Sidwell sued over staff psychologist's affair

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This was the child's psychologist. It wasn't just an affair.

Both the mother and the school deny there was any professional relationship between the child and the psychologist. Dad has a different version. I would withhold judgement on this until the case is made in court (the dad's complaint is his version of events, not proved facts).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This was the child's psychologist. It wasn't just an affair.

Precisely. I don't understand why people here are jumping to the defense of Tara the Tramp. She was wholeheartedly involved in this too, and obviously saw nothing wrong with getting involved with her child's psychologist. How sick is that?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is my opinion on why the husband filed the lawsuit:

Once upon a time an affair between a separated spouse and a faculty or staff member at their child's school -- no matter how genuine and beautiful the love, or how very discretely and privately maintained -- would have been considered a shocking thing indeed.

And in that time, if anyone had caught a whiff of what was going on, there would probably have been some societal consternation and condemnation of such love.

For better or for worse, those days are gone. People now take a live-and-let-live approach and are, frankly, more likely to laugh at an affair than to judge it.

It is likely that no one at all has changed either their opinion or their treatment of the separated spouse or the staff member involved.

Perhaps the husband, recalling that once-upon-a-time, is frustrated that no one now seems to care about behavior which is arguably hurtful to him.

In filing the lawsuit he may hope that society-at-large will provide the judgment of the relationship that the immediate community involved did not.

He may also be trying to impose consequences for behavior which he feels has had none.

Maybe, but an old-fashioned gentleman, as you describe, might think through the effect on his daughter to have the details of said affair printed in newspapers around the globe. He essentially eliminated any chance that his child can get over this.

[Anonymous]

PP 9:29. I hate to say it, but I think that once upon a time people did not necessarily emphasize the feelings, wants and self-esteem of children in general.

Think of the days of spankings, public parental reprimands, published honor rolls and class ranks, no co-valedictorians, and trophies only for the winners.

[Anonymous]

Trophies are supposed to be just for the winners. Striving to be best is what made this country great. There is no shame in defeat if you put your best into it. Trophies-for-all generates an entitlement mindset that hurts society'sprogress. Your other points are ver good though.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This was the child's psychologist. It wasn't just an affair.

Both the mother and the school deny there was any professional relationship between the child and the psychologist. Dad has a different version. I would withhold judgement on this until the case is made in court (the dad's complaint is his version of events, not proved facts).

I suspect that the mother is claiming the professional relationship had terminated. But if he did do that evaluation and make recommendations to the school, he had a formal, professional relationship with the child and that doesn't just go away because the mom starts sleeping with the psych, especially since he seems to have used his evaluation and the process to ingratiate himself with the mom. From the school's perspective, they have a psychologist on staff, who is also evaluating a student and making recommendations, in his professional capacity, to the school. They then learn that he has used this role to get involved with the mother, and that the daughter -- their student -- is aware of this, and they do nothing. It may be in the school's interest to deny a professional relationship but unless its untrue that he did the evaluation and made an educational recommendation, I don't see it flying.

[Anonymous]

Hell hath no fury as a man scorned... or cuckolded. Maybe mom married up and is the breadwinner.

[Anonymous]

No. Mom is not the breadwinner in the Newmyer family juggernaut.

Whatever else may be unclear here, you can be sure of this.

[Anonymous]

Newmyer is immensely wealthy - perhaps in the hundred million range... he is not doing this for money & not going to settle... unless he is looking for leverage to remove he child from Sidwell (depending on what was in the post-nup. This will probably will get dragged out...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
I suspect that the mother is claiming the professional relationship had terminated. But if he did do that evaluation and make recommendations to the school, he had a formal, professional relationship with the child and that doesn't just go away because the mom starts sleeping with the psych, especially since he seems to have used his evaluation and the process to ingratiate himself with the mom. From the school's perspective, they have a psychologist on staff, who is also evaluating a student and making recommendations, in his professional capacity, to the school. They then learn that he has used this role to get involved with the mother, and that the daughter -- their student -- is aware of this, and they do nothing. It may be in the school's interest to deny a professional relationship but unless its untrue that he did the evaluation and made an educational recommendation, I don't see it flying.

From yesterday's Washington Post:

The counseling sessions with the child occurred off school property, the lawsuit states. But Newmyer’s wife, Tara Newmyer, said through an attorney that the school psychologist, identified in the lawsuit as James F. “Jack” Huntington, was not treating her daughter “in any professional capacity.”

link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/sidwell-friends-school-sued-for-10-million-over-alleged-affair/2011/05/12/AFnsjX1G_story.html

[Anonymous]

I think this serves Sidwell right for admitting the child of a woman who attended Rutgers. What did they expect?

[Anonymous]

LOL!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think this serves Sidwell right for admitting the child of a woman who attended Rutgers. What did they expect?

Better yet maybe it will cause them to reconsider their policy of automatically admitting children of large donors. People who give large amounts of money expect to have their say in running the school. And apparently know how to get revenge when they don't get their way.

[Anonymous]

After leaving Sidwell Jack Huntington joined a firm in Bethesda called Rathbone and Associates, but they just dropped him from their website. He continues to work at the Wake Kendall Group, which was founded by the wife of a Sidwell board member. Small wonder that they keep him around!

[Anonymous]

"Terry" Newmyer and I were classmates at The Sidwell Friends School a half century ago. I last saw him in 1963. While the specifics of his lawsuit against the school are unfortunate, they serve to point out a glaring shortcoming of the school which has gone unreported and unaddressed for far too long. In 1883 Mr. Sidwell founded a school predicated upon the principles of the highest educational, moral and ethical standards. In the middle of the last century, at the urging of many of the influential parents from Washington's highest socioeconomic strata, the school undertook what can only be characterized as a concerted program of social engineering which sacrificed those same educational, moral and ethical standards to the prevailing ideology of the city's aristocracy to keep the student body populated with those whose parents were notable and whose acceptance into the nation's finest colleges and universities was assured by legacy and the "old boy network" rather than intellect and merit. Having attended Quaker meetings for my fourteen years at Sidwell Friends where we were instructed to listen to our "inner voice", I would respectfully suggest that the school listen to its own inner voice and let it guide them back to the path Mr. Sidwell set nearly 130 years ago.