‘Terrifying’: Teacher raped his student who just finished eighth grade, but Delaware authorities never notified the public

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Ten years ago, Delaware teacher Thomas Herlihy took a student to Atlantic City.

The girl had just completed eighth grade at Talley Middle School, where Herlihy, then 32, taught science and math. She later told authorities that Herlihy took her to famed chef Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant at Caesars Hotel & Casino, and that they drank alcohol, rented a hotel room and had sex for the first time.

Herlihy, whose father was a Delaware Superior Court judge until 2016, continued having sex with the girl for another 2 ½ years in Delaware while she was still a minor, court records state.

In 2019, however, the teenager’s boyfriend found explicit messages and images from Herlihy on her phone. His parents notified Brandywine School District, which contacted Delaware State Police, who later brought in the FBI and New Jersey authorities to assist their investigation.

She eventually told police and prosecutors in both states about her sexual relations with Herlihy, but only one state told the public about his crimes.

New Jersey charged Herlihy in 2020 with three counts of first-degree aggravated assault — that state’s most serious rape statute. He pleaded guilty to one count in 2021, and in January 2022 he was sentenced to seven years in prison.

In June 2022, a Delaware grand jury indicted Herlihy on 44 felony charges — third- and fourth-degree rape, first-degree sexual abuse of a child by a person in a position of trust, authority or supervision, and continuous sexual abuse of a child. The crimes occurred in his car, the basement of his home near New Castle, and in hotel rooms, the indictment said.

The office of Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings, which obtained the indictment, could have notified the public about the charges. In child rape cases, police or prosecutors usually issue a news release, in part to help determine if there are other victims.

Yet Jennings’ office made no announcement that a former teacher, then imprisoned in New Jersey, also had been charged in Delaware with rape and sexual abuse of a minor he once taught.

Nor was any public notification made in March of this year — nearly four years after the indictment — when Delaware dropped 43 of the 44 felony counts and let him plead guilty to one count of fourth-degree rape. A judge sentenced Herlihy to two years of probation, which will begin when New Jersey releases him from prison in the coming months.

Until now, with the publication of this story, Herlihy’s indictment and conviction has not been reported by Delaware media outlets. WHYY News recently learned about Herlihy’s charges and convictions in New Jersey and Delaware from a source who wondered why there was no coverage in Herlihy’s home state.

Such lack of disclosure of crimes committed by public officials is not uncommon in Delaware, as WHYY News has documented. Over the last 20 months alone, the DUI and vehicular assault arrest of state Rep. Kevin Hensley, the shoplifting charge against state budget director Cerron Cade and the student rape charges against Alexis I. du Pont Middle School Principal Tasha Oliver were not disclosed to the public via news releases.

Jennings, a Democrat who is seeking a third term as attorney general, would not speak with WHYY News about her office’s lack of transparency in the Herlihy case. Jennings often speaks with the media, even on controversial topics such as WHYY’s expose of her own corporate-paid trips to South Africa, which included a safari, and to resorts in Colorado and Arizona.

But Mat Marshall, spokesperson for Jennings, said the public wasn’t notified when Herlihy was indicted or when he pleaded guilty because authorities were concerned that doing so “might cause lasting harm” to the victim, who would not testify against Herlihy in Delaware Superior Court if the case had gone to trial.

“We weigh the newsworthiness of a release against public safety, investigations, trial obligations, and — particular to this case — victims’ wellness. We make hundreds of these decisions and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. But here our choice was simple and unanimous,” Marshall said in a statement.

“We had — we continue to have — serious concern that a release would not only do irreparable harm to this victim, but to other victims of sexual violence by a person in a position of authority, who could feel blamed or shamed and ultimately less empowered to seek justice. Here — even with hindsight, and even knowing that my choices might be publicly criticized — the decision was clear.”

Court records do not identify Herlihy’s victim by name, however. And WHYY News does not identify victims of sex crimes.

State Prosecutor Abby Rodgers, who didn’t personally handle the case, said all but one felony count against Herlihy was dropped because the victim, now an adult, was not in a condition to participate in a trial against her rapist.

“Sometimes we have to make decisions [based on] what is best for our victim and his or her mental health and how they want to proceed moving forward,” Rodgers said.

