MICHAEL RUBINKAM
Associated Press
SCRANTON, Pa. (AP) — A former Pennsylvania state university administrator testified during a federal civil rights trial Thursday that he didn’t sexually harass or assault students, prompting one of the plaintiffs to rise from his seat and shout: “Don’t lie!”
The 26-year-old accuser had to be restrained and the courtroom in Scranton was cleared after the man disrupted Isaac Sander’s testimony.
The accuser is one of three former East Stroudsburg University students who filed suit against Sanders, the school’s former vice president of advancement, alleging he used his high-powered job to offer them gifts, scholarships and campus jobs, then victimized them. Sanders denies wrongdoing.
U.S. District Judge Robert Mariani was furious over the accuser’s outburst, warning him he’d be placed in a courthouse cell if he acted up again. U.S. marshals and courthouse security were summoned to maintain order.
“This is my first and last warning to you!” Mariani told the man sternly, wagging his finger.
The judge denied a defense request for a mistrial and brought the jury back into the courtroom to hear more of Sanders’ testimony.
Sanders, 66, a Montgomery, Alabama, native and the father of three adult children, repeatedly denied touching any of the men.
Asked to address one allegation that he coerced one of them into giving him oral sex, he replied: “That’s preposterous. That’s absolutely not true.” He added it would be “disgusting” to him to touch another man’s genitals.
Sanders was fired six years ago following an investigation by the agency that oversees Pennsylvania’s state university system. A termination letter shown to the jury Thursday said the probe had substantiated allegations of sexual misconduct toward students as well as financial mismanagement.
Sanders has never been charged with a crime.
The plaintiffs portray him as a predator who targeted emotionally fragile black men from broken homes because he believed they’d be less likely to report the abuse.
Sanders acknowledged Thursday that he paid for accusers’ eyeglasses and auto repairs, gave one of them a suit from his own wardrobe and sent another an inappropriate email.
But “I did not go around hugging students,” let alone touching them, he said.
Before Sanders took the witness stand, a Baptist minister in Alabama testified out of the jury’s presence that Sanders had touched him inappropriately in 1999, when he was a student at Stillman College in Alabama and Sanders worked in the development office there. The plaintiffs’ attorney, Albert Murray Jr., sought the minister’s testimony to illustrate that Sanders has a history of predatory behavior.
The minister said that on a school-sponsored trip to Washington, D.C., Sanders touched his buttocks as he exited a limousine, rubbed his side while they were at a cigar bar, followed him into a public bathroom and watched him urinate, and tried sliding his hand all the way up the student’s leg under the table at a dinner reception. He said he slapped Sanders’ hand away and later told him: “I don’t get down like that. This is not what I’m interested in.”
He said he reported Sanders’ conduct to the university president after flying back to Alabama, and Sanders was barred from contacting him again — but violated the ban by seeking to have his picture taken with the student.
After the clergyman provided his detailed account, the judge ruled that most of the conduct he described was ambiguous, and only permitted him to tell jurors that Sanders had touched his buttocks.
The Associated Press generally doesn’t name people who say they were sexually abused.
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