Teacher Makes Deal To Drop Lawsuit Drops Claim In Exchange For Promise District, Two Women Won’T Countersue

A Newport High School teacher has abandoned a federal lawsuit in which he claimed two female colleagues sexually harassed him.

Roger Coplen dropped his claim in exchange for a promise that the two women and the Newport School District won’t pursue counterclaims that he filed a false or frivolous lawsuit.

The school district also agreed to provide sexual harassment training for all supervisors and to remove a letter from Coplen’s personnel file that ordered him to have no contact with school counselor Sylvia Campbell. Coplen also will be granted a salary review by an arbitrator and will be allowed to challenge other documents in his personnel file.

Although the no-contact order is to be removed from Coplen’s file, the lawsuit settlement includes a provision that he and Campbell must stay 100 feet apart. If they have to communicate to do their jobs, it must be in the presence of a third party.

Coplen, 53, claimed Campbell, 38, and the district’s former curriculum director, Pam Veltri, 44, subjected him to unwanted physical contact, sexual gestures, dirty jokes and sexually provocative language. The women called the charges absurd, and a state administrative law judge dismissed the claims as unbelievable.

Administrative Judge David G. Hansen noted Coplen didn’t present several of his allegations until months after the offenses were supposed to have occurred - even though Coplen was pressing other harassment claims at the time of the alleged incidents. The alleged sexual harassment “did not occur,” Hansen ruled.

An initial written statement by Coplen in 1995 made few such allegations against Campbell and none against Veltri, who later took a job in Spokane. Instead, the statement suggested Coplen’s grievance against the women sprang from nonsexual complaints about his working conditions.

Coplen said harassment, dating from 1992, became sexual in 1994 when Campbell made a sexually obscene gesture at him and “placed her hand on my arm.” Also that year, Coplen claimed, Campbell’s husband, Bruce, assaulted him with a handshake that crushed his hand and left him unable to straighten his little finger. Police said X-rays showed no broken bones, and they took no action against Bruce Campbell.

When Hansen rejected Coplen’s harassment complaint under state law, Coplen filed the federal lawsuit in Boise. The case was transferred to the U.S. District in Court in Spokane, where the settlement was recently approved.

The agreement requires all of the parties to remain silent. Details were released under state public disclosure laws.