The married dean of a Queens public school is being accused in a lawsuit of stealing a female colleague’s online identity after she dumped him — using it to sexually shame her on the Internet.
Chantay Sewell, 39, filed the $350,000 federal suit against Robert Van Wyck Middle School Dean Philippe Bernardin — who once appeared on “Sesame Street” — for allegedly sending the ugly messages from her accounts.
“It was horrific,” Sewell said. “He’s a bully. No one should have to go through what I went through and I just feel like I had to stand up for myself.”
The suave part-time actor — whose IMDB.com page also lists the soap opera “One Life to Live” as a credit — allegedly began a relationship with Sewell at the Jamaica school after telling her his marriage was broken, the suit claims.
But shortly after Sewell severed the relationship, the educator began a campaign of cyber-defamation, according to the suit filed by her attorney, Harvey Mars.
“Bernardin used Sewell’s Internet accounts to publicly post private information about her and to communicate with third parties while posing as Sewell,” the suit states.
In August 2011, Bernardin, 42, sent an e-mail message to her contacts list that “contained malicious statements toward Sewell regarding certain sexually transmitted diseases and sexual activities,” the suit states.
In March 2012, he used Sewell’s Facebook account to broadcast a message to her circle of friends and family that also contained sexual smears, according to court papers.
Sewell obtained the IP addresses linked to the defamatory posts — and found that they were allegedly coming from a computer belonging to Bernardin’s wife, according to the suit.
Bernardin, of Floral Park, declined to comment on the suit.