Alleged victim in teacher’s harass case speaks out

WESTFORD » Jannelle Cioffi is not someone you’d call “weak,” according to her husband, Michael Cioffi.

One incident did get through to her, though, after she faced months of alleged harassment by Michael Colson, former Westford Education Association president and a Westford Academy history teacher currently on leave.

As The Sun previously reported, Colson is scheduled to be arraigned at Ayer District Court on Tuesday, facing charges of harassment and identity fraud. A complaint filed by the Westford Police Department described how Colson allegedly used at least one fake Facebook account and email address to harass Jannelle Cioffi before, during and Cioffi after her unsuccessful School Committee run. When police tracked the accounts to Colson’s home IP address, he “stated that he could not say it was not him,” according to the complaint.

Cioffi believes she was first harassed by Colson in November 2019. Soon after she argued in a Facebook group with another parent about school policy, an account under the name “David Townie Weir” posted on multiple Facebook pages about a “special intimate summer affair” he shared with Cioffi, a claim she denies. She said the police are currently investigating whether this account belonged to Colson.

As Cioffi became increasingly involved in local politics over the next few months, Colson reached out to her over Facebook messenger in January 2020 to meet her. The following month, during a dramatic School Committee meeting, Cioffi and Colson joined forces to distribute 200 T-shirts expressing support for Superintendent Bill Olsen. He later urged her to run for School Committee multiple times and told her he would do anything to help her get elected, short of a public endorsement,