EXCLUSIVE: Perth Amboy teacher convicted of harassment loses appeal

PERTH AMBOY – A former high school teacher who kept porn in his classroom, showered abusive, bigoted language on students and drove some to consider suicide will no longer be able to teach in a public school in New Jersey.

This result comes after a long legal battle that began in 2012, when Emilio Perez, a computer teacher at the Middlesex County Vocational and Technical High School in Perth Amboy, was criminally charged with harassing four students.

Those students included a black girl he called "ghetto" and told that "we all know that black people steal."

He also called a student a homophobic slur and his behavior reportedly caused a student to cut her wrists and another to harbor suicidal thoughts "as a result of defendant's racist remarks and religious slurs," court records show.

He was acquitted in Municipal Court of two of those cases and convicted of harassment involving the black girl and a Jewish boy.

He appealed and a Superior Court judge found him guilty of harassing the Jewish student, whom he had ridiculed for celebrating Hanukah, told to "go count your money, that's all you're good for," and told to pick up a coin Perez had dropped on the floor.

Because he was convicted of a crime involving a public position, Perez had to forfeit his job as a teacher. Perez appealed the conviction and the job forfeiture but eventually lost when an Appellate Division panel on Friday ruled that his arguments were "wholly without merit."

"The (trial) judge properly determined that defendant's repeated slurs and abusive conduct, antithetical to his role as teacher, were intended for the purpose to alarm, annoy and harass" the student, the appellate decision says, adding that testimony was corroborated by several students.

Before he was criminally charged, the Middlesex County Vocational and Technical Schools Board of Education had tried to get rid of Perez, who had been reprimanded before.

In April 2012, a month before the harassment charges, the district filed tenure charges against him with the Office of Administrative Law — the process districts must go through in order to fire bad teachers who have job-protection rights under tenure.

The tenure charges included:

• Storing pornographic software and movies in a file cabinet

• Falsely accusing two students of posting his online dating profile in the school building

• Directing certain students that they were no longer welcome in his classroom

• Using students for an outside business venture

• Distributing alcoholic chocolates to students

• Using inappropriate punishment techniques

• Destroying a computer server

• Losing seven 500 GB hard drives

• Installed a cellphone blocker, which is against federal law.

The tenure charges were dismissed in 2013 as a result of him losing his job upon conviction in court.

Perez's attorney, Edward Cridge of Mellk O'Neill in Princeton, did not immediately return a request for comment Friday.

In court papers, Perez denied that he harassed students and said that the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office should have waived the job forfeiture.

State law allows a county prosecutor to waive the forfeiture provision if a defendant is convicted of a low-level offense, as Perez was.

But to do so, the courts have to consider "totality of circumstances," the defendant's "moral turpitude," and if the offenses constituted "part of a continuing pattern of anti-social behavior," the appellate panel said.

The courts found Perez's conduct was "ongoing and pervasive" and the Superior Court judge said it was "extremely egregious." Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Nancy A. Hulett said Perez "grossly" violated the duties of his office and the victims and school officials "absolutely and unequivocally" sought forfeiture.

Staff Writer Sergio Bichao: 908-243-6615; sbichao@mycentraljersey.com