A teacher from Brooklyn is demanding her job back after being arrested back in 2011 for charges of drugging and raping a middle school student. Claudia Tillery a 45 year old woman filed papers in Manhattan Supreme Court that argue she was acquitted of all charges in April 2014 and the Department of Education’s improperly used sealed evidence to force her from her job she’s had for 19 years.
According the hearing officer the acquittal does not excuse the inappropriate behavior on the teacher’s part. The evidence showed Tillery allowed the student into her home without permission, took him to a motel multiple times and gave him $500 cash.
The teacher is also under fire for not telling administrators or the student’s parents that he had stolen her daughter’s laptop, a camera and her phone from her apartment.
The hearing officer Haydee Rosario stated, “Such failure, I find, not only constitutes conduct that is prejudicial to the good order and discipline of her service but, most importantly, sheds light about the true nature of her relationship with Student A.”
The student told police that Tillery did not report the stolen items because she was fearful it would cause him to expose their on going sexual relationship.
In her papers, the teacher said it was ‘arbitrary and capricious’ for the hearing officer to consider evidence that was sealed because of the acquittal. “The hearing officer credited Student A’s testimony in its entirety … regardless of the numerous inconsistencies,” according to Tillery’s lawyer Stacey Van Malden.
A former student at the Stephen Decatur School, testified that he and Tillery had oral sex and intercourse in her bedroom and a hotel room that she rented on multiple occasions.
A DNA test proved no semen on her bedroom comforter but one stain on it had vaginal fluids and saliva that contained both their DNA. Tillery claimed that the student came in contact with the comforter while it was in the hamper in her laundry room.
Throughout this ordeal Tillery claimed he ‘made her do it.’ Rosario stated, “Her defense of ‘he made me do it’ reasoning, that Student A, a minor entrusted to her care, caused all of her misery that she endured during her criminal trial and during this disciplinary proceeding, serves to demonstrate why termination of her employment is the only appropriate penalty in this case.”
Source NY Daily News
