Holmdel Man Files $50M Sex Abuse Lawsuit, Names Former Teacher

HOLMDEL, NJ — A Holmdel man is suing the Middletown school district alleging underage sex abuse by one of its teachers decades ago.

The 40-year-old filed a lawsuit on Nov. 15.

The man says that between the years of 1995 -1997, Sherry Diodato, a former Language Arts teacher at Thompson Middle School, befriended him, groomed him and began a sexual relationship with him. Diodato is currently 59.

This started when he was 13 and lasted until he was 16, per the lawsuit. The teacher was in her early 30s at the time.

Diodato retired from the Middletown school district in 2018, but she still lives locally in the area, in Atlantic Highlands. Diodato declined to comment to an Asbury Park Press reporter who contacted her at her home.

The plaintiff said the inappropriate relationship with his teacher began in the winter of 1995 when he was a middle school student at Thompson Middle School. Diodato was his eighth-grade Language Arts teacher; she then went by her maiden name of Farwell.

He was 13; she was 32.

In class, he said she would touch different areas of his body, such as his knees and made gestures and/or comments to the student, expressing the sentiment that she viewed him as "special."

When he was in the eighth grade, the teacher suggested to the pupil that he come to her Atlantic Highlands home after school to go over class material. These private, after-school interactions initially began under the guise of "tutoring," and were encouraged by Blake's parents, who viewed her interest in Blake as a positive academic mentoring relationship.

However, at her home the two would sit "side-by-side on her couch in the upstairs multi-purpose room, talking, smoking cigarettes that she provided, and listening to music," read the lawsuit.

The plaintiff said as a result of the "extensive grooming," he developed romantic feelings for his teacher and the two kissed and groped each other. This continued for a month, he said, at her home or in parks and all when his teacher's then-fiancé, Dr. Diodato, was not at home.

He said near the end of his eighth-grade year, it progressed to sexual intercourse and the two would have sex approximately twice a week. Diodato said she wanted to adopt the teen and have him join her family as an adopted or surrogate child, all while their sexual relationship was ongoing, according to the lawsuit. She would even take him to her fiancé's softball games or to dinner with her fiancé and his biological daughter, and encourage him to talk to her fiancé and develop a friendship with him.

Subscribe to Patch: https://patch.com/subscribe

Diodato also told him early in the relationship that if anyone ever found out what they were doing, "she would get in trouble."

"In high school, [plaintiff] met girls his age and eventually started dating them. [Plaintiff] stopped calling Sherry after that and the sexual abuse stopped," read the lawsuit.

For years, he said he never told anyone about the sexual abuse "because he felt complicit and responsible for the sexual abuse, and because he feared Sherry would get in trouble. When [plaintiff] ultimately told his parents when he was in high school, [plaintiff] threatened to harm himself if his parents reported her. At the time, [he] felt that he loved Sherry Farwell and believed he would rather harm himself than have Ms. Farwell (by then Ms. Diodato) get in trouble."

The plaintiff is seeking $50 million in damages from the Middletown school district. Diodato has never been criminally charged, according to the Asbury Park Press.

Reporting by Carly Baldwin/Middletown Patch