A teacher at the elite New York school where Jeffrey Epstein once taught has resigned after being accused of sexually abusing a pupil for two years.
Mara Naaman, 50, stepped down four days after Dalton School received a letter written ‘on behalf of a former student’ claiming the English teacher abused them between 2020 and 2022.
Parents at the $61,000 a year private school were alerted three days later in an email from principal Jose De Jesús which warned them that there may be other victims.
‘We are only providing the name of the teacher so anyone with relevant information can provide such information,’ he wrote.
‘Our priority is determining the veracity of these claims and determining whether there are other allegations of abuse from other members of the community.’
Mother and former Fulbright Scholar Mara Naaman, 50, resigned from her job as an English teacher at Dalton School in New York four days after it received allegations of sexual abuseÂ
Principal Jose De Jesus told parents the school was trying to establish the number of victims
A mother and former Fulbright scholar who described herself as a ‘writer, scholar, humanist’, Naaman was a tenured Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Williams College in Massachusetts where she spent seven years before joining Dalton in 2017.
At the school she taught English literature to ninth through 12th graders and was appointed a ‘house advisor’, responsible for ‘creating a safe space for conversations around personal responsibility’, according to the school’s website.
‘House Advisors not only advise on academic matters but are a ‘sounding board’ for students on all matters, including social and emotional issues,’ it explains.
‘Moreover, the House Advisor is the main contact between Dalton and the student’s family.’
Former students at the K-12 school include journalist Anderson Cooper, actresses Claire Danes and Tracee Ellis Ross, and actor Chevy Chase
The school gained notoriety during the trial of Jeffrey Epstein when it emerged that the billionaire pedophile had worked there as a physics and math teacher in 1973, tutoring the son of former Bear Stearns chairman Alan ‘Ace’ Greenberg among others.
It was also at the center of a legal action against former principal Gardner Dunnan who was accused in a 2018 lawsuit of sexually abusing a 14-year-old student he took into his home in the 1980s.
Dunnan allowed the girl to be admitted to the school without going through a formal application process, the lawsuit claimed.
Given she couldn’t afford the tuition, the lawsuit states that the girl was allowed to live with Dunnan and his wife provided she helped them with their newborn baby at their apartment near the school.
Naaman, a Columbia University graduate, was among dozens of Dalton staff who signed an ‘anti-racism manifesto’ in 2020 demanding an overhaul of the curriculum before they would return to class after the pandemic.
The eight-page document demanded the hiring of 12 dedicated diversity officers, giving half of all donations to New York’s public schools, and the elimination of AP classes if black students’ scores don’t equal those of white students.
School officials insisted the document was just a set of ‘thought starters’, and said it already had a ‘commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racism grounded in our deep appreciation for the dignity of all community members’.
The school has reported the latest accusations to the police and have hired ‘an external investigative firm T&M USA LLC, experts in the field of sexual misconduct to conduct an investigation’.
The $61,000-a-year school on the Upper East Side boasts journalist Anderson Cooper, actresses Claire Danes and Tracee Ellis Ross, and actor Chevy Chase among its alumni
The former Fulbright scholar, originally from Michigan, gave up a tenured role as Assistant Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature at Williams College in Massachusetts before joining Dalton in 2017Â
‘The school has clear policy and boundary guidelines for appropriate interactions with Dalton students,’ De Jesus wrote.
‘Currently at the time of hire, all employees are fingerprinted and we conduct a background check.
‘Annually they attend boundaries and sexual harassment prevention trainings.’
Naaman’s sudden resignation has also alarmed some parents who were relying on her for college recommendations for their children.
‘It was a very big surprise,’ one former Dalton parent told the New York Post.
‘Everyone has been talking about it but no one really knows what happened.’