Divorced teacher mom, 40, 'is caught on tape performing oral sex on her teen boy student,' blames brain surgery as more boys accuse her
KNEWZ.COM | CHARLOTTE LEE
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Nicole Dufault, the New Jersey teacher who admitted to sexually abusing teenagers at Columbia High School and blamed her appalling behavior on brain surgery, has been accused by three more former students alleging abuse.
As northjersey.com reports, two lawsuits filed in state Superior Court two weeks ago, and a third filed on Tuesday, claim the South Orange-Maplewood School District and others failed to identify or act on knowledge of Dufault’s criminal behavior.
Each of the three ex-students is seeking $50 million in damages from the district and other defendants. John Baldante, an attorney representing the new plaintiffs, said Dufault “was just out of control with her behavior,” adding: “The question here is: What did the school know directly, or what should they have known?”
Dufault, 40, a divorced mother of two, was arrested in 2014 and pleaded guilty to aggravated criminal sexual contact with 14 and 15-year-old boys in January 2020. Prior to her arrest, she was a language arts teacher at the school for nine years.
Nicole Dufault’s sexual abuse came to light when a video of the disgraced teacher performing oral sex on a student spread on social media.
The explicit video caught the attention of students and administrators at the high school, leading to her arrest in 2014. Dufault pleaded guilty to criminal sexual contact in January 2020.
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In March, the former educator was sentenced to a suspended three-year sentence for sexually molesting her students. This meant she avoided having to serve any time in prison.
Oxygen reported in January 2020 that New Jersey prosecutors had sought a five-year state prison sentence.
The three new sexual abuse lawsuits against Nicole Dufault follow a similar suit filed by a former male student last month, claiming that between 2013 and 2015 — when the plaintiff was in his first two years at Columbia High — his teacher violated the trust placed in her as a mentor by molesting him and five other students.
Dufault, the suit alleges, leveraged her teacher’s pass to the school’s computer system to wipe out records of the truancy of the students she abused.
As Patch reports, the suit claims that during the secret sessions held in her classroom, the teacher would broach sexually explicit topics with the youngsters.
She would also touch “intimate parts of their bodies” in front of the others, according to the suit. The incidents also occurred in her car, authorities said at the time.
“Dufault customarily solicited and seduced [one plaintiff] by indicating that they were lovers and telling [the victim] that she ‘loved him,'” one of the lawsuits says.
As NJ.com reports, Nicole Dufault’s attorney, Timothy Smith, argued the sex abuse teacher was the victim due to brain surgery that left her vulnerable to the students.
Smith said his client suffered from “frontal lobe syndrome,” which some experts have said is associated with the inability to control impulses.
The divorced mother of two young sons was forced to forfeit her teaching licenses, register as a sex offender and will be subject to parole supervision for life.
