Peter Colombo, whose most recent teaching position in the district was at Greene Middle School as a physical education teacher, sued Palo Alto Unified School District in February for defamation, false imprisonment and lack of due process.

Colombo was charged in 2022 with sexual assault of a child after a former student’s husband alleged Colombo sexually assaulted his wife in 2001 when she was in sixth grade. Colombo was subsequently put on unpaid leave by the district.

However, in April 2023 the Santa Clara County district attorney’s office dropped the charges citing lack of evidence to proceed.

Colombo’s attorney, Evan Nelson, said Colombo is currently employed in the district, but not as a teacher.

“They have him stuck in the district office with a made-up position,” Nelson said. “They’re having him do stuff like watch sand deliveries and move goalposts that got left out on the soccer fields and things like that. That’s not what he got his certificate for.”

Nelson said when the sexual assault accusation was made in 2022, it came to Colombo’s wife and the school district before Colombo reported it to the police on his own initiative.

“The accuser’s husband sent an email not just to the district, but he sent an email to Pete’s wife,” Nelson said. “Pete was the first one to report it himself. He’s a mandatory reporter.”

Due to the severity of the crime, Nelson said the district was supposed to investigate the allegations but never did.

Superintendent Don Austin and Board of Education President Jennifer DiBrienza both declined interview requests for this story.

“With Title IX, they’re supposed to investigate something that involves this kind of a serious allegation that could have an impact on the safety of current students,” Nelson said. “They didn’t do any of that. They put him on leave six months later, in about June of 2022. That’s when the (Santa Clara) district attorney decided to arrest Pete based on information that the detectives had found.”

But in an interview with The Paly Voice in May of 2023, after Colombo’s charges were dropped, Austin said the district planned to conduct its own investigation into Colombo’s conduct.

“We have different standards than the legal system when it comes to what we need to look at,” Austin said in the interview.

According to Nelson, though, around the time when Colombo was arrested, the police only talked to one of the four female P.E. teachers at Greene during the investigation and the other three had information that would have exonerated Colombo.

The Palo Alto Police Department initially agreed to an interview request but did not respond to subsequent questions.

In her court declaration, then-Greene P.E. teacher Aimee Becker said the alleged crime could not have occurred as described given that she had been present the entire time.

“I can, and do, unequivocally testify that what the accuser reported to have happened as a rape/sexual assault during that year is 100% utter nonsense,” Becker testified. “It absolutely could not have occurred, and I testify that it did not occur based on my own personal knowledge being present and in charge of the girls’ locker room at that time.”

Nelson also said an immediate Title IX investigation carried out by the district, which he said didn’t happen in this instance, would have helped exonerate Colombo earlier.

“I appreciate it’s a difficult situation, first, for districts of schools to deal with these kinds of allegations,” Nelson said. “That’s why the timeline is there. It’s not just to protect the accuser — it also protects the accused, and so there’s due process there that needs to be followed to make sure that everybody’s adequately protected.”

And while Nelson said some might consider no immediate Title IX investigation a good thing for someone like Colombo accused of a crime, Nelson said this is not the case.

“Isn’t he glad they didn’t do a Title IX investigation?” Nelson said. “Well, no. Title IX has a bunch of due process in there for both the accuser and accused, and it’s very important to make sure that both sides get those protections.”

As a result of the way he alleges the district has treated Colombo, the lawsuit against the district names Austin, Trent Bahadursingh, Lisa Hickey and Amanda Bark as co-defendants.

Bahadursingh is the deputy superintendent and Austin’s chief of staff while Hickey is currently the superintendent of Millbrae Elementary School District but was PAUSD’s director of human resources for certificated personnel at the time Colombo was placed on leave. Bark is the district manager of policy and legal compliance.

Bahadursingh, Hickey, and Bark all declined interview requests for this story.

Nelson also said one of the most complicated parts of the case has been that the district hasn’t been able to produce the accuser’s grade reports and attendance records.

“The grade report would have said who her PE teacher was and how could that be deleted and gone missing?” Nelson said. “And to this day, it has not been produced, and there’s been no adequate explanation for what happened to it.”

According to the PAUSD website, “Records are maintained for students who attended PAUSD schools from the early 1900s to the present.”

Junior Sahil Srivastava, who had Colombo as a P.E. teacher at Greene, said he was appalled when he first heard about the charges against Colombo.

“I was really surprised,” Srivastava said. “Obviously, there’s a lot of things that were unknown, and later, I believe the school district posted a message about it where all the facts came out, and I think it was really disturbing to hear.”

However, incoming school board trustee and #MeToo activist Rowena Chiu said while it may not apply to this case, false sexual assault allegations are quite rare.

“Now, I would say broadly — this isn’t a comment on Peter Colombo’s innocence or guilt per se — but, and I want to be careful, I stress that ‘but,’ I would say broadly, it is very difficult to come forward with the sexual assault accusation,” Chiu said.

Chiu also said in cases like these, it is important to err on the side of caution.

“In my personal opinion, I think, for the district, the safest precaution would be not to allow a teacher accused of sexual assault to return to teaching until there is a legal case that has proven beyond reasonable doubt that they have not committed a sexual assault,” Chiu said. “But in this case, this is very complicated because the charges were dropped.”

Srivastava said, despite the charges being dropped, he thinks Colombo should not return to teach at the district.

“Honestly, I feel that he shouldn’t return, because, yes, the case was 20 years old, and it is hard to gather evidence from so long ago, but any allegations like that are deeply disturbing, especially for a teacher who’s job is to work with kids,” Srivastava said.

However, Nelson said Colombo should be given back his previous teaching position.

“When you’re put on an involuntary or a forced leave, they need to retain your position for you when you come back, and the district didn’t do that,” Nelson said. “And even right now, I mean, we’re fighting within the district through their grievance process to get him restored to the teaching position which he’s entitled to have, and that’s being done in addition to the lawsuit that’s ongoing.”

Nelson declined to make Colombo available for an interview.

This story was originally published on The Campanile on December 1, 2024.