The Simi Valley Unified School District has negotiated a tentative settlement of a lawsuit that accused a high school principal of sexually harassing a staff psychologist for two years until she accepted a demotion to escape him, lawyers involved in the case said Monday. District Court in Los Angeles.
As far as I know, he has never been reprimanded. His attorney, J. Jane Fox of Ventura, said he denied all the allegations and that the pending settlement should not be considered an admission of guilt. Greene was accused in the lawsuit of making sexually explicit remarks to Kopman-Davis as part of an effort to seduce her, of touching and grabbing her, and of giving her a poor evaluation in the spring of after she repeatedly rejected him--including rebuffing his advances at a professional conference in San Francisco, said her lawyer, Julia Dragojevic.
Austin acknowledged that under the terms of the agreement, three school district officials were to be dismissed as defendants--Supt. John Duncan and two assistant superintendents, Allan Jacobs, who is in charge of curriculum, and Robert Marcus, who was in charge of personnel and has since retired. Kopman-Davis and Dragojevic claimed that she took her complaints about Greene to the three officials and received no action except for an offer to transfer to another school.
She filed suit in August, , after filing a complaint with the state Fair Employment and Housing Board and being told it could take years to resolve, according to Dragojevic. The suit named as defendants Greene, the school district, the three district officials and the school board, the lawyer said. He said she was given the chance to provide names of witnesses or other sources during each meeting with the officials and did not, leaving the district little choice but to offer her a transfer.
Greene, 48, has been employed by the district since , and Kopman-Davis, 32, since , Dragojevic said. School Board President Lewis Roth said that Greene had never been reprimanded for sexual misconduct, and that the board had no plans to discipline him or Kopman-Davis. One of the witnesses testified in a deposition that she had had a five-year sexual relationship with Greene and that after she ended it, the principal threatened to end her teaching career, according to Dragojevic.
