Teacher Describes Acts of Alleged Sexual Harassment

A South County chemistry teacher testified Friday that she was stripped of class assignments and transferred to a different high school because she complained that her principal and assistant principal sexually harassed her.

“I used to have great trust in my employer and the system, and I was proud to be a teacher,” testified Sharon Daly Forslund on the opening day of the trial in her sexual harassment lawsuit against Saddleback Valley Unified School District. “This (ordeal) has destroyed my confidence.”

Forslund, 51, of El Toro alleges in her lawsuit that Mission Viejo High School Principal Robert A. Metz and Assistant Principal Wilbur Chong sexually harassed and assaulted her and then retaliated when she made complaints to their superiors.

Lawyers for the school district and the two administrators denied that Forslund was harassed, and claim that she fabricated the charges when the administrators decided she wasn’t qualified to handle five chemistry classes a semester.

As the projected three-week trial opened, Forslund’s attorney, Carrie MacMillin, told the Orange County Superior Court jury that the administrators used their positions of authority to harass a subordinate.

“Small people with great power. That is the theme of this case,” said MacMillin in her opening statement.

Defense attorney James P. Collins Jr. told the jury that the administrators simply felt Forslund “was not a strong enough teacher” to handle five chemistry classes. He pointed to statistics that showed a significantly higher student attrition rate in her chemistry classes when compared to another chemistry teacher. He also said that students in her classes received lower grades because she did not “motivate her students.”

Collins said the administrators “were not sexually harassing the plaintiff.”

Forslund, who was the first witness called to the stand, appeared slightly nervous as she described awkward and inappropriate encounters she said she had with the administrators. She testified that the harassment occurred between 1985 and 1986, usually during one-to-one meetings or faculty functions.

She said that Metz occasionally hugged her, rubbed his hand along her face, sat in sexually suggestive positions and made comments about her sex life. She also alleged that Chong snapped her bra strap, grabbed her buttock and talked to her about oral sex, saying “he could make me happy.”

Metz, 52, of Mission Viejo, and Chong, 54, of San Juan Capistrano, sat in the courtroom with their wives and listened as their alleged sexual misconduct was detailed. Both men, who are still employed at the high school, declined comment through their attorney.

Forslund said that she felt powerless to reject Metz’s hugs or say anything about the way he sat when they were alone in his office because as her supervisor, he evaluated her classroom performances.

But later, at the urging of friends, colleagues and a teachers’ union representative, Forslund said she made a verbal complaint to the district’s assistant superintendent. She was told to put the complaint in writing, but when she did, the assistant superintendent read it and handed it back to her, saying, “ ‘Someone could get fired over this,’ ” Forslund testified.

Meanwhile, Forslund said, Metz retaliated by taking away two of her five chemistry classes and putting her in physical science classes, a subject she was less qualified to teach. She appealed the decision within the district and was reassigned to the five chemistry classes for the 1986-1987 school year.

Toward the end of the school year, Metz observed Forslund’s class and subsequently gave her an unfavorable evaluation, she testified. Before that review, he had always given her good evaluations since she started working at the high school in 1983.

Forslund tried to appeal the evaluation within the district, but lost her grievance. Later, over her objections, she was transferred to Trabuco Hills High School, where she still teaches.

Forslund, who is seeking unspecified damages, will undergo cross-examination when the trial resumes Monday.