Marshall and Rodgers said the fact that Herlihy’s father is Jerome O. Herlihy — who was a Superior Court Judge from 1989 to 2016 — played no role in how the case was adjudicated.

“That doesn’t factor into our analysis,” Rodgers said.

Herlihy’s defense attorney, Eugene J. Maurer Jr., could not be reached for comment.

Delaware transparency advocate Amy Roe said she’s astounded by the state’s failure to notify the public about Herlihy’s rape charges and his recent conviction.

“It’s very terrifying, especially because he was in a position of power with students in school,” Roe said. “All of these other parents should know about this. This is shocking. It just makes me feel sick to my stomach.”

Law enforcement usually announces child sex abuse charges

While all crimes have unique circumstances, and the Oliver case was not disclosed until WHYY News exposed the allegations, authorities in Delaware typically announce child rape charges.

One reason is so other victims or witnesses can contact police or prosecutors, especially when the suspect has had frequent contact with children.

Just last week, for example, New Castle County police announced the arrest of Orlando Gonzalez-Jimenez of Newark for allegedly sexually assaulting a child under age 5 at an in-home day care in his house between 2016 and 2019, roughly the same period when Herlihy was raping the teenager.

While announcing last week’s arrest, police urged anyone “who believes they may have been a victim” of Gonzalez-Jimenez to contact detectives.

In August 2025, when state police charged former Anna P. Mote Elementary School teacher Vincent Buckwash with unlawful sexual contact and child sexual abuse, the agency issued a release that said Buckwash inappropriately touched five students on multiple occasions during the 2023-24 school year. Police also released Buckwash’s photo and asked anyone with relevant information to contact authorities.

Jennings’ office also announces many criminal convictions, such as on Tuesday when they issued a news release about Buckwash’s sentencing last week to three years in prison after his guilty plea to unlawful sexual contact with five boys ages 7 and 8. Buckwash “made a conscious, repeated, and deliberate decision to commit sickening acts against innocent children – children that, as an educator, he had a sworn duty to protect,” Jennings said in a statement.

In January 2025, her office issued a release about 19-year-old Fidel Chamorro-Ramirez’s conviction for second-degree rape of a 12-year-old girl who lived in their Seaford home.

“Protecting our children is absolutely paramount,” Jennings was quoted as saying, while calling the crime “reprehensible.”

‘Conduct that would impair and debauch the morals’ in N.J.

The investigation into Herlihy began in June 2019. That’s when the victim’s boyfriend found explicit messages and a photo of Herlihy’s penis on her phone, and told his parents.

They contacted the district, who notified state police. Brandywine put Herlihy on unpaid leave with no access to students that October, spokesman Bill O’Hanlon said.

Hanlon said the district’s standard practice is to notify the school so parents can be notified, but Brandywine doesn’t keep records of such notifications from that long ago.

Meanwhile, Delaware State Police interviewed the victim, who was then 18, as well as her boyfriend and a friend.

The victim told detectives that she and Herlihy had sex about 15 times during the summer of 2016, with the first time occurring in Atlantic City and the others in Delaware. She also told them about eating at Ramsay’s restaurant, which matched his credit card records, as well as drinking together and staying in a hotel.

Delaware authorities involved the FBI and in February 2020 notified Atlantic City police. Rodgers said her office agreed to let New Jersey prosecute Herlihy first.

New Jersey authorities moved expeditiously, charging Herlihy in August 2020 with three counts of first-degree aggravated sexual assault and child endangerment.

The arrest warrant said Herlihy and the girl engaged “in conduct that would impair and debauch the morals” of the young teen.

He was arrested within days, and while being held in prison pending trial, Herlihy pleaded guilty to aggravated sexual assault in August 2021.

At his sentencing in January 2022, Superior Court Judge Dorothy Garrabrant sentenced Herlihy to seven years behind bars. The victim read a statement in court, Delaware prosecutor Rodgers told WHYY News.

Media in the Atlantic City area reported on Herlihy’s sentencing, and the Atlantic County Prosecutor’s Office issued a release.

