Another former student sues N. Kingstown over 'fat testing' scandal. What to know.
A third former North Kingstown student and his parents are suing the town and current and former school officials for their “reckless and callous indifference” toward the so-called “naked fat testing” program conducted on students for decades by former coach Aaron Thomas.
The new complaint, filed this week in Superior Court, cites two independent investigations conducted for town officials and a third by the U.S. attorney's office that all found a broad lack of oversight of Thomas and variously condemned his behavior with students.
Why it matters:
Thomas is currently facing charges of second-degree child molestation and second-degree sexual assault. A recent motion to have the charges dismissed was denied by the judge, clearing the way for the case to move forward.
Thomas has pleaded innocent to the charges. His lawyer John E. MacDonald has said that while Thomas’ actions were “clearly questionable” as he performed his body fat composition tests on student athletes, they didn’t rise to the level of criminality.
Breaking down the new lawsuit:
The new suit asks for a jury trial and damages, noting the defendant, identified as Joe Doe 22 – who is now 21 years old – suffered “permanent emotional and psychological injury” due to the defendants’ “negligence in the performance of their professional duties as teachers, administrators and educators."
In the case of John Doe 22, the suit alleges Thomas repeatedly performed illegitimate “puberty” tests on him through his junior year as well, where Thomas would press his fingers around the boy’s genital area.
The boy’s “embarrassment and shame about the foregoing was such that he could not disclose these events to his parents or his sibling for years,” says the suit.
The new lawsuit, filed by lawyer Tim Conlon, who is representing two other former students in similar cases, contends school officials repeatedly ignored and essentially buried complaints about Thomas’ behavior.
"Thomas’ inappropriate and unprofessional conduct continued without any meaningful supervision, and indeed with the tacit approval of the administration for the two decades of his employment," the suit says.
Even after the former basketball coach left the high school, the defendants "including the School Committee members sitting at the time, delayed reporting Thomas’ behavior to the Rhode Island Department of Education, which was informed of Thomas’ conduct months after his suspension, and well after Thomas’ termination."
The Aaron Thomas case:
Thomas resigned in 2021 as he was about to be fired by the North Kingstown School Committee. But the scandal didn’t break into the open until news reports that he had taken another job at a nearby school.
Former students told investigators that Thomas conducted his body composition test alone with the students and routinely began the procedure by asking them if they were “shy or not shy.”
If they answered "not shy," they stripped naked and Thomas would feel around their genital areas with calipers performing skin measurements.
Thomas allegedly continued doing the tests even after school officials told him to stop and purchased a machine in 2018 that eliminated the need for him to touch the students.
This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Aaron Thomas 'fat testing' spawns a third lawsuit from former student
