Ex-teacher accused of groping student sues N.J. girl’s family, calls accusations ‘baseless’

A former Monmouth County teacher accused of molesting a 14-year-old girl has filed a lawsuit against the student, her family and school officials after the educator said the “baseless” allegations destroyed her career.
Jenna Sciabica, a former special education teacher, filed a countersuit last month in Superior Court of Monmouth County denying the unnamed family’s allegations. The student’s family sued the teacher earlier this year after the girl’s mother spoke at a school board meeting and accused the teacher of sexually assaulting her daughter.
Sciabica was later charged with harassment by offensive touching in municipal court after a month-long investigation by police. A municipal judge found Sciabica not guilty at a hearing in the case Thursday, according to her attorney, Mitchell J. Ansell.
Sciabica’s lawsuit alleges the family “demanded the Marlboro School District pay them $5 million, or they would file a lawsuit.”
The school district rejected the demand, the lawsuit said.
Sciabica also filed a defamation complaint against school staff and more than a dozen people who made claims about the case online, including in a YouTube video and via Facebook comments.
“Ms. Sciabica was a devoted educator and member of the community, and it is shameful how she has been treated by her friends, colleagues, and others who rushed to judgment without knowing all the facts,” said Layne A. Feldman, Sciabica’s attorney.
“As a result, her reputation is ruined, and she will likely never again work in her chosen career,” said Feldman. “She has received bomb threats at her home. This is utterly inexcusable.”
Marlboro school officials did not respond to a request for comment. The family’s attorney, Nimi Ameri, also did not respond to a request for comment.
“Ms. Sciabica is a victim here, but so is the minor child at the center of this Complaint, whose parents have sacrificed her anonymity in service of their greed,” Feldman said. “Ms. Sciabica may never be able to regain her reputation, but we are hopeful that our efforts will bring her justice.
Sciabica was charged in April with harassment by offensive touching, a petty disorderly persons offense. An attorney representing Sciabica at Thursday’s hearing in the case said she was found not guilty.
In April, school officials sent a letter to the community that said Sciabica was no longer in her position after she was accused of inappropriate physical contact with the student in a school hallway at Marlboro Memorial Middle School in March.
The district’s letter followed a dramatic statement at a school board meeting by the girl’s mother.
“My daughter was sexually abused in this school,” the mother told the school board. Standing with her husband, the woman alleged school officials failed to protect her daughter from the teacher and mishandled the incident.
“She molested my daughter,” the mother said of the teacher. The alleged sexual abuse was caught on surveillance video, and another teacher witnessed the assault in the school hallway, the woman said.
The 14-year-old was also forced to go to Sciabica’s classroom following the alleged incident, where she had a class, the girl’s mother said.
In May, the family filed a lawsuit against Sciabica and school officials, alleging a video shows Sciabica fondling the student’s breast in the hallway in view of another teacher.
The lawsuit also alleged Sciabica repeatedly made sexual comments in front of her students, who were between 10 and 14, including inappropriate remarks about other teachers at the school and her own sex life.
Sciabica was a tutor and was familiar to the teenager’s family, the complaint said. Sciabica privately tutored the girl’s two younger brothers. The girl was also a student in Sciabica’s classroom at school.
In her countersuit filed last month, Sciabica denied she inappropriately touched the girl and made sexual remarks to students. She viewed the girl as a daughter or niece, due to her friendship with the girl’s mother, her lawsuit said.
“There was absolutely and unequivocally nothing sexual about their relationship and it is wholly inaccurate and frankly, disgusting, to suggest otherwise,” the lawsuit said.
The incident in the school hallway was related to a conversation the previous week when the girl tried on her 8th-grade dance dress at home while Sciabica was at the house and the dress didn’t properly fit her chest, the complaint alleged.
In the school hallway the next week, Sciabica asked if the girl borrowed a shirt of hers and “pulled at some fabric on the chest area of the shirt, feeling the shirt,” the complaint said.
She also tapped the girl’s chest twice for no longer than a second and asked, “What did mom decide?” about the dress, according to the lawsuit.
The girl “giggled and stomped her feet,” and replied that her mother was taking the dress in, the lawsuit said.
The video showing the incident demonstrates there was no groping, the lawsuit alleges.
The teacher who witnessed the incident tutored the girl, but at roughly half the rate that Sciabica was paid to tutor the girl’s siblings, making her jealous of Sciabica, the lawsuit alleges.
There had been no prior complaints about Sciabica during her 16-year teaching career, her lawsuit said.
Sciabica was forced to resign, lost her tenure and may lose her pension, the complaint alleged. She is also in danger of losing her teaching license, it said.
“She has received credible death threats and numerous unwanted communications from actual pedophiles and creepy men,” the lawsuit said.
NJ Advance Media staff writers Tina Kelley and Eric Conklin contributed to this report.
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Brianna Kudisch may be reached at [email protected].