US Teacher Resigns After Being Accused Of Sexually Abusing Student

A high school teacher at an elite private school in the United States resigned after being accused of sexually abusing a former student. According to the New York Post, 50-year-old Mara Naaman quit four days after Dalton School received a letter alleging impropriety. The letter was written on behalf of a former student who claimed their English teacher harassed them between 2020 and 2022.  

The school additionally held an assembly to inform high school students of the inquiry and sent a letter alerting parents that there may be more victims.

''We are only providing the name of the teacher so anyone with relevant information can provide such information. Our priority is determining the veracity of these claims and determining whether there are other allegations of abuse from other members of the community, '' according to an email from principal Jose de Jesus.

US English Teacher's Resignation Amid Sexual Abuse Accusations

The school also stated that it had filed a police report and recruited an investigation firm that specialises in harassment and sexual abuse cases. Notably, Naaman, a mother and former Fulbright scholar who defined herself as a ''writer, scholar, and humanist'', was a tenured Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Williams College in Massachusetts, where she spent seven years before returning in 2017. Her work has been published in a variety of journals, including the Journal of Arabic Literature.

She taught English literature to students in grades nine through 12 at the school, which has an annual tuition of $61,000. According to the school's website, she was also designated a 'house advisor', who is in charge of ''creating a safe environment for  conversations around personal responsibility."

This isn't the first time the school has come under scrutiny. In 2018, former headmaster Gardner Dunnan was charged in a federal lawsuit with sexually abusing a 14-year-old pupil who lived with him and his wife in 1986.

The institution, which has several celebrities among its alumni, sprang to notoriety during the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein when it was revealed that the millionaire paedophile had worked there as a physics and maths instructor in 1973.