A Riverdale prep-school teacher who is accused of bedding a 16-year-old student testified Monday that there was no hanky-panky going on — insisting they were merely doing a crossword puzzle when his fiancée walked in on them.
“I’m sure I was doing crossword puzzles,” a haggard-looking Richard Hovan told Manhattan Supreme Court jurors.
Hovan, 33, who taught at Riverdale Country School, said he met with the victim, whose name is being withheld by The Post, multiple times because she was on a special dean’s list for academic, social and emotional issues, including throwing tantrums and swallowing magnets during class.
He said that the girl was emotionally unstable and stopped by his Chelsea apartment three times — but that they never had sex.
“I put on the TV . . . I did crossword puzzles . . . Eventually she calmed down and left,” he testified about the first time she came over in April of that year.
But on May 14, 2011 — the night before his ex-fiancée, Marina Bontkowski, busted them — the victim showed up at his doorstep “out of control . . . really distraught,” Hovan testified.
“I was trying to talk to her and not getting a lot out,” he said, adding that she stayed over that night instead of going to her friend’s house.
The now-19-year-old testified last week that Bontkowski burst through the door and caught the two on the couch, just as “my shirt came off just as we were about to have sex” — a claim Hovan denied.
“She was livid. Marina is small in stature but she can be very scary,” he said. “I didn’t quite understand what was going on.”
The former geometry teacher admitted to lying to Bontkowski about his relationship with the victim to “protect her privacy.”
Prosecutors revealed that Hovan exchanged a staggering 10,000 text messages and calls with the victim between March and May 2011 — compared to the 3,000 he shared with Bontkowski.
“[The victim] had more difficulties than anyone else in my life at that time,” he responded about the constant communication.
When pressed by defense attorney Vinoo Varghese for “the truth,” Hovan reiterated, “Nothing happened sexually and I was just trying to help someone through some difficulties.”
On cross-examination, Assistant District Attorney Shanda Strain tore into Hovan for not informing authorities of the victim’s troublesome issues.
“You didn’t feel the need to tell anyone . . . ‘Maybe take a look at her, this behavior is crazy’?” Strain asked.
“Teens often swing wildly,” Hovan replied. “She didn’t want me to tell anyone.”
The strawberry-blond victim and Bontkowski have both lied during the rape investigation in an effort to protect their alleged two-timing man.
The stunning brunette ex was convicted of perjury after having a change of heart about lying to a grand jury in 2013, destroying her goal of becoming an FBI agent.
Hovan testified that he told Bontkowski not to take the stand because he was afraid she would tell “lies” and that “she’d end up in trouble and I would end up in trouble for something I didn’t do.”