Rebuttal to false allegations in the 2016 NY Post article.

Nearly two years after I was sexually assaulted by a student (08.15.2014), hereinafter referred to as my assaulter, who alleged (in Nov. 2014) that I had a sexual relationship with him, and 18 months after I resigned from the NYC DOE (01.23.2015) for reasons addressed in the conversations shared here, Susan Edelman at the NY Post was provided with my confidential SCI file for an investigation that was closed in February 2015. She proceeded to write an article without any acknowledgment that the allegations were from 2014 and my resignation was effective January 2015. (Article as submitted into evidence by NYSED is below - there's no need to give the NY Post more clicks.)

So, why was a two-year old case of someone who left the classroom deemed newsworthy for exactly one NYC "newspaper" when SCI had several hundred more recent cases (in SY2015/16) with similar allegations and teachers still on the payroll? 

Well, after SCI closed their case, they forwarded the file to the NYSED. Exactly three weeks prior to receiving a phone call from Susan Edelman (07.01.2016) notifying me of her upcoming article (published 07.03.2016), I allowed the NYSED's second settlement offer to me expire, which meant that NYSED would have to prepare for a Part 83 administrative hearing. Finally, the language of the settlement offer made sense to me - NYSED stated that if I voluntarily surrendered my license, then the reason for doing so would remain confidential. I didn't and exactly three weeks later, the NY Post publishes an article with information from a file held by NYSED about a resignation that occurred 18 months prior.

Of course, NYSED would deny their retaliation for my insisting on a hearing, but you can draw your own conclusion about which of the exactly two parties who were in possession of the file would benefit most from an article pieced together from its contents and published on July 3, 2016: SCI who ceased to have any interest in me following my resignation in January 2015, or NYSED who then had to actually build a case against me and could submit this article as evidence?

Read more about this in the blog. 

On July 1, 2016 I let Susan Edelman's call to me go to voicemail because I didn't recognize the number. Rather than call her back, I passed her information onto my lawyer. After my lawyer informed me what Susan was going to write, I contacted my assaulter (who was then 19 years old).

The conversation took place via message and was screenshot, as I thought it might be prudent to hold onto not only my assaulter's admission of lies and his request that the "real story" be told,  but also his asking for forgiveness. 

Not once during the conversation did my assaulter push back when I stated that I never raped or seduced him. Instead, he replied "I know. It's f***ing stupid." Now, at that time, I didn't know that the information Susan Edelman was using came from my assaulter's SCI statement. I knew just three things: 1. that information wasn't true, 2. my assaulter just acknowledged that it wasn't true, and 3. my assaulter offered to call Susan Edelman to tell her it was all lies. 

During the conversation my assaulter spoke about how he thought of suicide when he hit a low and told me that he wrote a letter in May 2015 asking for the real story to be told and for forgiveness. In his words: "it was [his] last apology." 

This conversation was included in exhibit R-2 at my Part 83 hearing and can be found below.

Also, read more about this in the blog.

The NY Post Article illuminated for me the SCI investigation. Up to that point, I had been unaware of most details related to the SCI investigation. My knowledge had been limited to what was in my statement (more on that below) and the names of some others who were interviewed by SCI: my assaulter, two students, and my assaulter's then-current 12th grade teachers. 

Needless to say, I flipped out when I read the details written in NY Post article. It was all lies - just as my assaulter stated two days before the article was published. Over the course of the next few days I spoke with my assaulter, at first mostly yelling at him via text for the lies he told, and then trying to piece together the source(s) of this other information. 

In the conversation with my assaulter, which took place from July 3 - 5, 2016, he never questions nor pushes back on my version of events. Not once does he deny sexually assaulting me. Not once does he push back on my assertion that we never had a sexual relationship. 

In the conversation with my assaulter, he denies using the language that Susan Edelman used in the article. He stated "That f***ing article is full of so much bull****." Well, if he thought that the article was full of so much bull****, then he must've thought his statement was too. 

This conversation was included in exhibit R-2 at my Part 83 hearing and can be found below.

Read more about this in the blog.

My written statement was mostly accurate and matched with what I verbally told SCI Investigator Derrick Dottin. Of course, the most controversial part of my statement was not only the focus of the article, but was dictated to me by Derrick Dottin. 