A presentence report determined that his predatory behavior was repetitive and compulsive, and the judge ordered him to the Avenal Avenel Diagnostic Treatment Center, a correctional center for sex offenders.

Garrabrant said Herlihy originally said he was not amenable to treatment, but has since changed his view, media reports said.

She ordered him to serve 85% of his sentence, followed by probation, and to register as a sex offender with lifetime supervision.

“With this sentence, the court cannot mend in any way the pain that’s occurred to all of the families involved, most notably the victim’s,” Garrabrant said, according to breakingac.com. “The court can only provide closure today and, hopefully, the beginning of healing for everyone.”

Most Del. charges cited acts before she started high school

Jennings’ office obtained a Delaware grand jury indictment with 44 felony counts in June 2022.

The indictment didn’t include an arrest affidavit that detailed Herlihy’s alleged crimes in Delaware, as was the case in New Jersey. Instead, each count cited the crime statute and noted that the victim was a minor.

The vast majority cited alleged rapes and sex abuse acts in his car, home and a hotel room during the summer of 2016, before the victim entered ninth grade.

Some also cited alleged crimes from September 2017, after she started 10th grade, through December 2018, when she was a high school junior.

The indictment didn’t identify Herlihy as a teacher and the victim as his student.

Though Rodgers didn’t handle the case at any stage of the proceedings, she said she understands “that’s always a concern for protecting the public” by notifying them that someone has been charged with sexually violating a child.

“But one of the other pieces of it too is to protect the victim in these cases and especially children victims,” she said. “The press release is traumatizing and alerts the community to what has happened to this poor child.”

After Herlihy was indicted in Delaware, what appeared at first to be a strong case that could send him to prison for life began to disintegrate, as the victim reconsidered her willingness to testify against him. By early 2024, she informed prosecutors she definitely could not go on the witness stand, and the state pivoted to salvaging the prosecution with at least one felony conviction.

That February, prosecutor Nicole Warner, who had taken over the case from Kathleen Dickerson, who had left the Attorney General’s Office, offered a plea bargain to Herlihy. Warner had decided the state didn’t have enough evidence to win at trial.

Warner offered Herlihy a deal in which the state would drop 43 of 44 counts, leaving only one charge of fourth-degree rape. Warner recommended a sentence that would let Herlihy go free upon his release in New Jersey. While fourth-degree rape is classified as a violent felony and carries a penalty of up to 15 years behind bars, there is no mandatory prison time under Delaware law.

Under the plea offer, Herlihy would be on probation in Delaware for two years, have no contact with the victim, provide a DNA sample, register as a sex offender and complete sex offender counseling and treatment.

“In every single case, regardless of our emotion about it or if we think somebody has committed a crime, the state has the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt,” Rodgers said. “You have to look at what is it that you’re going to stand in front of a jury and use to prove your case.

“And that comes from direct testimony, live witnesses. That comes with corroborative evidence, things that support the statements. If you don’t have enough of that material, you’re not going to prevail at trial. We have to make a decision about what to do with the case to balance accountability for the offender and our victim-centered approach to prosecution and taking care of our victims as well.”

On March 24, 13 months after the deal was offered, New Jersey authorities transported Herlihy to the New Castle County Courthouse to enter his plea in Superior Court. The victim did not attend the hearing.

Beyond the fact that the case had collapsed, concern for the victim’s well-being also influenced the state’s decision not to announce the resolution that included no additional prison time for Herlihy, who is now 42, despite his plea to felony rape.

“Particularly in cases where it’s reduced down to something much less, the very last thing we want to do is appear to be victim blaming or shaming by putting out a press release that this case has been reduced down to this much lesser charge given how it initially processed,” Rodgers said.

Melissa Winters, a psychologist who heads victim services in Jennings’ office, said she hopes the public understands the devastating impact of rape on a teenager by an adult mentor.

“It’s such a sensitive period of development at that age,” Winters said. “And the impact of having someone in a position of power who abuses that power in order to do things that are inappropriate and life changing — the effects last forever.

“To be the victim of a crime like this, especially for such a long period of time, can really impact that developmental process and their ability to kind of understand themselves and who they are. We see people who struggle with mood and behavioral changes for years or a lifetime.”