Female students allege that the professors tried to get them to “sexually service professors at other colleges.”
Several professors at John Jay College of Criminal Justice are under criminal investigation for sexual assault and drug dealing.
Four of the accused professors are on administrative leave, while more are named in the accusers’ complaints. They are being investigated by the New York State inspector general and Manhattan district attorney.
The complaints allege that the professors used and sold drugs on the New York City campus. As the New York Times reported, “Drug use and sex were said to be common in the offices of some professors and in an area known as ‘the Swamp’ in one of the school’s buildings.”
Anthropology professor Ric Curtis, 64, was the ringleader of the alleged misconduct. The accusers and eyewitnesses claim Curtis frequently used and sold drugs in his office at John Jay. They recalled seeing drug paraphernalia in his office, including a pipe, a grinder and needles.
Curtis, former chair of the sociology, anthropology, and law and police science departments, has been at the school for 30 years.
One accuser, 24-year-old recent graduate Naomi Haber, told the New York Post that Curtis convinced her to go off her medications, including antidepressants, for bipolar disorder—and “introduced weed into my life, instead.”
Haber also claimed that Curtis held on to his “devotees” by hooking them with drugs. “Ric supplied weed to his devotees, several times a day, which made it even harder for [‘swamp’ devotees] to leave once they had become dependent on the drugs and by extension, him.”
The women also accused the men of sexual assault, and attempting to have them “sexually service professors at other colleges,” as well as rape, according to the Post.
John Jay was apparently aware of the allegations since at least May, the Times reports, and found significant quantities of drugs and drug paraphernalia in an internal investigation.
However, the school did not alert police until September—and when it did, John Jay did not disclose the “circumstances under which [the evidence was] recovered.”
Another accuser, 39-year-old Claudia Cojocaru, a former student who is now an adjunct professor at John Jay, criticized the school’s handling of the allegations.
“They were incredibly rude and victim-degrading. They made us perform like circus animals, distorted the facts, and distorted what we talked about,” she said. “They tried to brush the whole thing under the rug, so to speak. They re-traumatized us by making us relive all sorts of traumatic experiences.”
