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Patch is not naming the teacher because he was not charged with a crime and denies Davidson’s allegations.

The school district responded to Davidson and reassigned the teacher to work at home. The superintendent also addressed the letter’s allegations in a statement to the school community.

“Child abuse in any form, especially that of a sexual nature, should be exposed and individuals proven to engage in such actions must be held accountable to the maximum extent allowed by law,” the letter stated. “There should be zero tolerance.”

He also encouraged any other possible victims to come forward.

In November 2022, the district reached a settlement after the teacher resigned, compelling the district to abandon its case to terminate him. No reason was given in the paperwork for his departure.

On April 8, Davidson openly shared her letter addressed to superintendent on social media.
Vess Mitive, the teacher’s attorney, told Patch that Davidson “ought to be careful” and could possibly end up in a defamation lawsuit.

“These are false allegations about something that allegedly occurred many years ago,” Mitev said. “This simply did not happen.”

Davidson told Patch that although more people are aware of her allegations against the teacher, she felt her story was not fully told, and published the letter herself.

“I Was Easy Prey”

Davidson was a student in the teacher’s class as a freshman during the 2010-11 school year. This was the start of his “special” interest in her, she said in the letter.

“I was a quiet, soft spoken 14 – 15 year old,” she wrote. “He had seemed to take an interest in me after I had made a passing joke in his class one day during a lesson.”

She became more vocal in his classes, but finished the school year out of class due to health issues.
Davidson claimed the grooming “escalated” in the 2011-12 school year. She spent time in his classroom after school and during lunch periods, when they would hang out with a group of other students.

“He had started to build up a level of trust,” she said.

At this time, Davidson said she had trouble relating to her peers, after missing out on social experiences due to her illness. She felt comfortable talking with the teacher about things that “felt much more relatable.”

She was also interested in the field of science and saw him as a mentor.

“I believe he saw my loneliness and depression and took full advantage of that vulnerability,” she said. “I was easy prey.”

In her senior year, Davidson said she continued to spend all of her free periods in his classroom.
“He would even have me sit in on his classes, telling everyone I was his daughter,” she said.

He would also hold her in “long hugs,” she said.

“This was not sexual to me, as someone who was struggling, this seemed like a comforting act I appreciated,” she said. “Fathers hug their daughters, right?”

The “hugs” slowly turned into hugs where Davidson would sit on the teacher’s lap, she said in the letter.

Davidson wrote that while sitting on his lap, the teacher would put his hands under her shirt.
“He would tell me that he was struggling mentally and that the ‘feeling of’ my skin ‘brought him comfort’,” she said. “That I was ‘saving him.’”

One day, the teacher’s actions went a step further, and he attempted to touch her on more parts of her body, she said. “I very sharply said ‘no.'”

In the weeks that followed, Davidson expressed to the teacher that she was “having panic attacks” about the incident. The teacher told her to not tell anyone about it, she said.

The teacher allowed her to tell another educator about the incident using specific wording.

Davidson later expressed this to a female teacher, who agreed the teacher’s actions were “not intentional.”

According to the police report, the female teacher denied that Davidson made such an allegation to her.

For the remainder of her senior year, Davidson said she still had “anxiety” about it but was beginning to “find her place,” and eventually began dating another student.

When that relationship ended, the teacher was “there to pick up the pieces” of the breakup.

“He had stated during our conversations that if he were my age, I would have been his dream girl,” she said. “He would make passing comments about our age gap and how he wanted to take me away somewhere where no one would question our age and marry me.”

The teacher gave her his cellphone number, and the two began texting in and out of school.

Davidson also wrote that her last month of school was “hell” because of bullying from other teachers. Some teachers “caught on” of the teacher and Davidson’s relationship, and would call her names in the hallway.

“Instead of getting me help, they ridiculed me,” she said. “I had to walk down the halls by myself while teachers whispered about me as I walked by them. They would call me a ‘mistress’ a ‘whore’ a ‘home wrecker.’”

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“Working Up The Courage”

Davidson told Patch she told her parents about the incident after her high school graduation.

“I think I was afraid of disappointing him, there was so much weight put on making him proud,” she told Patch. “There was also the fear that if he did go to jail that his children would lose their father and I thought that would be all my fault.”

At this time, she didn’t believe it was a possible crime until her mother told her this was considered a crime.

The teacher stopped texting Davidson in her first semester of college after her parents threatened him, she said.

She wanted to tell the school or police for a number of years leading up to me sending the letter, but was afraid of facing victim-blaming or shaming from the public.

“Every time I thought I had found the strength to tell someone of authority, I backed out from fear,” she told Patch.

Davidson told Patch she had been “actively working up the courage” to send a letter to the school, at the same time several Babylon School District alumni publicly came forward with sexual abuse allegations.

“It was the first time I had ever seen survivors of teacher-based assault, it was the first time I realized I wasn’t alone, and all of our stories were so incredibly similar in terms of grooming,” she said.

Her fears were diminished after reading about the Nov. 15, 2021 Babylon Board of Education meeting, when dozens of alumni protested against the district’s alleged lack of disciplinary action against named teachers.

“Seeing that the public was actively supporting survivors was the first time I realized maybe I wouldn’t have all the blame for what happened to me,” she told Patch.

The Brentwood School District attempted to go through 3020-a proceedings — state-mandated disciplinary proceedings that could lead to a tenured termination — with the teacher. Davidson also worked with the Suffolk County Police Department, which ultimately concluded that the statute of limitations expired.

Davidson then connected with the nonprofit Crime Victims Center. A lot of people don’t “realize just how awful” the 3020-a process is for the victim, she said.

Before the 3020-a process took place, the teacher resigned, forcing the district to abandon its case to terminate him. The teacher reached a settlement with the district.

The teacher is still licensed to teach, according to online state records. Davidson told Patch she felt compelled to write the Facebook post to tell her story in her own words, and to prevent any student from experiencing a similar situation.

If she could have taken the teacher to criminal court, she would, she told Patch.

“If I wasn’t going to get real justice, I wanted him to have to face me. To have to hear what he did from my mouth. To feel even an ounce of unease and discomfort,” she told Patch. “To see with his own eyes that I wasn’t going to keep his secret ever again.”

The New York State Education Department told Patch in a statement that it takes “misconduct against educators seriously”, and does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations in order to protect the fairness and integrity of 3020-a processes.

At the end of her public post, Davidson concluded with a message for all school districts.

“This abuse happens every single day in schools, so much more than you know, and it isn’t talked about enough. The process of a victim coming forward and fighting for change and justice is unjust, brutal and unkind,” she said. “Even so, we will not be quiet any longer.”

Patch reached out to the office of the Brentwood superintendent multiple times for comment.

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