By Walter Elliott
SOUTH ORANGE / MAPLEWOOD – Civil litigation against the South Orange-Maplewood School District, its board and a former teacher at the center of a sex scandal continues as of May 14 – after criminal jurisprudence has recently run its course.
An attorney has filed a civil suit in N.J. Superior Court-Newark’s Chancery Division that Friday on behalf of a former Columbia High School student who was victimized by nine-year Ninth Grade language arts teacher Nicole Dufault.
The plaintiff, now 22, was 14-16 years old, or a CHS freshman and junior, in 2013-14. He also identified himself among the six boys who Dufault, now 41, had sexual contacts within high school classrooms, in her car while parked on school property and at her apartment.
The plaintiff, in the court filings, identified himself as being videotaped by another boy while Dufault had sexual activity with him in one encounter. That recording’s appearance led to a multijurisdictional investigation that led to Dufault’s Sept. 18, 2014 arrest.
Damages against Dufault, SOMSD and the two-town school board were not specified in the filings nor disclosed by the plaintiff’s attorney as of May 26. The plaintiff, however, had dropped out of CHS and had suffered from panic attacks from his encounters with Dufault.
Dufault has been serving a three-year suspended sentence since a Superior Court-Newark judge’s March ruling; the alternative would have been an up to five-year state prison term.
March’s ruling included surrendering her teaching license. She is subject to lifetime parole supervision and registration as a sex offender under Megan’s Law.
Dufault had pleaded guilty Jan. 23, 2020 to three counts of aggravated criminal sexual contact just before jury selection. Essex County Prosecutor’s Office attorneys and defense lawyer Timothy Smith made the plea bargain, which included dropping 37 of the counts against her.
Born Nicole Bradley, the Bloomfield High School Class of 1997 graduate earned an education degree at now-Caldwell University. She went on to teach at Bloomfield Middle School, Ridgefield Park Jr./Sr. High School, Little Falls’ Passaic Valley Regional HS and Hawthorne High before getting hired by SOMSD in 2004.
Bradley, who became Nicole Dufault in a 2007 marriage ceremony in East Orange, divorced from Drew Dufault by July 2012. They had two children.
Victims’ testimony and ECPO findings have Dufault’s trail of sexual misconduct starting while she was teaching in CHS summer school in 2013.
The filing plaintiff said that Dufault would invite him and other boys to her classroom. She would use her access to the SOMSD computer system to hide the boys’ truancy.
It was in the classroom where Dufault and the boys would talk “about lewd and sexual actions” and where she touched “intimate parts of their bodies” before the group.
That activity, over the next 13 months said prosecutors, would spiral out to sexual encounters in classrooms, in her car and in her home. One session was held in her car while at a local fast food restaurant’s lot.
Neither SOMSD nor Dufault’s attorney, citing the ongoing litigation, have declined comment on the May 14 filing. It is not known whether the other five victims will also be filing suits.
