The former Sonoma Academy humanities teacher accused by multiple female graduates of sexually charged and inappropriate behavior has sued the Santa Rosa college prep school in a series of court filings that also seek to block a settlement with the women plaintiffs and secure compensation in the wake of his 2020 firing.
Marco Morrone, in a cross-complaint filed in Sonoma County Superior Court, alleges Sonoma Academy and its leadership created a non-traditional campus environment that broke down physical and emotional boundaries between teachers and students, creating fertile ground for what he called unfounded claims of inappropriate behavior on his part.
The school’s “social experiment of catering to, and indulging, the children of Sonoma County’s elite has had consequences both ironic and profound for those school administrators and trustees who conceived of and established this culture,” the lawsuit states.
In a separate legal motion, also filed in early October, Morrone formally objects to a pending settlement between Sonoma Academy and the graduates who sued the school, one of the Bay Area’s most exclusive college prep campuses.
Morrone contends that the public has a right to know “the truth about the ultimate financial motivation behind the plaintiff’s claims,” according to his motion. Terms of the pending settlement are set to be confidential.
One of the involved plaintiffs who has previously helped speak for the group did not respond to an email seeking comment. Gloria Allred, the crusading attorney whose Los Angeles firm is representing the women in their lawsuit against the school, declined to comment.
Morrone’s legal filings are the latest chapter in a scandal that engulfed Sonoma Academy after seven graduates came forward four years ago, publicly sharing their accounts of alleged sexual harassment and boundary crossing behavior by Morrone between 2007 and 2014. The allegations were first detailed in a 2021 Press Democrat investigation, followed by dozens of additional stories and allegations unearthed against another former Sonoma Academy instructor.
Reaching a settlement
Banding together as The Athena Project, the women initially pressed the school for greater transparency and action in response to the misconduct claims. The group also sought to establish a claims process that would pay restitution for the harm suffered by Sonoma Academy abuse survivors.
But those talks eventually stalled, and in late 2022 Allred filed an 81-page lawsuit on behalf of 12 plaintiffs against Sonoma Academy, Morrone and other former staff.
Much of that lawsuit cites findings outlined in a 49-page independent report paid for by the school and made public in November 2021, after The Press Democrat’s investigation. The report by New York-based firm Debevoise & Plimpton concluded Morrone had acted inappropriately with 34 students during his 18-year tenure at Sonoma Academy.
Morrone was fired in October 2020, in the wake of a preceding school inquiry that stemmed from complaints brought by three of the women who would later help form The Athena Project. Morrone “self-revoked” his California teacher’s credential in 2022, according to state records. (In California, educators do not need state licensing to teach at private schools.)
The 2022 suit alleged additional details that, if true, also fill out the investigators’ findings against another former instructor, Adrian Belic, an Academy Award-nominated filmmaker who taught a film course at the school in 2004. School investigators found he had fostered a sexual relationship with two students.
The Debovoise report also named a former Sonoma Academy female assistant soccer coach accused of having a sexual relationship with a female student between 2002 and 2003.
The lawsuit spearheaded by Athena Project members named the school, Morrone, and Sonoma Academy’s former longtime top administrators, Janet Durgin and Ellie Dwight, alleging they had actively engaged in a “cover-up” of reported incidents of sexual assault and harassment of female students by faculty and male students. The plaintiffs sought compensatory, special and punitive damages to be determined at trial, as well as attorneys’ fees.
According to court records, Sonoma Academy has reached a pending settlement with the graduates, a move which Morrone is opposing.
His San Francisco attorney, George Lee, declined a request for an interview with Morrone or to comment about the case.
A spokesperson for Sonoma Academy declined requests to interview the current head of school, Percy Abram, or Karen Meyer, chair of the Sonoma Academy Board of Trustees.
“Because this is an ongoing legal matter, and out of respect for the privacy of individuals involved, we are not able to comment on this subject at this time,” Megan Malone, the school’s director of marketing and communications, said in an email.
Allegations span years
Morrone’s reported behavior included multiple forms of sexual harassment — emotional and physical — as well as actions that experts described as grooming of minors, according to The Press Democrat’s investigation, the school’s subsequent findings and claims made in the 2022 lawsuit.
The boundary crossing included, according to accounts by graduates and investigators’ findings: unsupervised, one-on-one martial arts classes with female students; other inappropriate and unnecessary touching of female students in the classroom; one-on-one off-campus meetings he solicited with female students; questions and comments about their romantic lives and intimate feelings, including comments in private writing assignments; and explicit reading assignments for female students, “so that they could understand his desires, his struggles to control his sexual impulses, and to send a message,” the lawsuit alleged.
Morrone, in his cross-complaint, disputes the allegations against him.
“Mr. Morrone never sexually harassed, abused, inappropriately touched, or otherwise harbored any desire or intention to pursue sexual relationships or opportunities with any of the plaintiffs, or any other student at Sonoma Academy,” the cross-complaint states.
To the extent that any of his behavior crossed lines, Morrone contends, the blame rests with the school.
Sonoma Academy created an environment of “forced intimacy” between faculty and students, his suit contends, where the school “not only encouraged, but required faculty to become deeply involved with the personal lives of their students.”
That included, Morrone claims: requiring students to call teachers by their first names; encouraging physical affection, such as hugs; requiring faculty and students to spend time together off campus, including during trips abroad to such places as Japan, Thailand, England and Germany, where “sleeping accommodations were sometimes intermingled between the groups.”
Annual “orientation retreats” included outdoor activities such as whitewater rafting, rainforest tours and camping, “all in groups technically supervised by faculty but de facto intermingled to the point where all common and sufficient boundaries between students and their adult counterparts was either relaxed or erased altogether,” according to the suit.
The cross-complaint also details alleged “indoctrination” into a campus culture that eroded emotional boundaries, beginning with off-site retreats prior to the start of the school year. At the retreats, each faculty member was encouraged to “speak from the heart and listen from the heart.”
Faculty counsel sessions divulged such topics as “suicidal thoughts, attempted self-harm, eating disorders, instances of spousal infidelity, confessions about drug and alcohol use…intimate details of divorce proceedings, and on one occasion, the revelation that a faculty member (who has since left the school) had posted accounts of his own ‘polyamorous ‘marriage, drug use, and frequent attendance at ‘Burning Man’ on his personal blog, which had subsequently been discovered by one of his students,” according to the cross-complaint.
Morrone said staff members who did not participate in the counsel sessions were pulled aside and “admonished for not sufficiently ‘leaning in’ or not ‘getting it.’”
Morrone also takes direct aim at the lawsuit filed by the 12 Sonoma Academy graduates, finding fault with the school for its move to settle rather than defend itself in court and “teach the Plaintiffs, once and for all, a few long-overdue lessons about truth, consequences, and responsibility – Sonoma Academy has once again chosen to pacify and coddle their entitled alumni, paying them for their silence as they once rewarded them for their adolescent temper tantrums and melodrama.”
The cross-complaint also names a former school counselor, Carolyn McAleavy, whose daughter is one of the plaintiffs in the Allred suit, accusing the counselor of having “conspired to silence Mr. Morrone” when accusations against him were first being made public.
Among the issues Morrone seeks to resolve in court, according to the cross-complaint, is whether the school and McAleavy “knowingly colluded with her daughter” to get Morrone to sign a non-disparagement agreement that left him “powerless to defend himself, his reputation, or his family from wild public accusations by the Plaintiffs…”
In the cross-complaint, Morrone reiterated his request for a jury trial, where he claims he can prove his innocence. He also seeks reimbursement for related legal expenses and attorneys fees.
You can reach Staff Writer Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @pressreno.