John Jay Professors Allegedly Preyed on Female Students, Sold Drugs

Four professors at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan have been accused of selling drugs and “pimping out” two female students.

A new report from the New York Post claims that four professors at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan allegedly preyed on female students. The students, who spoke to the Post about their accusations, claim that four professors preyed on them during their time at the college.

Naomi Haber, 24, claims that Anthropology Department chair Anthony Marcus violently raped her during a night out at an academic conference in 2015. “He put his hands around my throat, choked me with both hands and forced himself inside me without warning,” she wrote in a document that described the accusation. “The only thing I could do was to go numb and detach myself from my body.”

Haber claims that another anthropology professor, Ric Curtis, urged her to have sex with his colleagues. Additionally, Haber accused Curtis of casually selling marijuana and using it in his John Jay office. “Ric was magnetic and introduced me to a world of deviance that I had no idea existed,” Haber said in the document regarding her relationship with Curtis. “Ric was an expert at sniffing out those vulnerabilities, so he was aware of how impressionable I was.”

Another student, Claudia Cojocaru, claims that Curtis groped her during a party in Brooklyn. Cojocaru, a 30-year-old former student of the college, also filed a complaint against Barry Spunt regarding unwanted touching and inappropriate comments. Spunt has aggressively claimed that the accusations are false.

To make matters worse, Cojocaru believes that she was chosen because of her troubled past, which made her more vulnerable to manipulation. “I was vulnerable and alone without family, or a solid network of friends,” Cojocaru said in a statement. “Much like other women in their entourage, I believe that I was chosen because of the belief that my history of trauma would make me malleable and submissive, and if I ever ‘turned’ on these people, it would make it easier to discredit my complaints of being preyed upon and assaulted as a byproduct of mental illness, or medication side-effects.”

The accused professors have been placed on paid administrative leave. They are not teaching courses during the fall semester.