Bay Shore art teacher in student sex abuse lawsuit is arrested for stalking her

John Kennedy, a Bay Shore High School art teacher accused of sexually abusing a student in a Child Victims Act lawsuit against his school district, was arrested Sept. 3 and charged with stalking that same former student, Suffolk County police said.

Days earlier, the district moved to make Kennedy personally pay any damages she recovers and to force him to return the salary he earned while he was allegedly abusing her, court documents show.

Kennedy, 53, was arrested at his home on Moriches Road in St. James at 4:10 p.m., hours after the 18-year-old girl reported he had followed her that morning from her house to Selden, the Suffolk County Police Department said in a statement. Police were called around 10:40 a.m.

A Sixth Precinct Crime Unit investigation found Kennedy had a sexual relationship with the student when she was a 17-year-old senior last year and that he drove past her house repeatedly over several weeks, the department said. He was charged with stalking in the fourth degree, held overnight and arraigned Sept. 4 at First District Court in Central Islip.

The woman sued the Bay Shore Union Free School District in July. Urgent Matter is withholding her name because she is an alleged victim of sexual abuse and stalking.

Her complaint, filed in state Supreme Court in Suffolk County, says Kennedy groomed and repeatedly sexually abused her in his classroom at Bay Shore High School between June and October 2025, when she was 17. It does not name Kennedy as a defendant, instead seeking to hold the district liable for negligently hiring, retaining and supervising him.

The complaint says the district knew or should have known about Kennedy’s conduct and failed to act. It says a TikTok video of Kennedy drew student comments that he flirted with female students, and district employees told the student who posted it to take it down.

The district received several anonymous written complaints about Kennedy’s conduct with female students, and human resources representative Christina Cope confronted him but no meaningful action followed, the complaint says.

Principal Stephen Gordon and guidance counselor Michelle Plett met with the woman and her mother about Kennedy’s behavior, the complaint says, but the district allegedly continued to allow him access to her.

The district denies the allegations. In an Aug. 20 answer, it says the accusations are uncorroborated and unsubstantiated and that its investigation has been hampered by the girl’s refusal to cooperate.

The district also says it placed Kennedy on administrative leave and barred him from its property in October 2025. Superintendent Steven Maloney told the Bay Shore-Brightwaters community in a Sept. 3 letter that the employee arrested that day had been on leave since October 2025 and that the alleged incidents did not occur on district property.

On Aug. 26, the district brought Kennedy into the case as a third-party defendant. It asks the court to order him to indemnify it for any damages and to forfeit his pay under New York’s faithless servant doctrine, which lets an employer reclaim compensation paid to a disloyal employee. The filing was entered on the docket Sept. 1, two days before the arrest.

Kennedy has taught art at Bay Shore since September 2000, the district’s third-party complaint says. He was paid $154,699 by the district in 2025, state payroll records in the Empire Center’s SeeThroughNY database show.

Detectives asked anyone with information, or who believes they were victimized by Kennedy, to call the Sixth Precinct Crime Unit at 631-854-8626.

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