David Fox was just eight years old when he rushed home from school, grabbed a razor blade and tried to carve up his own face.
Unsure of how to put an end to the sexual abuse he experienced at the hands of his elementary school gym teacher, Fox believed that self-mutilation was the only way to discourage his predator. “Maybe he thought I was pretty,” Fox told The Review this week in an exclusive interview. “So, I guess I tried to ugly myself up.”
Now 66, Fox lives in hospice care in California and admits that although those physical scars may have healed, the emotional wounds remain raw.
“I know now that everything in my life, it stems from a lack of self-esteem, a lack of self-confidence,” he said. “Ever since I was 11 years old, I just felt like a piece of garbage.”
After developing a drinking problem at the age of 13—Fox admits to consuming a pint of whiskey a day—he lists failed marriages, the inability to maintain sexual intimacy in relationships, and several lost professional opportunities as casualties of the mental anguish that plague him as a result of those childhood assaults, even if he didn’t always recognize the abuse as the cause of his fragile emotional state.
“I realized that I pushed people away as a result of the abuse, and I’m sad that I never had a good marriage, that I never had a relationship last more than a few months,” he said.
Fox believes that he took a significant step last November toward reclaiming some power over his childhood experiences when he filed a lawsuit under the Child Victims Act statute against his ex-gym teacher Edwin Gaynor, the Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Scarsdale and the Archdiocese of New York, alleging that Gaynor’s repeated sexual abuse was enabled by the negligence and indifference of church officials.
In the lawsuit, Fox claims he was molested by Gaynor from 1962 to 1965, while at IHM. Allegedly, Gaynor would often hold students out of gym activities and force them to sit on his lap in the bleachers during class. It was there, Fox said, that Gaynor often fondled and caressed students while the rest of the children played dodgeball or basketball on the gymnasium hardwood.
“You would see boys up there in the bleachers on his lap during class, but I didn’t really understand what was happening until it was my turn,” he said. “But all the kids knew about Gaynor, we had songs about what he did, nicknames for him; things that 10-year-olds are not supposed to know about.”
Fox soon became a favorite target of Gaynor’s, and was molested repeatedly over the next three years, both on IHM’s campus and in Gaynor’s Eastchester apartment, according to court documents.
These accusations against Gaynor marked the opening salvo in a deluge of ongoing lawsuits against the former teacher and basketball coach. Since Fox’s initial filing on Nov. 7, 2019, 20 more accusers have come forward with similar tales, painting a picture of alleged assault that occurred at three different Westchester catholic schools from 1959 to 1986.
Although he feels vindicated by other accusers speaking out against Gaynor, Fox told the Review that he believes that the number of accusers who have come forward likely pales in comparison to the actual amount of victims over the years.
“For every kid that filed lawsuits, there are probably 10 or 20 that didn’t,” he said. “It wasn’t just 21 kids, it was hundreds of kids.”
Like many who have come forward, Fox says that the emotional consequences of the abuse have been crippling, even after several decades.
As Fox mulled over the possibility of suing Gaynor and the Archdiocese, the profound sadness he felt as a result of his lost opportunities in life began to be replaced by another emotion: rage.
“This man destroyed me, he destroyed my life,” he said. “When I started to think about it, I realized I could have had a better life, and that’s when the anger started.”
Fox’s anger was not only directed at Gaynor, but also at the institutions which he believed allowed Gaynor’s sexual abuse to continue unchecked.
In 1967, approximately two years after the abuse had ended, Fox worked up the courage to alert IHM Monsignor John Caldwell, only to be met with disbelief and hostility.
“At first, he was like ‘How can I help you, my son?’ but as I told him what had happened, I could see his face getting redder and redder, like smoke was almost coming out of his ears,” Fox said. “Finally, he held up his hand to stop me, told me to get the hell out of his office, and had two guys come in to escort me out.”
Fox took his complaints to another priest, Father Walter Schroeder, and Gaynor would be dismissed from IHM shortly thereafter, only to land another coaching job at Holy Rosary School in Hawthorne. But by the 1980s, Gaynor was back at IHM, once again employed as a basketball and baseball coach, a fact that Fox only learned last December after another accuser came forward alleging that Gaynor had abused him at IHM between 1985 and 1986.
“It blew me away, I couldn’t believe it; how could [IHM] just forget what happened just 20 years earlier?” Fox said. “But back then, the church felt that it was untouchable.”
As the civil case against Gaynor, IHM and the Archdiocese moves forward—a recent court order determined that Gaynor, now 85, must be deposed by Aug. 7—Fox remains adamant that justice and closure—not financial gain—are his motives behind the lawsuit.
Fox told the Review that, should he win the case, he plans to donate any and all compensation he receives to the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.
“I would love to sit on that stand, look him in the face and tell him just how much he f**ked me up, but I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Fox said. “But seeing others come forward with similar stories, that validates me, it empowers me and it makes me feel like I wasn’t alone.”
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