'Always Thinking Of You'

A spokesman from the Lawrence Woodmere Academy sent Patch this statement in response to this story:

“The Lawrence Woodmere Academy puts the wellbeing of our students first. Any inappropriate contact between teachers and students is unacceptable and has no place in any school. As such, the individuals referenced in news reports were no longer employed at our school.

“New leadership is in place and we worked with an independent third party to develop additional training and protocols to help prevent unacceptable behavior from occurring. We are deeply committed to providing a safe, supportive and quality learning experience for our students.”

Samantha Farber was 14 and a freshman at the Lawrence Woodmere Academy when her history teacher, who was 28 years old, “fell in love” with her. She would call his unwanted advances an obsession.

He was unable to stop thinking about her, he’d tell her. He’d talk to her about how unhappy he was with his wife and how he wished he and Farber could run away together. He’d leave her love notes in her binder and send her more than 100 emails from an email address he created specifically for that purpose. He would come up behind her and rub her shoulders, or put his hand on her knee if they were sitting next to each other.

After two and a half years of his advances, Farber had finally had enough. She spoke up. She told the principal. She told the dean. She told the school’s headmaster. She even told the board of directors. The headmaster confronted the teacher, and he confessed to everything — he said he couldn’t get her out of his head.

And then … nothing. The police were not called. The parents of other students at the Lawrence Woodmere Academy were not notified. Because the teacher never assaulted Farber — because they never had sex — the school did nothing. After weeks, after the headmaster asked Farber what she wanted the school to do, the teacher resigned. He’s now teaching at a middle school in Westchester.

Farber had to finish high school. Because of the close-knit nature of the school, everyone knew that the teacher had left because of her. And they hated her for it. She was vilified and mocked. She lost her friends. She developed an eating disorder. She went to therapy. And still, the school did nothing.

So when news broke in October about another LWA teacher having an inappropriate relationship with a student — this time, a former teacher who had an ongoing, long-term sexual relationship with a student starting when she was 14 — Farber heard the echoes of her story. The teacher had left the school. Parents weren’t told. The school did nothing.

When she saw that, Farber decided, again, to speak up. And hoped that, this time, it would be enough. And that people would listen.

'Thinking Of You'

Farber started at the upper school of the Lawrence Woodmere Academy in the fall of 2008. The school is small, and boasts about its low student-to-teacher ratio. It’s not at all unusual for teachers to get close with their students and develop friendships.

But Farber relationship with her teacher, whom we’ll call Mr. Smith, was different. “He would always comment on how I looked and how I acted so mature and how he wished I was older,” she said.

Over the course of her freshman year, Farber grew close with Mr. Smith. When her freshman year ended, Farber was having her friends and teachers sign her yearbook. Mr. Smith simply wrote, “Have a nice summer.” Farber asked him, “That’s it? That’s all I mean to you?” He responded, “I can’t write what I really feel in a yearbook.”

Mr. Smith then pulled out a tissue and wrote, “You’re what makes me get out of bed in the morning.”

“It was almost like wedding vows,” Farber recalled.

In her sophomore year, things with Mr. Smith became more intense. She would spend time in his classroom, and the two would talk every day, even though Farber didn’t have him as a teacher. Often times, the conversations drifted to how unhappy he was with his marriage.

“He’d say, ‘Why can’t my wife be as easy as you to talk to?’ Stuff like that.”

Towards the end of the year, a bunch of students and teachers were gathered together in a classroom and chatting. Mr. Smith took a Dunkin’ Donuts napkin and wrote on it, “Do you like me? Yes. No. Maybe.” and slid it to Farber, indicating she should circle one.

Farber said she was flabbergasted that her teacher would pass her a note like that. She handed it back to him. After everyone else left the room, he asked her about it again, and she told him to answer himself. He circled “Yes.”

“And then I did, because I felt I was obligated to,” she said.

For the remaining days of her sophomore year, Mr. Smith was lamenting what he would do without being able to talk to Farber every day. On the last day of school, Mr. Smith created a new email address and gave it to Farber and told her to email him so they could continue to talk during the summer. Farber refused, and told Mr. Smith that he had her email, so he could email her if he wanted to talk so badly.

“It took 15 minutes for him to send the first email,” she said. That first email said that he would miss her and that he would be thinking about her all summer. Over the summer, Farber said that Mr. Smith sent her more than 250 emails and text messages.

“We should hang out,” one email read. “You should send me pics.” “Thinking of you.” “Wish I was there tanning with you.”

The messages would vary in content and tone, she said. But they were constant.

“He was drunk one night at a bachelor party and he emailed me that he was thinking about me,” Farber said. “I think he loved the thrill of it.”

Farber said she tried to never enable Mr. Smith. She would never initiate a conversation with him, only reply to messages he sent. He always made the first move.

When Farber's junior year started, she once again had Mr. Smith as a teacher. She said that on the first day of school, he told her that she didn’t have to take any tests or do any work in his class, and he would just give her good grades — so long as she kept talking to him and going to the after-school clubs he was a part of.

Mr. Smith was emboldened to take things to a new level.

“On buses, he would sit in the seat in front of me so he could hold my hand through the crack of the seat,” she recounted. “He’d come up when I was on the computer and massage me. He’d hug me when I’d leave and whisper in my ear, and I’d just flinch.”

