The female romance language teachers who were fired for allegedly speaking the international language in a Brooklyn classroom aren’t going down without a fight.
Cindy Mauro and Alini Brito say their reputations have been ruined by allegations they engaged in a steamy lesbian romp inside of James Madison HS, and now they’re suing the city Dept. of Education for $2 million for “wrongful termination, libel and slander.”
The women’s lawyer, Michael Valentine, said among the people who will be targeted by the suit is the school custodian who allegedly told school officials he had seen two women having sex in a classroom.
Valentine’s clients maintain that what was going on in the classroom was completely innocent – Mauro was helping her friend Brito by getting her some sweets to get her crashing blood sugar level back up – and that the custodian has a dirty mind.
While he told other school employees he saw the women going at it, at a DOE hearing he admitted he was standing behind another person 15 feet away from the cracked open door, could only tell that there was one partially clad woman inside the darkened classroom.
“He admitted in his hearing testimony that he only saw one person, but speculated there were two women in there having sex,” Valentine said, leading to his clients getting smeared and fired. “When does a fish become a whale?” he said.
Both women had already filed separate actions against the DOE aimed at getting the decision to fire them annulled.