A New Jersey woman has filed what may be a first-of-its-kind sexual harassment lawsuit, alleging that a high-school principal pressured her for sexual favors in return for helping her special-needs son with disciplinary problems.

The harassment allegedly even extended to a September 2010 meeting at a hotel where Clifton High School Principal Jimmie Warren stripped down to his underwear and asked Dawn Colombo to have sex with him. She had asked him to meet her after her son Brandon was suspended for 21 days.

“Warren, in retaliation for Plaintiff's rejection of his sexual advances, refused to allow B.C. back in school and instead continued B.C.'s suspension,” Colombo says in a complaint filed last week against Warren and the Clifton School District.

She claims to have audio recordings in which, among other things, Warren admits that he “touched your [Plaintiff's] boob.”

Courts have found that teacher-on-student and student-on-student sexual harassment violates Title IX of the federal Education Amendments of 1972. But there doesn't appear to be any precedent extending the law to harassment of a non-student.

Colombo filed a criminal complaint against Warren in December, accusing him of lewdness and aggravated sexual contact. In the civil suit, she says that “Warren engaged in a continuing pattern of extremely inappropriate, unwelcome, harassing, and sexually suggestive communications with Plaintiff, as well as unwanted, inappropriate sexual touchings upon Plaintiff.”

Warren has denied doing anything improper. When Clifton police questioned him, he said he met Colombo at the hotel “because she said she wanted a place where she could smoke cigarettes and speak freely,” Detective Capt. Robert Rowan said.

The suit says Warren “began making overly suggestive comments” to Colombo toward the end of her son's freshman year at Clifton High. “Specifically, Warren stated to Plaintiff that 'if you let me suck your breasts, then I will make sure B.C. is not accused of doing anything wrong and I will help him if he gets into trouble,' or words to that effect.”

At meetings in Warren's office during the 2009-10 academic year, he allegedly exposed himself to Colombo and “unexpectedly and quietly approached Plaintiff from behind, put his hands under Plaintiff's breasts, and fondled them.”

After Brandon was suspended for 21 days in September, the suit says, Colombo agreed — “with great apprehension” — to meet Warren at the Ramada Inn in Rochelle Park, N.J. He had assured her it was “only to talk, no sex,” but once they were in the room, he took off his pants and lay down on the bed.

“Warren directed Plaintiff that he wanted to have sex with Plaintiff, who emphatically and unambiguously refused,” Colombo alleges.

No matter how badly Warren may have behaved, though, the key issue is whether Colombo can recover any damages from his employer. As far as the school district's liability, she does not seem to have a case under Title IX since, as a non-student, she was not “excluded from participation in” or “denied the benefits of” the educational opportunities at Clifton High.

The New Jersey Supreme Court has ruled that a school district may be found liable under state law “for student-on-student sexual orientation harassment that creates a hostile educational environment when the school district knew or should have known of the harassment, but failed to take action reasonably calculated to end the harassment.” L.W. v. Toms River Regional Schools, 915 A.2d 535 (2007).

Colombo alleges the school district “created a hostile environment” against her but her complaint is vague about what the district knew of Warren's alleged harassment, failing to specify any communication or complaint that she made about him to a school official.

Warren has been suspended without pay. "I always had the utmost respect for him as a principal," a former school board member told The Record (Bergen County, N.J.) newspaper.

By Matthew Heller
2/19/11