Let me be clear: Despite what the NY Post article states and what's written in my statement, I did not admit to "4 to 5" incidents of oral sex with my assaulter. I shared that there was "a single incident of sexual contact," carefully choosing my words so I could avoid talking about being sexually assaulted. A "single incident" was an accurate number and it allowed me to leave out the "non-consensual on my part" part - the missing information I referenced in my July 1, 2016 conversation with my assaulter. Unfortunately for me, though, my assaulter's interview preceded mine and he had lied to Derrick Dottin, saying that I performed oral sex on him "thee times."   

No matter how many times over nearly two hours I repeated "a single incident of sexual contact," Derrick Dottin would not accept the truth and would not end the interview. So, I told him it was less than five times, which was still accurate since one is less than five. However, he wouldn't accept that response either, insisting that I give him a number that was more than one, but less than five. That didn't really leave me with many numerical choices, so I sarcastically asked if four sounded good to him. Unfortunately for me, it did. He told me to write "approximately 4 - 5" down, so I did because then I was free to leave. I suppose for someone solely interested in confirming information rather than obtaining the truth, "approximately 4 - 5" was close enough to "3."

I've been asked why I gave any number at all, let alone four. It's a valid question. For one, I hate liars* and saying that there was never any sexual contact would have been a lie. And, two, despite the hearing officer's theoretical belief that silence was an option, it wasn't. I was the last person Derrick Dottin interviewed and he had already obtained mostly false and out-of-context information that supported his preferred narrative. Derrick Dottin was not going to allow me to leave without me providing a number that he deemed sufficient.  So I said "four." Quite frankly, any of the three available numbers in the greater than one, but less than five range would have pleased Derrick Dottin. He just wanted a firm numerical commitment that was closer to three than one is and each of the available numbers in the range would have accomplished that.

Four was not an arbitrary number. It is the number of times my assaulter was sexually aggressive towards me from April - August 2014. It started with him trying to kiss me on April 18, 2014 when he picked up his MacBeth book at my home and again on May 1, 2014 in my classroom after school , followed by another classroom incident on May 21, 2014 when he exposed himself to me and ma*******ed, asking that I give him a h**d job (confirmed by my assaulter during his testimony), and finally escalating to the sexual assault on Aug. 15, 2014. 

This testimony can be found below.

*Ironically, I say exactly this to Mary Buckley Minucci in a text message in April 2014 when she told me that Rebecca Kunce was not going to report her $15,000 Math For America stipend for the 2013 tax year. Why is this ironic? Read the next section.

Read more about this in the blog.

SCI focused their interviews on the 12th grade teachers. Interesting, at least to me, was that none of my grade team - my assaulter's other 11th grade teachers who were often witnesses to my interactions with my assaulter during the time period he alleged we had a sexual relationship- was interviewed.  I'm in the middle of writing a dissertation so I don't have time to detail everything I've since learned about the 12th grade teacher interviews, but suffice it to say that some 12th grade teachers were at best confused, and others, at worst, told demonstrable lies and falsified evidence. I'll provide the short version of the worst cases, which involve Mary Buckley Minucci, Samantha Curran, and Rebecca Kunce.

Mary Buckley Minucci (current Assistant Principal for Math at Fort Hamilton High School) and Samantha Curran (current Academic Coordinator at Excel Upper in the Canarsie section of Brooklyn) falsified evidence. Ironically, the false nature of the "evidence" that Mary Buckley Minucci and Samantha Curran conspired on (which was submitted to SCI by Samantha Curran) was submitted into evidence by NYSED at my Part 83 hearing. I couldn't make this up if I tried - NYSED submitted a piece of evidence at closing that contradicted a piece of evidence they submitted at opening. See, Mary Buckley Minucci selectively shared with Samantha Curran out-of-context parts of a much longer conversation I had with her regarding my assaulter. By "shared with" I mean Mary Buckley Minucci gave screenshots to Samantha Curran, with all references to Mary Buckley Minucci removed, so that Samatha Curran could submit the screenshots as her own to Derrick Dottin. The screenshots were literally enlarged to conceal whose phone it was. At the end of the day, SCI should've caught this false evidence. All they had to do was look at my phone records, which were in their possession, to see that I had a total of 14 text messages with Samantha Curran distributed over two school years, and none within this timeframe.

