SOUTH BEND — The University of Notre Dame last month fired a female employee who worked as an academic coach amid allegations she pressured a male student into having sex with her daughter.[...]
After completing an internal review of the employee and her daughter's interactions with the male student, Notre Dame concluded that the employee's behavior violated its values and its sexual and discriminatory harassment policy, and fired her, according to a copy of a letter provided by, the South Bend-based law firm representing the male student.[...]
The woman employee was an academic coach who worked for Notre Dame's First Year of Studies program, and she started in that job in August 2014, attorney Peter Agostino said Monday.
Notre Dame's First Year of Studies Program website on Friday said that the program in fall 2014 started a pilot program that provided new students access to an academic coach and listed contact information for a woman employee. On Monday, that page link was no longer available.[...]
The woman allegedly provided lodging, transportation, hotel rooms and condoms for the encounters, pressuring the student to continue the relationship and threatening him when he tried to end it. The sexual encounters he was pressured into created a racially hostile environment, causing him to suffer academically and emotionally, according to the suit.
When the student first sought to end the encounters, the suit claims, the woman convinced him he needed mental counseling. The student was counseled by a Notre Dame employee who was a "friend and confidant" of the defendant and who sought to medicate the student to keep him passive, the suit claims.
The stress of the "hostile sexual environment and degradation" was furthered exacerbated by the woman pressuring the student to convert to Catholicism, according to the suit.
The student claims he brought the situation to the attention of Notre Dame officials a few weeks ago, but the university has "failed to act to remedy the situation," the suit says.
