Councilman faces sexual harassment allegations, fallout
Amid a contentious campaign for higher office, explosive allegations have surfaced that Santa Clara Councilman Dominic Caserta sexually harassed students at the high school where he works, prompting his council colleagues to consider whether to censure him or demand his ouster from office.
Reached by phone Wednesday, Caserta, a candidate for county supervisor, said he plans to push ahead with his campaign.
“I am not planning to resign from the council and I’m not planning to suspend my campaign because the bottom line is these allegations are false and I’m going to continue to move forward,” he told this news organization.
“The #MeToo movement is authentic and powerful and courageous
and I support it,” Caserta continued. If anyone perceived his actions as inappropriate, he said, “I apologize for their perception.”
A personnel file for Caserta, a civics teacher at Santa Clara High School, apparently was mistakenly emailed to the entire Santa Clara
Unified School District staff on Monday and later deleted.
As first reported by San Jose Inside, the file shows Caserta faced multiple allegations of sexual harassment against students as early as 2002, from unwanted hugging to inappropriate comments and flirting. One student reportedly claimed Caserta ran his hands through her hair and made sexually charged remarks, including mentioning he had an erection. Another student reportedly said he told her to give him a hug.
Separately, Lydia Jungkind — a 19-year-old student from Germany who volunteered for his campaign — is accusing him of making inappropriate comments and gestures.
When the campaign team was taking pictures one time, Caserta pulled her by the waist, Jungkind said, and whispered in her ear that she looked “sexy.” Caserta kissed her on the cheek, Jungkind said, and at one point, while driving her to a bus stop, put his hand on her thigh and told her it was hard to resist the urge to kiss her.
It didn’t stop there, she said.
“He started to walk up on me while I was sitting on his living room table, working, and giving me massages, I told him I didn’t want a massage but he did not stop,” said Jungkind, who also had taken a class from Caserta at Foothill College in 2017.
On Tuesday when the allegations first surfaced, Caserta posted a statement on his website suggesting they are politically motivated.
But calls for Caserta’s resignation are mounting.
At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, which Caserta did not attend, several people, including the Rev. Jethroe Moore II, head of the San Jose Silicon Valley NAACP, called on him to quit the council.
“The allegations against him are serious and a danger to our children,” Moore said as attendees clapped. “This board, this group needs to take those accusations seriously.”
Mayor Lisa Gillmor thanked the speakers but stayed largely silent during the meeting.
On Wednesday, Gillmor said in a statement that the council would “openly discuss the allegations” at its meeting next Tuesday.
“This meeting will provide Councilman Caserta an opportunity to respond to the allegations against him,” Gillmor said. “Our city attorney will provide us with the actions the City Council may take to reprimand Councilman Caserta if appropriate. This could include a request for him to resign.”
On Wednesday, the city released a statement asking any of Caserta’s victims to contact the Santa Clara Police Department, which is searching its archives for records involving the councilman.
The Santa Clara County Democratic Party on Wednesday withdrew its endorsement of Caserta due to the allegations. The powerful South Bay Labor Council also pulled its support. And the San Jose Police Officers Association and the San Jose Fire Fighters Local 230 — which had endorsed Caserta — along with the Santa Clara County Government Attorneys Association released a joint statement calling on Caserta to pull out of the race and resign from the council.
Reached by phone Wednesday morning, Teresa O’Neill, who sits on the Santa Clara City Council with Caserta and served on the school board when Caserta was a young teacher, said she’d heard rumors for years but hadn’t witnessed any sexual harassment firsthand.
“A lot of us have had unpleasant encounters with Dominic,” O’Neill said, but they’ve largely involved his “temper,” she said.
“Dominic deserves due process,” O’Neill continued. “The first concern is for all the people, the students and other people who have been impacted.”
Asked whether she thought Caserta should be removed from the classroom, O’Neill said, “It sounds like it’s not beyond the realm of possibility based on what we’ve seen other places.”
Andrew Lucia, an assistant superintendent with the district, declined to discuss Caserta’s file, but said the district “takes all allegations very seriously.”
Lucia confirmed that, as of Tuesday afternoon, Caserta was still employed as a teacher in the district. He declined to discuss why the district has not removed Caserta from his classroom.
The district, Lucia added, is “taking steps to make sure we are securing employee records.”
The school board is scheduled to meet tonight. When reached by phone, Noelani Pearl Hunt, president of the district’s board of trustees, declined to discuss the possibility of removing Caserta and referred questions back to Lucia.
Karen Hardy, who was a long-term substitute teacher at Santa Clara High School years ago and later ran against Caserta for a seat on the Santa Clara City Council, told the Mercury News she remembers Caserta picking up a female graduating senior student at an assembly toward the end of the year, spinning her around and hugging her.
“It made me very uncomfortable,” Hardy said.
It’s not the first time Caserta has been hit with allegations of inappropriate behavior. Last week, the candidate was accused by a former campaign worker of walking around in a towel in front of volunteers. Caserta has dismissed the staffer, Ian Crueldad, as a “disgruntled ex-contractor.”
In 2002, Caserta was reprimanded for distributing a standardized exam to students early, disqualifying students from recognition.
“That was a big mistake and I apologized for it,” Caserta said in his statement.
But Caserta also blasted the media for “blowing things out of proportion.”
“Rehashing things that occurred 12 to 16 years ago is a waste of time,” he said. “Sadly, that is just the political climate. … I am looking forward to many more years of service to our community in the classroom and on the dais.”
Caserta is not the only candidate in the race to replace outgoing Supervisor Ken Yeager facing allegations of inappropriate behavior.
His challenger, former San Jose City Councilman Pierluigi Oliverio, is under renewed fire from unions and others who have opposed his campaign over sexual harassment allegations stemming from several years ago. In that case, Oliverio’s former chief of staff accused him of calling her derogatory names and making inappropriate sexual comments; she subsequently dropped his name from a 2014 lawsuit filed against the city. Oliverio has denied the allegations.