Farber said she would sometimes leave her books and materials for other classes in Mr. Smith’s room, because it was easier than using a locker. On some occasions, she would come back to find notes tucked into her books. They’d say things like, “I love you,” and “Always thinking of you.”

In December of that year, which was 2010, the constant advances and touches finally hit a boiling point for Farber. “I was really getting uncomfortable with everything and I didn’t know how to express it,” she said. “I couldn’t sit in his class, so I’d leave.”

When school reconvened after winter break, Farber had finally had enough. She went to the administration with the emails and notes he wrote her and told them everything.

Consequences

“We decided we are not going to fire him.”

It was the response that Farber claims she got from Alan Bernstein, the headmaster of the Lawrence Woodmere Academy. Because Mr. Smith had never had sex with her, the school was going to allow him to stay.

Bernstein wasn’t the only school official Farber said she told about the emotional and psychological torment. She told Shelley Silbering, who was then the principal of the upper school and has since retired; and Marc Hoyle, who was then the dean, and is now the principal of the upper school.

Farber was 16 when she reported what Mr. Smith had done to her for the past two-and-a-half years. She said that Bernstein asked his 16-year-old daughter, who was also Farber's friend at the time, if anything “inappropriate” had happened besides the emails.

Bernstein called Mr. Smith into his office and asked him if the accusations against him were true. He admitted to it, Farber said. She later heard that Mr. Smith told Bernstein, “I got her into my head and couldn’t get her out.”

Farber's father threatened the school with legal and public action if nothing was done. Eventually, he called one of the members of the school’s Board of Directors, who told Bernstein to get rid of Mr. Smith.

Weeks after she reported Mr. Smith’s behavior, Farber was called into Bernstein’s office. He asked her, “If you’re uncomfortable with him, do you want to leave?” Farber said no. So Bernstein asked her what she would like the school to do. She was taken aback that the head of the school would shoulder her with the responsibility of deciding what to do with Mr. Smith.

Bernstein asked her if she’d be OK with Mr. Smith resigning, and Farber said yes. So he did, and the school sent an email to the parents saying that Mr. Smith resigned. But that email did not include the reason for his resignation or what he had done to Farber. Mr. Smith was not fired.

That, unfortunately, was not the end of Farber's troubles.

“He disappeared, and I got tormented,” she said. “I literally lost every single friend, other than my best friend. I lost everything. I was journaling, and writing, ‘I want to die. I can’t believe my life is ruined. I hope his life is better.’”

Farber, who is now studying to become a social worker, has dealt with the effects of what Mr. Smith did to her for years. She feels it was one of the main factors that led to the eating disorder that turned her world upside down for years.

“It lessened myself worth,” she said. “It made me think I was just an object for someone to stare at. It made me hate my body.”

The Lawrence Woodmere Academy would not comment about Farber's accusations against Mr. Smith, or the school’s reaction.

“At LWA, student safety and a successful education has always been and continues to be a top priority throughout our school history of over 100 years,” Marc Hoyle wrote to Patch in an email. “Out of respect for employee privacy, the school does not discuss personnel matters publicly.”

Patch also reached out to Mr. Smith, but did not receive a reply.

“These are supposed to be people who are teaching me right from wrong, and what’s appropriate or not appropriate,” she said. “But because he didn’t touch me or do anything that was criminal, it wasn’t enough.”

Repercussions

Farber, who is now 24, said it took years for her to stop blaming herself for what happened. It all came to a head for her last October when she heard about the arrest of Daniel McMenamin, whom she called Mac, a former LWA teacher. McMenamin was arrested on Oct. 19 and charged with two dozen counts of rape for his alleged ongoing sexual relationship with a former student at LWA, which began in November 2014 when the girl was 14. McMenamin left LWA two years ago.

“When I saw the news about Mac, who was my volleyball coach, I knew this played out the way my story played out,” said Farber.

Seeing the story of McMenamin’s arrest inspired Farber to go to the police and report what had happened to her. Though the officers filed a report, Farber said they didn’t think she had much chance of pressing criminal charges because Mr. Smith didn’t physically assault her.

“If you told me all it would take is for me to have sex with him and then I’d have a case, I would do it in a heartbeat,” Farber said. “No one is taking into consideration how much I went through at such a young age. I was manipulated by a guy and thought it was my body that was causing this.”

Farber also draws a direct line between the school neglecting to tell parents about Mr. Smith, and the school neglecting to tell parents about McMenamin’s alleged crimes, which she believes the school knew about and covered up.

“It’s really hard, especially with the #metoo movement, to think that if the school maybe took a bit of responsibility back when [Mr. Smith] was fired, maybe Mac wouldn’t have done what he did.”

Farber did not come to Patch with her story, but she was happy to talk about it. What she wants, she said, is for someone to listen to her and do something, instead of saying what Mr. Smith did to her was OK because she wasn’t raped.

“Private schools care about protecting their reputation and the checks that are signed, and it’s at the cost of the security, and the dignity, of their students,” she said.

Farber also told her story to the New York Post. In the days after her account was published, Bernstein stepped down as headmaster of the Lawrence Woodmere Academy.

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