Two graduates of a well-known criminal justice college have come forward with allegations that professors themselves walked on the wrong side of the law.
Naomi Haber, 24, and Claudia Cojocaru, 39, spoke out in an interview with the New York Post on Saturday, sharing their claims of rampant misconduct at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.
The New York State inspector general and the Manhattan district attorney’s office are investigating the allegations, which date back to 2014, though the probe is in the early stages, a spokesman for the inspector general said.
Four professors have been put on administrative leave in the wake of the allegations: Anthony Marcus, the former anthropology chair; Richard ‘Ric’ Curtis, an expert on illegal drug markets; Barry Spunt, a former chair of the sociology department; and Leonardo Dominguez, an epidemiologist and adjunct professor.
John Jay graduates Naomi Haber, 24, and Claudia Cojocaru, 39, allege rampant misconduct among professors at the criminal college in Manhattan
Richard ‘Ric’ Curtis, an expert on illegal drug markets, was allegedly the ringleader, presiding over a world of drug use and sex in a secluded annex building known as ‘The Swamp’
In the interview, and in a formal complaints filed with the school’s Title IX office in May, the two women accuse the professors of various degrees of misconduct.
Perhaps the most heinous allegation is Haber’s that Anthony Marcus, the former chair of the anthropology department, violently raped her at at academic conference in Washington DC when she was a 21-year-old sophomore.
‘He put his hands around my throat, choked me with both hands and forced himself inside me without warning,’ she wrote in her complaint. ‘The only thing I could do was to go numb and detach myself from my body.’
The women allege that the ringleader of the misconduct was Curtis, 64, a respected anthropology professor who’s been at the school 30 years, who they say held court over a world of drug use and sex in a secluded annex building known as ‘The Swamp’.
Haber grew up in a Hasidic Jewish community in upstate New York, and says that Curtis took advantage of her sheltered upbringing.
‘Ric was magnetic and introduced me to a world of deviance that I had no idea existed,’ wrote Haber, who has cut ties with her religious community. ‘Ric was an expert at sniffing out those vulnerabilities, so he was aware of how impressionable I was.’
Haber claims that Curtis tried to entice her to have sex with academic colleagues, including a professor he was trying to recruit to teach at John Jay.
Both Haber and Cojocaru say that Curtis, an expert in illegal drugs and especially heroin, often used and sold drugs from his office in ‘The Swamp’.
Cojocaru said Curtis groped her while at another professor’s party in Brooklyn.
Haber said in her complaint that Dominguez, 27, an adjunct professor, tried to have sex with her and ‘continuously’ harassed her ‘even though I asked him to stop on many occasions.
‘We’d be sitting on Ric’s couch, and [Dominguez] would try and put his hands on my legs and on my butt,’ she wrote. ‘He would also stick his hands down my pants to see what underwear I was wearing and to feel my ‘warm vagina.’
Leo Dominguez is seen interviewing heroin users in the Bronx as part of his academic work in 2017. He is one of the John Jay professor placed on leave over misconduct allegations
A Romanian native, Cojocaru says she was the victim of sex trafficking and became a permanent resident in 2011 through the Violence Against Women Act. She is now a John Jay adjunct professor teaching a Sex and Culture course.
She filed a complaint against Spunt, 70, contending that the associate sociology professor ‘placed his hand on my buttocks without my consent, groping me.
‘He made inappropriate comments about my unwillingness to sit on Ric’s lap to show ‘gratitude’ about being ‘helped’ by Dr. Curtis.’
Spunt’s attorney Carmen Jack Giordano told the Post that Cojocaru’s accusations were ‘vicious and defamatory’. He claimed the accusations were in retribution for Cojocaru’s failure to get into John Jay’s PhD program.
Curtis’ attorney Robert Herbst also accused Cojocaru of making up her complaints because she was rejected from the PhD program.
Herbst told the Post that Curtis ‘has never before been the subject of complaints of misconduct of any kind at John Jay. Because he works with, studies, and teaches about people involved in the sex and drug trade, he is more vulnerable than most to false allegations of the kind that Ms. Cojocaru and Ms. Haber have hatched here.’
Professor Marcus’s lawyer, Scott Simpson, told the New York Times that his client ‘adamantly denied the allegations.’
A lawyer for Professor Dominguez could not be reached for comment.
A John Jay spokesman said that the school takes ‘any allegations of misconduct seriously, and we are cooperating with law enforcement authorities.
‘The safety of all members of the John Jay community is of utmost importance to us, and we expect every member of our community to live up to our standards of conduct,’ the spokesman added.