Thunberg noted that Thomas had been willing to plead to misdemeanor charges before the trial, and the plaintiff’s lawyers were willing to accept, but the attorney general’s office wanted to pursue the trial. Thomas ended up with the same outcome after all.
For more than two decades, Thomas was known among many male high school student-athletes for his self-designed tests, conducted alone in his office or a closet, where he prefaced his exams with “Are you shy or not shy?”
It was the phrase he used to invite the boys to take off their underwear, so he could use his hands and calipers to pinch and probe around their groins, inner thighs, and the muscles leading to their genitals.
A jury had acquitted Thomas in May of felony charges of second-degree child molestation and second-degree sexual assault after a lengthy trial with testimony from 25 witnesses, including Thomas, and more than 170 exhibits.
Instead, the jurors found the former coach guilty of the misdemeanor charges, which carried up to a year in prison. But Thomas would not have to register as a sex offender and would not be barred from teaching.
Three of the former athletes who testified during the trial gave statements to the court; one in person and two in letters that Healy read to the court.
They were dismayed by the jury’s decision to acquit Thomas. “There is anger, but it pales in comparison to how exhausted I am,” one wrote to the court. “In the bluntest terms, the legal system failed me.”
“I hope and pray that my voice encourages others to speak out,” another former athlete wrote. “I trusted adults, I trusted my teachers, I trusted Aaron Thomas … only to be duped by someone who created ways to touch me.”
The former athlete who was 13 when Thomas began testing him in the nude stood before the judge and urged her to sentence his former coach. The outcry over the “naked fat tests” of hundreds of North Kingstown’s boys had torn the community apart, he said.
“There is real primal anger in our community,” he told the judge. “I beg you to sub him out of society. I beg you to give North Kingstown the grace. I beg you to give our community time and distance from this man. I beg you to give that to our family.”
However, Thomas and his lawyers maintained that there was no sexual intent and that Thomas designed the “body composition tests” to create better athletes. The former student athletes also testified that there was no sexual talk during the exams.
A body-composition expert said there was no value to Thomas’ tests and no reason for anyone to be naked.
Thomas had voluntarily suspended his state educator certifications during the criminal investigation and trial. MacDonald said Thomas will not teach again.
Outside the courthouse, MacDonald and lawyer John Calcagni, who also represented Thomas, thanked the judge and jury for their decision and maintained that the tests were not sexual.
Thomas, 58, lost his job in early 2021 after former student-athletes told school administrators he had performed private “naked fat tests” on them. The accusations became public in October 2021, after Thomas was hired to teach at Monsignor Clarke, a Catholic school in South Kingstown. He was fired shortly after.
That led to revelations that school officials were told in June 2021 that Thomas was a “potential threat and liability” according to an investigative report. Subsequent investigations for the school committee in March 2022 and the town in June 2022 were scathing, finding school officials had been blind to Thomas’s actions — and that Thomas had lied about what he was doing.
Thomas was charged in July 2022 with second-degree child molestation, based on a player who alleged he was tested starting when he was 13, in 2001 to early 2002; and second-degree sexual assault, from a player who was tested between September 2019 and June 30, 2020.
Thomas admitted that 600 teenage boys playing sports at North Kingstown had gone through his self-designed body-fat tests over 28 years.
He faces filed civil lawsuits from some former student-athletes.