On October 14, 2025, partner John Baldante was featured in the Rolling Stone article “This Small Town Protected A Predator. Now His Survivors Are Fighting Back.” The article discusses Baldante & Rubenstein’s case against John Anagnosti, also known as Mr. A, an elementary school teacher in Leonia, New Jersey, who sexually abused his students for nearly 15 years.
While the case is ongoing, John Baldante represented Joe and Michael Gonzales, both of whom were abused by Mr. A. Michael Gonzales stated that Mr. A molested him roughly 500 times, a claim that was used in his lawsuit against the Leonia Board of Education. Joe Gonzales said that the abuse nearly ruined his life. “I became a bully, I ruined friendships,” he explained.
In 1981, an elementary school student publicly spoke out about being molested by Mr. A, who pleaded guilty and resigned–but retracted his plea and resignation several months later. The case was then moved to the state Superior Court in 1982, when Mr. A was finally convicted of sexual assault (but only received three years of probation and a $25 fine). The article stresses that many local parents in the town of Leonia, New Jersey, fought against Mr. A’s conviction, even raising $7,500 for his defense.
Though Mr. A died in 2020, New Jersey changed its statute of limitations for child sexual abuse survivors in 2019, allowing Joe and Michael Gonzales an opportunity to tell their stories and to sue the Leonia Township Board of Education. “When you sit down with these victims and they start to tell their story, oftentimes, we’re the first person they’ve ever spoken to about it,” Baldante explained in the article.
Baldante & Rubenstein was able to help the brothers recoup a combined $6 million in separate settlements in 2024 and expects many more survivors to come forward. “There’s no question that there are undoubtedly hundreds [of other survivors],” Baldante stated. “Mr. Anagnosti was the Pied Piper [of Leonia Township]. In the context of cases against a single perpetrator within a public school Board of Education, the claims against Mr. A are evolving into one of the largest clusters of claims [in New Jersey].”
“The Leonia school district dismissed the reports of sexual abuse made by students and tried to sweep Anagnosti’s predatory conduct under the carpet,” Baldante said. “Unfortunately, these efforts by Leonia only compounded the problem.”
To read the Rolling Stone article, please click on the following link. If you have any information pertaining to Mr. A, please reach out to John Baldante at baldante@brattorneys.com.