By
Susan Edelman,
Georgia Worrell and
Mary Kay Linge
October 8, 2022 12:27pm
Updated
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Newly released reports from the Special Commissioner of Investigation for city schools documented multiple cases of shocking sexually-charged behavior by female teachers and aides in city public schools — from bedding students to sending explicit photos to high schoolers to exposing bare breasts to remote-learning 5-year-olds.
Natalie Black, 27, a teacher at Hillside Arts and Letters Academy in Queens, sent at least 15 raunchy snaps of herself “in lingerie or nude” to a 17-year-old male student beginning in late 2021, an SCI report said. The boy was interviewed by the NYPD, but no charges were filed.
By March 2022, the report found, Black’s bad behavior escalated: she showed male students photos of her vagina, pulled down her pants in a student’s home and told him to “eat my ass,” and sent kids videos of herself “deep throating” a liquor bottle and dancing naked from the waist down.
Danielle Medellin, then 24, exchanged nearly 5,500 “very flirtatious” texts with a boy in her class.Hillside administrators never informed the school community of the investigation, students said.
Black refused to cooperate with SCI investigators. She was “removed from DOE service” while the probe was ongoing, the report noted — but remains a DOE employee, according to her active LinkedIn page, which also sends readers to self-created videos of Black’s singing performances on YouTube.
The SCI report recommended that Black be permanently removed from the DOE workforce, “given her total unfitness as a pedagogue.” The DOE declined to provide Black’s employment status.
Michelle Zak, then 31, “engaged in an inappropriate relationship” with two of her underage students.In another galling incident, Makita Brooks-Stanton, a paraprofessional at PS 160 in Queens, took her phone along to a May 2020 doctor’s visit — then stripped down for a breast exam in full view of her remote-learning pre-kindergarten class.
“She even had the doctor say hi to the class on Google Meet,” said a mortified mother who was monitoring the session over her 5-year-old’s shoulder.
“She was in her blue gown and that’s when she was exposed,” the mom told The Post last week. “It was a frontal view.”
Natalie Black sent at least 15 raunchy snaps of herself “in lingerie or nude” to a 17-year-old male student.youtube.comBrooks-Stanton flashed the tots for “about two minutes,” said the mom, whose shouts eventually got the class’ lead teacher to shut down the offending screen.
The “breast exposure to a pre-K class did not appear purposeful,” SCI investigators concluded — but Brooks-Stanton’s “actions showed a serious lack of professionalism.”
“I felt really bad when I registered the complaint,” the mother said. “I think this was just a poor judgment call on her part.”
Brooks-Stanton remains at PS 160, families said.
In other cases substantiated by SCI:
- Danielle Medellin, then 24, exchanged nearly 5,500 “very flirtatious,” “sexual tension”-filled texts with a boy in one of her 11th-grade math classes at Manhattan’s Institute for Collaborative Education. She resigned before she could be fired, as SCI recommended — and then snagged a job as a New York Times data analyst, according to her LinkedIn page.
- Michelle Zak, then 31, “engaged in an inappropriate relationship” with two of her underage students at the Queens High School of Teaching, Liberal Arts, and Sciences, smoking pot with them and hosting them for sleepovers. She was assigned to a non-classroom DOE job while the investigation was underway and is now a self-employed tutor.
Makita Brooks stripped down for a breast exam in full view of her remote-learning pre-kindergarten class.- Juliana Garofalo, another Institute for Collaborative Education teacher, told co-workers that she had a “sexual relationship” with a male student before he graduated in 2018. The then-33-year-old resigned from the DOE before SCI recommended her termination — but sued the city when word of the damning report got back to the private Connecticut school that had unknowingly hired her. A New York State Supreme Court judge dismissed her case in December, saying that Garofalo’s behavior was “utterly disqualifying” for any teaching job.
Seven of the 21 substantiated SCI reports on sexual misbehavior in city schools released to The Post in the last two months involve female perpetrators — a ratio in line with the national average, according to the advocacy group Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation (SESAME).
One of the incidents took place at Hillside Arts and Letters Academy.Helayne Seidman
Teacher Makita Brooks-Stanton at P.S.160 exposed her breasts to her pre-K students during a visit to her doctor.Helayne Seidman“I’m outraged,” SESAME founder Terri Miller told The Post. “How dare these teachers — who are put in a position of trust over our children — violate that trust so egregiously? These incidents are going to put a mark of trauma on every single one of those children.”
Miller warned against the tendency to minimize the damage done by female teachers who prey on teen boys.
“Studies find that boys offended by a female are more likely to suffer more severe psychological trauma, more likely to become addicted to alcohol and drugs, and more likely to drop out of school,” she said.
Zak allegedly targeted male students at Queens High School of Teaching, Liberal Arts, and Sciences.J.C.Rice“This is a life-threatening trauma and injury that bad-apple teachers are inflicting on our children — and they are children,” Miller added. “Damage done.”