New York City teachers sent obscene messages and sexually exploited their students, investigation finds

Recently, reports were released by the New York City Schools Special Commissioner of Investigation documenting numerous instances of inappropriate sexual behavior by teachers and assistants, ranging from sleeping with students, sending explicit photos, to expose breasts without clothes for remote learning.

One of the cases is that of Natalie Black, 27, who is a teacher at the
Hillside Academy of Arts and Letters in Queens. The woman sent around 15 photos of herself “in lingerie or naked” to a 17-year-old student from late 2021, according to an SCI report. The minor was questioned by the New York police, but no charges were filed.

According to the report, Black’s inappropriate behavior escalated: She showed pictures of her vagina to male students, dropped her pants at a student’s house and told him to “eat her ass,” and sent videos to kids of herself “swallowing deeply.” a bottle of alcohol and dancing naked from the waist down.

Hillside authorities never informed the school community of the investigation, the students reported.

The woman refused to cooperate with SCI detectives. She was “removed from DOE service” while the investigation continued, the report stated, however she remains a DOE employee, according to her active LinkedIn page.

The SCI report recommended that the woman be permanently removed from the DOE, “given her total incapacity as an educator.”

For her part, Makita Brooks-Stanton, a paraprofessional at PS 160 in Queens, brought her phone to a doctor’s visit in May 2020 and then stripped naked for an on-view breast exam for her pre-K class. remote learning.

“He even had the doctor say hello to the class on Google Meet,” said a mother who was monitoring the session behind her 5-year-old son.

“She was wearing her blue dress and that’s when she was exposed,” the mother explained to the New York Post last week. “It was a front view.”

Brooks-Stanton showed her breasts for “about two minutes,” said the mother, whose screams finally got the teacher to turn off her screen.

The “exposure of the breasts to a pre-K class did not appear to serve a purpose,” the SCI researchers concluded, but Brooks-Stanton’s “actions displayed a serious lack of professionalism.”

“I felt very bad when I registered the complaint,” the mother said. “I think this was just poor judgment on her part.”

In addition, Danielle Medellín, then 24 years old, exchanged nearly 5,500 “flirty” and “sexually tension” text messages with a boy in one of her 11th grade math classes at the Manhattan Institute for Collaborative Education. The woman quit before she could be fired, as SCI recommended, and later got a job as a data analyst for the New York Times, her LinkedIn page says.

Another case accredited by SCI is that of Michelle Zak who “engaged in an inappropriate relationship” with two of her underage students at the Queens High School of Teaching, Liberal Arts and Sciences, by smoking marijuana with them and hosting sleepovers. She was assigned a DOE job outside of the classroom while the investigation was done and is now a self-employed tutor.

In this sense, Juliana Garofalo, a teacher at the Institute for Collaborative Education, told coworkers that she had a “sexual relationship” with a male student before he graduated in 2018.

Garofalo, 33 at the time, resigned from the DOE before SCI recommended her termination, but she sued the city when word of the damning report reached the Connecticut private school that, unknowingly what she had done, contract. A New York State Supreme Court judge threw out her case in December, saying the woman’s behavior was “totally disqualifying” for any job.

Seven of SCI’s 21 substantiated reports of sexual misconduct in city schools published by the outlet in recent months involve women, a proportion in line with the national average, according to advocacy group Stop Educator Sexual Abuse. , Misconduct and Exploitation (SESAME).

Also read:

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• High school coach accused of having sex with 17-year-old student at Kansas school