MILFORD — A one-time teacher of the year award-winner in Shelton allegedly took a teen he was mentoring on walks in the woods outside school and molested the boy, according to a warrant for his arrest.
The former educator, 77-year-old David Munson, was arrested last April on charges of first-degree sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor.
He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and his lawyer has vowed to take the case to trial. An arrest warrant in the case detailing the charges against Munson, who retired as a teacher in 1999, was made public Wednesday, Jan. 2, at Superior Court.
The sexual assaults allegedly occurred between September 2005 and August 2007, but did not come to light until October 2017, when a 25-year-old man complained anonymously to the Rape Crisis Center of Milford that he had been sexually assaulted in Shelton years before.
Shelton police Detective Sgt. Matthew Kunkel and Detective Richard Bango met with the man, who told them that when he was a 13-year-old student at Shelton Intermediate School, his mother was having health problems, which resulted in him not speaking to others.
So the school assigned him a mentor to meet with weekly — Munson, then a retired teacher. In September 2005, the man told police, Munson took him on a walk in the woods and walking rails across the street from the school and molested him.
The man estimated Munson molested him in the woods outside the school 18 times, until he stopped going to school altogether and was admitted to a psychiatric ward in 2007, where he was diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder, social phobia, and anxiety.
The man said he met with Munson years later two more times at local restaurants. On one of the occasions, he said Munson sat next to him in a booth and grabbed him under the table several times, after which the man pushed Munson’s hands away.
He also showed police several emails from Munson including “an emoji symbol of a man blowing a heart kiss.”
During an interview with police, the warrant says Munson denied molesting the boy or sending him e-mails with suggestive emojis in them.
The warrant says Munson told police he’d be willing to take a polygraph test, but when detectives tried to set up an appointment for later that month, his lawyer declined on his behalf. Detectives also spoke with three other students mentored by Munson, none of whom alleged he touched them inappropriately.
Munson appeared in Superior Court Wednesday for the sixth time, where prosecutor Amy Bepko asked Judge Peter Brown to continue the case so she could provide discovery materials to Munson’s lawyer and consult with another prosecutor who had been handling the matter.
Munson, who has posted a $100,000 bond in the case, is scheduled to return to court Feb. 6.