Toms River Board, Superintendent Face Sexual Harassment Suit

TOMS RIVER, NJ — A Toms River high school guidance counselor has filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the Toms River Regional Board of Education and Superintendent David M. Healy, alleging Healy made repeated inappropriate comments about her legs and accusing the board of failing to properly address her complaint.

Ann M. Millard, a guidance counselor at Toms River High School East, filed the lawsuit April 10, according to documents obtained from the Ocean County Courthouse. The lawsuit follows up on an affirmative action complaint Millard filed last June alleging Healy had on four occasions made inappropriate comments about her legs.

Millard alleges the following incidents:

• After a Senior Night awards presentation in 2016, Healy congratulated her on the event, and then proceeded to say he was "distracted by (her) calves," and followed up by asking if she worked out, then compared her legs to those of another district employee, suggesting there should be a "best legs" contest. Millard says the incident happened in front of Toms River East Principal Patrick Thomas and Assistant Superintendents John Coleman and Marc Natanagara.
• Outside Toms River East, as Millard's husband arrived in their pickup truck to pick her up, Healy said to her that her husband should help her into the truck, but then added, "I guess you don't need help."
• At an event for parents of 8th-graders, Healy approached her and other counselors and commented to her, "I see you're still running," which Millard alleges prompted remarks from other counselors about the fact that he remembered her.
• After the 2017 Senior Night awards, that Healy approached her on the stage and after congratulating her on the event, told her she forgot "an award for the best legs" and proceeded to bring up the female employee he had mentioned the year before, and asked about Millard's workouts. Millard's lawsuit says Thomas was present and attempted to deflect the conversation by saying the entire guidance team wears FitBits but Healy responded, "no, it must be genetics."

Millard says the comments made her extremely uncomfortable and caused anxiety attacks — issues that worsened when copies of her affirmative action complaint were distributed anonymously to the news media and subsequently published. The publication of her detailed complaint sparked outrage and repeated public debate at Toms River school board meetings from July through November, as residents demanded answers on the district's response.

Millard's lawsuit says the board failed to adequately investigate her complaint and never revealed what actions the board took to address the issue with Healy or to punish him, beyond a letter she received that said Healy "regrets that his comments concerning her physical fitness caused Ms. Millard discomfort and embarrasment in her work environment."

Toms River school board attorney Stephan R. Leone of Carluccio, Leone, Dimon, Doyle and Sacks rejected the lawsuit's claims. "I'm satisfied the board took proper action," he said Monday, declining to comment further.

Brenda Liss, of the firm Riker, Danzig, Scherer, Hyland and Perretti, said by email late Tuesday that Healy denies the allegations in the complaint, "and he denies engaging in any inappropriate conduct." She also declined to comment further and said Healy would not be commenting on pending litigation.

Steven R. Cohen, the attorney for the Toms River Education Association who filed the original affirmative action complaint with the district last June, declined to comment when reached by phone Monday.

Millard's original complaint was filed June 22, and Leone asked retired Superior Court Judge Vincent J. Grasso to investigate the allegations. Leone said Grasso, who is a member of Leone's firm, was asked to investigate because it involved the superintendent and the district felt it should be an impartial, outside investigation. Millard's lawsuit says the investigation was neither impartial nor outside because of the fact that Grasso works for Leone's firm.

Grasso's investigation was completed July 28 and the report presented to the school board Aug. 7; by that time, Millard's complaint had become public in news reports following the leak.

Millard's name was redacted from copies of the complaint sent to the news media, including Patch, but the details it contained were sufficient to identify Millard to anyone who knew her, the lawsuit said. The Asbury Park Press published the complaint letter in its entirety, the lawsuit notes, and she says she received multiple emails, phone calls and text messages after its publication as a result.

Meanwhile, angry residents and former school district employees excoriated the board repeatedly, demanding to know what was being done to Healy. They were further angered by the hiring of private investigator James Dierking of DAR Associates of Beachwood, to look into the source of that leak. Leone said the leak of the complaint was just one of several issues, and he said the leaks compromised the integrity of the board and were potentially a significant ethical violation. Critics said the board should have been less concerned with the leaks and more concerned with the allegations about Healy's behavior.

Then-Board President Ben Giovine said the board was satisfied with the outcome of Grasso's investigation into Millard's allegations and had full confidence in Healy.

The source of the leak has never been clear. The number of people who had access to Millard's initial complaint was limited to Cohen's office; Toms River Schools Business Administrator William Doering; the members of the school board, which at that time included Giovine, Loreen Torrone, Robert Onofrietti, Janet Bell, Gigi Esparza, Daniel Leonard, Christopher Raimann, Joe Nardini and Russ Corby, who is now the school board president; and Kathy Egan, who was president of the Toms River Education Association at the time, and Mary Novotny, a New Jersey Education Association representative. The anonymous packages were mailed the weekend before the July 19 school board meeting, with reports appearing that Tuesday, July 18.

The reasons for the leak of the original complaint, along with information that the board was renegotiating Healy's contract, seeemed to point to a concerted effort to undermine him. A retired teacher, Mary Coghlan, spoke at the November board meeting and unleashed a number of harsh comments, saying morale was low and accusing the district of being misleading in its statements on improvements in abstenteeism and dropout rates. The board approved the new five-year contract 6-1 with two abstentions, with both abstentions due to board members who have family members employed by the district.

The district has seen improvements in test scores, on the SAT in particular, and in other areas of its academic standing. It also has received more than $2 million in grants and funding from various outside sources, including a $637,000 sponsorship of the arena at Toms River North and a recent $763,000 grant from the U.S. Navy for an academic program, critical funding at a time where state funding has been threatened.

Millard says the continuous publicity that resulted from the leak caused her "additional pain, humiliation, suffering, embarassment and indignity." But neither she nor her attorney ever received a copy of the report, the lawsuit says; they are demanding an unredacted final copy of it.

Dierking's final report was never released even to the full school board, however. At the November 2017 school board meeting, Giovine refused, saying doing so would cause hard feelings among board members.

"We all sat down with the investigator, we all said certain things and I think if that was read by every board member, we would be hard pressed to (not) have ill will," Giovine said.

Healy was hired by the district in 2014, when it was still recovering from the shock and fallout of the 2010 arrest of Michael J. Ritacco. Ritacco later pleaded guilty to bribery charges after he accepted more than $2.3 million in kickbacks to direct the district's insurance contracts to a specific carrier. Ritacco retired on the day of his arrest, and has been in prison since September 2012, serving an 11-year sentence. Then-assistant Superintendent Frank Roselli took over but retired in June 2013 following a heart attack. Thomas Gialanella, the retired superintendent of the Jackson Township School District, served as interim superintendent until Healy was hired.

Millard, who is seeking unspecified monetary damages, wants the district to ensure Healy is not in attendance at programs where Millard is required to be present "unless a truly compelling reason exists for him to do so."

The lawsuit also demands that her complaint and the investigation reports be forwarded to the state Department of Education "and such and other further actions necessary to ensure that he will not be assigned to a supervisory position in the future."

Toms River Regional Schools administrative offices, via Google Maps