer school to make up work, and graduated in August. He was angry. He said school officials didn't inform him that he wouldn't graduate on time until May, shortly after he filed a notice of intent to sue the school district. Meanwhile, the three alleged perpetrators all graduated in June.
Konezny said he was most troubled by the silence. Many of his fellow students, even friends, ignored him. "Nobody talked about it," he said. "There were a couple of kids who wanted to know how I felt." The Kennedy choir, which Konezny belonged to, made him a get-well card.
Then word got out that he planned to sue the school district. Afterward, he said, some students ridiculed him because, they said, his suit would drive up property taxes.
Now, Konezny said, "Just remembering it, thinking about it, is very taxing."
Lorette Konezny said of the Mepham sex-abuse case, "It's good to see there are students and other parents who are supporting the victims and not the attackers."
Subhed: Konezny, a warning sign?
Scott and Lorette Konezny and Sachs all say they believe the Mepham attacks were avoidable. They contend that Bellmore-Merrick school officials should have seen Scott's beating as a warning sign that security had to be stepped up throughout the district.
Sachs, who grew up in North Bellmore and graduated from Mepham High in 1977, also believes the Nassau County District Attorney's Office should have charged the alleged Kennedy assailants as adults. "Why weren't these kids arrested on a felony or a gang assault?" he said. "What was the message that was sent? You can pretty much get away with anything in school."
Konezny said his physical wounds have mostly healed, but he has permanent nerve damage in his cheeks and at the tip of his nose. And he still feels the pain of the attacks as though they happened yesterday.
He's currently studying at Suffolk Community College to become a veterinary technician, and he works part-time at a South Shore veterinary clinic. "I'm getting better," Konezny said. "I feel a lot better about myself. I'm not sure I'll ever be completely better."
Sachs said he hopes to settle the Konezny case, but he notes that he and his client are prepared to go to court if they have to. Bellmore-Merrick Central School District officials declined to comment about the case. Kate Collins, the district's spokeswoman, said that district officials do not comment about ongoing litigation as a matter of policy.
