In the 1970s, Highlands Intermediate School in Pearl City allowed a security officer to take boys on camping trips, meet with students in a private office and run after-school clubs. All the while, he was grooming and sexually abusing male students.

Joseph Moisa worked at the school for three years, even though administrators knew about the abuse for at least a year before he was fired, according to a lawsuit filed by three former students.

Nearly 50 years later, the state plans to pay $330,000 to settle with two men who accused the school of failing to protect them from Moisa. The third plaintiff in the lawsuit voluntarily dismissed his claims before the settlement.

The state already settled lawsuits in 2023 and 2024 with two other students who said Moisa abused them for a total of $900,000.  

Lawmakers opened the door to such suits in 2012 by temporarily lifting the statute of limitations that had prevented some adults from seeking damages for sexual abuse they experienced as children from individuals and public and private agencies.

When settling the first lawsuit involving Moisa in 2023, Attorney General Anne Lopez said school employees who would be familiar with the case’s details had died, and it was better for the state to avoid a trial and risk a greater payout. Moisa died over a decade ago.

The Hawaiʻi Department of Education did not respond to requests for comment.

The $330,000 settlement is one of 31 claims against various state agencies that could cost taxpayers more than $7.8 million this year. An appropriation bill that includes the payouts has passed the House and is moving through the Senate. 

Unaddressed Abuse

Moisa worked at Highlands Intermediate from 1974 to 1977. In 1976, a student told a counselor that Moisa performed oral sex on him during a school camping trip, but administrators did nothing in response, according to the most recent lawsuit.

The school may have been aware of allegations against Moisa even before the camping trip, but administrators didn’t start an investigation until they received at least three complaints against him, said Randall Rosenberg, one of the lawyers for the former Highlands Intermediate students.

“They have to discipline this guy,” Rosenberg said. “They can’t just sit there and turn a blind eye to it, which is what they did.”

The education department doesn’t have Moisa’s employment records from the 1970s, and there’s no evidence that he completed a background check before starting at Highlands Intermediate, Rosenberg said. He determined Moisa’s employment dates and details of the investigation by using old yearbook photos and corroborating his clients’ stories with those of their former classmates and families.

The school appears to have fired Moisa after he was investigated in 1977, although there are no records to confirm that, Rosenberg said. 

After Moisa left Highlands Intermediate, he moved out of state and was convicted as a sex offender in California, according to the lawsuit. Hawaiʻi News Now previously reported that Moisa was charged with molesting a child in 2010. He died in 2014.  

Rosenberg said he knows of at least two other students who were sexually abused at Highlands Intermediate in the 1970s, but the temporary window for them to file claims against Moisa closed in 2020.

“One thing that we’ve learned about these sexual predators, they rarely do it only one time,” Rosenberg said. “We know that if you have one victim, there’s more out there.”

Civil Beat’s education reporting is supported by a grant from Chamberlin Family Philanthropy.