In addition to the conspiracy to falsify evidence, Mary Buckley Minucci and Samantha Curran coordinated their statements in a way that downplayed Mary Buckley Minucci's knowledge and exaggerated that of Samatha Curran. Samantha Curran shared with SCI information from a conversation I had with Mary Buckley Minucci in her office in July 2014, when Samantha Curran wasn't even in Brooklyn, yet Mary Buckley Minucci never mentioned this conversation to SCI. 

Mary Buckley Minucci also lied about witnessing me taking a phone call from my assaulter at a happy hour that she was not actually at. This was easy to refute because my phone records show 0 phone calls between me and my assaulter AND I had a text conversation with Mary Buckley Minucci that took place while I was at that very happy hour and according to her text to me, she was at home with her husband wishing she was at the happy hour. 

In addition to the falsified text message submitted to SCI by Samantha Curran, she also lied to SCI about me texting her often about my assaulter. Again a look at my phone records would reveal Samantha Curran to be a liar and conspirator. 

Rebecca Kunce, a 12th grade teacher on a different teaching team, also told a demonstrable lie to SCI. For some reason she felt compelled to tell Derrick Dottin that I would stop by her classroom three times a week to see my assaulter. Had Derrick Dottin bothered checking her teaching schedule, my teaching schedule, and my assaulter's class schedule, he would have learned that 1. Rebecca Kunce was not my assaulter's teacher so he was never in her class, and 2. when Rebecca Kunce did teach classes, my assaulter was either on another floor or in his math class, which was taught by Mary Buckley Minucci and Samantha Curran in my classroom. I have no idea why Rebecca Kunce would lie about such a dumb thing, especially  knowing that it's easily refutable.

Read more about the lies told by each of these teachers in the blog.

Needless to say, there is more to tell. 

After I write and defend my dissertation, my writing will be focused on an academic analysis of three things:

1. The investigation process, including the failure of SCI to fact check statements made by so-called witnesses, and the additional false allegation made by Principal Victoria Antonini regarding my sponsoring another student's senior trip (which led to a second set of misconduct charges that were tossed out after Victoria Antonini's testimony contradicted her own complaint and allegation that led to the new charges), 
2. The lack of evidentiary support for the Anne Reynolds Copps' (the hearing officer - who's a lawyer, not a judge) opinion, which cited just verbal testimony and seemingly ignored significant contradictory contemporaneous evidence that included my assaulter's own written words, and 
3. The prohibitive systemic structures that limit a teacher's ability to provide individualized academic and socio-emotional student support outside of the classroom and the lack of such supports in school buildings. Not surprisingly, these structures negatively impact students already at the margins, calling into question the intent of such structures.

I got what I wanted out of the hearing process - official, on-the-record acknowledgment that I was sexually assaulted by the student and that I did not have a sexual relationship with him. 

I suppose my assaulter got what he wanted too. The real story was told and he was neither arrested nor deported for committing a criminal sexual act. He can thank the NYSED for the latter two.

Despite my vindication, it remains problematic that Anne Reynolds Copps, Esq. chose to engage in victim blaming, despite writing that her opinion should not be interpreted as such - if you have to explain that you're not engaging in victim blaming, then that's exactly what you are doing. As seen in the image below, Anne Reynolds Copps, Esq. wrote that I was responsible for my assaulter's "misapprehension of my intentions," completely absolving a 17 year old of all personal responsibility for his actions. The evidence clearly shows that my assaulter was well aware of my intentions, including why I purchased the sneakers (with funds I set aside for a student group trip that never happened), and FitBit for him (see the NY Post conversations below). Not only was I transparent about this, but he acknowledged in writing two weeks prior to sexually assaulting me that my intentions were rooted in academic and SEL support as a teacher and mentor. At issue is the likelihood that Anne Reynolds Copps neither considered the thousands of pages of evidence nor understood the timeline of events - at least her opinion suggests both - but I'll address those issues under Item #2 (above) after my defense. 

Til then, remember:

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."

-Anais Nin