Report: North Kingstown officials violated duty to protect children in 'fat testing' scandal

NORTH KINGSTOWN — For years, the “blind allegiance” and trust that school administrators showed Aaron Thomas allowed the boys basketball coach “to evade scrutiny of his inappropriate conduct,” an investigation has found.

As a consequence, those administrators breached their duty to protect the students in their care as Thomas continued conducting, unchecked, naked “fat testing” on students — even after he was told to stop in 2017 and again in 2018, says lawyer Matthew Oliverio.

On Monday night Oliverio released to the School Committee the results of his latest report on the controversy that has gripped the department for a year.

"Mr. Thomas continued fat testing students alone in his office in the same manner he had for years, despite being directed in September 2018 to discontinue the practice," Oliverio wrote. "This account illustrates the complete lack of oversight over the inappropriate conduct of Mr. Thomas."

Oliverio's report focuses much criticism on Supt. Philip Auger, who resigned last week, and former high school principal Denise Mancieri, now the district’s assistant superintendent. She has announced she is retiring at the end of the school year.

Neither Auger nor Mancieri, when told of Thomas’s actions, did proper monitoring to assure that naked testing of athletes stopped, or talked to students or their families, Oliverio said.

Instead, Auger “accepted Mr. Thomas’ word that no student was ever naked or inappropriately touched, because he trusted Mr. Thomas to tell the truth given his long, storied, and unblemished career and reputation within the school community," said Oliverio. "In other words, he turned a blind eye.”

Thomas would use skin calipers to perform various measurements on the body, including in the upper thigh area, under the genitalia. He has denied he ever conducted these tests while students were naked.

But in the first part of his report, released in December, Oliverio wrote, “at least five of the seven former students I was able to interview admitted that they were asked to remove their underwear 'if they were comfortable,' 'shy or not shy' to get 'a more accurate measurement.'”

Howie Hague, a wrestling coach and former athletic director at the high school, told Oliverio he was “taken aback” one day in 2017 when he passed by Thomas' office and saw him alone with a student. As Hague went by, Thomas shut the door.

The scene disturbed him enough that he raised it with then-athletic director Dick Fossa. Later the two spoke at a football game and Hague asked Fossa "if he ever addressed that situation and [Fossa] indicated Aaron Thomas was told to test the kids as a team.”

But Oliverio reported: “There is absolutely no evidence that this or any other ameliorative measure was implemented or monitored by [principal] Mancieri.”

“As the administrator in charge of everything that takes place in the high school, and consistent with her contractual and statutory obligations to protect the health, safety, and wellbeing of the students under her charge, she had a duty to confront her subordinate and inquire about his conduct.”

Following the 2017 incident, Fossa, who has since died, wrote to Thomas to say the School Department and town Booster Club had purchased a $5,000 “In-Body 270 Body Composition Analyzer." The machine “will allow students to step on a scale and the machine will print out and store information regarding weight, body fat and other relevant measurements.”

All measurements would be made in locker rooms with “two or more male coaches” present when male athletes were tested, Fossa said.

Oliverio said he found “no evidence that Mr. Fossa monitored Mr. Thomas for compliance with the new protocol or even followed up with Mr. Thomas. This is underscored by the fact that the fat testing surreptitiously continued beyond the new protocol.”

Oliverio said he found it “more troubling that the superintendent, given what he knew at the time, never approached Mr. Thomas about the issue again until it broke open in February 2021. The abject failure and neglect of monitoring and oversight over Mr. Thomas’ conduct after September 2018 by the superintendent can logically be considered neglect of duty.”

Meanwhile, said Oliverio, “Mr. Thomas lied and deviated from the instructions given to him.”

Thomas, who resigned last year prior to being fired, has not been charged with any crime.

His actions have sparked a number of investigations, including ongoing criminal investigations by the state attorney general and the North Kingstown police, a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Rhode Island, and internal reviews by the local School Committee and Town Council.

Speaking about the various allegations, Thomas' lawyer Timothy Dodd said: “At the appropriate time, through the pretrial discovery process, we expect to learn much more about what is true, what is unsubstantiated suspicion and what is obviously false.”

Oliverio based his findings on interviews with “various affected students,” parents, teachers, coaches and administrators, as well as a review of “electronic data” and the “unwillingness of others to cooperate.”

Among those who chose not to cooperate, Oliverio said, was former athletic director Keith Kenyon, who left the School Department around 2010. Kenyon is now principal at Nauset Regional Middle School in Orleans, Massachusetts.

In the 1990s, Kenyon began a performance testing program for athletes that used “statistics such as speed, strength, vertical leap, extension and the like to better condition athletes,” Oliverio said. “From all accounts, he was close to and familiar with Aaron Thomas, and it is evident that the fat testing program conducted by Mr. Thomas was an extension” of Kenyon’s performance program.

On Tuesday, Kenyon told The Journal: "I’ve fully, and without reservation, cooperated with each and every investigator and agency that has contacted me regarding this matter. And I will continue to do so whenever, and if ever, I am again contacted. Any statement to the contrary is simply untrue. Out of respect for the still open investigation I will make no further public comment."

Many school administrators were familiar with Thomas performing body-fat tests. But several told Oliverio that they were unaware Thomas performed the tests alone with students who were in various stages of undress.

Thomas “was very clever and discreet,” in how he conducted this testing, Oliverio said, and “deliberately concealed his conduct from those in a position of authority.”

Oliverio said he believed those administrators who said had they “suspected or known that Mr. Thomas was testing students alone, behind closed doors in a state of undress, they surely would have reported it to appropriate authorities.”

On Monday night, the School Committee unanimously appointed Michael Waterman, the district’s information technology director, interim superintendent.

Waterman, who taught middle school for 11 years and served three years as assistant principal at Wickford Middle School, said the community “needs support, and we need to heal together.”

Timothy Conlon, a lawyer representing several former high school students who first raised allegations of misconduct by Thomas last year, said Oliverio's report is confirmation “that what we suggested to the School Committee back in November — that these claims that the administration effectively dealt with this in 2018 — is not true.

“The 2018 interventions were woefully inadequate and now have been documented to be a complete failure,” Conlon said.

Email Tom Mooney at: tmooney@providencejournal.com

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: North Kingstown fat testing: Report will examine officials' actions