A man who attended Peter Cooper Elementary School in Ringwood says he was sexually assaulted by the school's principal in 1985, when he was just 9 years old. The allegation surfaced in an exclusive report, reviving questions about a man who has since built a long and troubling criminal record.
An exclusive report describes the former student as having attended Peter Cooper Elementary School at the time of the alleged abuse. The former student says the man who led the school as principal sexually assaulted him that year.
The Peter Cooper School has a documented connection to John Mangan, who is reported to have served as a principal there, according to Yahoo News. Mangan's name has surfaced repeatedly in New Jersey courts in the decades since, tied to both a prior sexual-assault case and, more recently, a federal child-pornography prosecution.
A Earlier Criminal Case With Conflicting Timelines
Accounts of Mangan's earlier sexual-assault case differ on key dates. Yahoo reports he pleaded guilty in 1996 to sexually assaulting a boy he met through a state-sponsored mentoring program. A separate account from Patch states that Mangan was convicted in 1997 of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old while serving as an elementary school principal in Ringwood, and that he was sentenced to four years in prison for that offense, according to the same Patch report.
Child Pornography Discovered During 2024 Home Search
Years later, Mangan resurfaced in a federal case. Authorities searched his home in Lanoka Harbor on October 29, 2024, and found a Samsung Galaxy Note 10 cellphone containing more than 250 images of children being sexually abused, according to Patch's reporting. Yahoo reports that Mangan pleaded guilty to the resulting federal child-pornography charges in Trenton federal court on June 9.
The reports diverge on what happened next. Yahoo states that Mangan was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison on the child-pornography charges, dating that sentence to 2009. A June 2025 Patch report, however, states that Mangan's sentencing in the federal case was set for October 21, 2025. The supplied record does not resolve that discrepancy or confirm the outcome of the scheduled sentencing date.
A Separate Bergen County Case Shows Pattern of Late Disclosures
The Ringwood allegation is not the only recent case in Bergen County involving decades-old abuse claims against a school employee. A man filed a lawsuit on September 8, 2025, alleging that second-grade teacher Howard Schultz sexually assaulted him at George White Elementary School in Hillsdale in 1981 and 1982, according to Patch. That case followed an earlier lawsuit against Schultz that resulted in a $3 million settlement for a different former student in June 2025, Patch reported.
The newer lawsuit against Schultz seeks $10 million, according to the outlet's reporting.
New Jersey law, under N.J.S.A. 2A:14-2a, governs the statute of limitations for civil actions stemming from sexual crimes against minors. The law's application to the Ringwood allegation remains unclear.
