A Maine middle school assistant principal resigned in 2023 after being accused of sexual harassment by a coworker.
Farausi Cherry soon took another administrative position in a different district.
Fifteen months later, he resigned amid another sexual harassment investigation.
Six months after that, he was hired in a third district, a job that would also end abruptly.
This spring, Maine lawmakers voted nearly unanimously to close a loophole many said Cherry exploited.
Lewiston Democrat Rep. Peggy Rotundo introduced a bill on behalf of a constituent who said Cherry sexually harassed her more than two decades ago, and was shocked to discover him working at her daughter’s elementary school.
A Portland Press Herald/Maine Trust for Local News investigation found that Cherry has been at the center of sexual harassment allegations and investigations at multiple school districts, but was not disciplined or fired, and instead received promotions or payouts before resigning. As a result, he was able to move from district to district without the cloud of accusations following.
The new law, designed to prevent cases like Cherry’s, outlines steps school districts must take if an employee is accused of misconduct. First, the subject is put on paid leave while the district investigates. The investigation must be completed, even if the employee resigns, and superintendents are required to notify the Maine Department of Education if there is an outcome of discipline.
All districts must check with the DOE about potential investigations before hiring any new employees.
Cherry denied any inappropriate conduct during his prior school jobs in a statement shared by his lawyer.
“I cooperated fully and voluntarily with any investigation involving me — because I have nothing to hide and I have always trusted the truth to hold up,” he said.
Maine law defines sexual harassment as any sexual advances, requests for sexual favors, or other verbal or physical conduct of a sexual nature, like suggestive remarks or unwanted touches, that threaten job security, working conditions or advancement opportunities. Often, claims go unreported over fear of retaliation.
There’s no way of quantifying how many educators accused of harassment have been re-hired by leaving amid or before formal investigations, although Rotundo alluded to several examples when she introduced her bill in February. About one person per year in Maine has their teaching credentials revoked because of misconduct, according to state data, though that is not what happened in this case.
The vast majority of school personnel are some of Maine’s strongest youth advocates, said Lisa Rávar, the prevention director at The Maine Coalition Against Sexual Assault. More than 50% of the reports to the Dept. of Health and Human Services of suspected sexual abuse to children are made by school personnel, she said.
“Ensuring that reports are fully investigated and that substantiated findings are stored centrally will make it more challenging for harm to continue unchecked. We’re encouraged by the steps this law will take to address reports and make sure that people who are causing harm aren’t able to move from school to school, hiding in plain sight,” Rávar said.
Cherry worked in more than a dozen school districts over a period of 31 years, as a substitute teacher, ed tech, guidance counselor and assistant principal, according to records from the state’s public employee retirement system.
Before the series of allegations began, he last worked for more than a decade at Windham High School as a guidance counselor, a job which he left of his own volition in 2016 to take a job in Portland Public Schools, according to that district’s superintendent.
‘We can’t have him back’
After six years as a guidance counselor at Portland’s Deering High School, Cherry secured a job as the assistant principal of Lyman Moore Middle School for the 2022-23 school year. Cherry, who is Black, received professional development and resume support during that application process from a program to support employees of color with career advancement.
Lyman Moore staff began voicing concerns about Cherry’s professionalism and handling of student discipline shortly after he started. David Hilton, a Moore teacher, said Cherry seemed generally unprepared for the job, and to the extent that he built connections with students, they were mostly with girls.
All year, district administrators encouraged staff to be patient with him. In February, the school board renewed Cherry’s contract. Kerrie Dowdy, president of the district’s teacher union, said there were meetings almost every week at Moore about “concerns raised in the school community of inappropriate conduct with staff and students.” They documented the issues, which persisted until school ended in June.
“We basically said ‘We can’t have him back, based on how the year has gone,’” said former teacher Rob Miller, who was the building representative to the teacher union at the time. He was frustrated by how early in the year the district had renewed his contract, limiting the ability of staff to get their concerns addressed. “There were overwhelming numbers of staff saying it wasn’t working.”
During that same time period, a female Moore staff member reported Cherry for sexual harassment, according to her husband, Sterling Douglas. The woman declined to be interviewed.
Douglas said Cherry repeatedly made inappropriate comments, used sexual innuendos in jokes, took photos of his wife from behind and generally made her “super uncomfortable.” She brushed a lot of it off, her husband said, but eventually did report him after a public incident, in which Cherry made unwelcome physical contact with her in a school hallway, and another male staff member approached her and encouraged her to report it.
Douglas’s wife worked with district HR investigators, who he said eventually told her Cherry would no longer be allowed to have contact with her. His wife quit her job near the end of the school year when Cherry was on the Moore campus one afternoon to referee an athletic event, he said.
A district spokesperson did not answer questions about that investigation, citing confidential personnel information.
But Cherry was appointed to a new district-wide administrative position called high school attendance/truancy liaison in July, the spokesperson said. The role was not refilled when, a month later, Cherry left for a job in Kennebunk-based Regional School Unit 21.
Hilton said staff discussed warning other districts about Cherry’s behavior. When they found out he had been hired in Kennebunk, Hilton said he considered calling the district, but wasn’t sure how to go about it. Douglas did call Kennebunk.
“Because I don’t want what happened to my wife to happen to anyone else,” he said. But when they asked for his name, he didn’t want to provide it. The situation was still too raw.
Fifteen months in Kennebunk
Cherry was hired as an assistant principal of Kennebunk High School in September 2023. In that role, he oversaw student discipline and teacher evaluation, and was the advisor for the class of 2026.
That time in particular was tumultuous for RSU 21. By the end of the 2023-24 school year, the high school principal, as well as 24 employees, had resigned.
In that year, rumors started to circulate about Cherry, according to interviews and records of email, and at least two staff members reported Cherry for unprofessional conduct to district leaders, which included calling female staff members “cute,” publicly commenting about their bodies and making unwelcome advances, according to emails reviewed by reporters.
Parents told their children not to talk to him. Teachers were frustrated — and some even retired early or quit — because of his behavior. He was absent from his role beginning in August of the 2024-25 school year, according to the student newspaper The Herd.
Scott Tombleson, the newly hired principal of Kennebunk High School, wrote to staff on Sept. 20, 2024, saying that Cherry planned to return to school on Sept. 26. It’s unclear what exactly prompted his suspension, but other emails indicate that there was an investigation based on allegations from several parents and staff members.
“While I can’t speak to specifics of the matter, I can say I am encouraged by the thoroughness and fairness of the process in responding to important concerns that were raised,” he wrote.
Emails obtained through a Freedom of Access Act request by community members revealed that several parents emailed school administrators about Cherry’s leave, urging the administrators to not allow him back at the school.
“I have told my kids not to talk to him, do not look at him, do NOT go in his office and do not listen to anything he says.That’s even if I send them to school tomorrow,” wrote one parent.
A day before Cherry was set to return to school, Tombleson sent an email saying that Cherry would not be in the building the next day.
“I am not able to share any additional details at this time,” he said to staff before sending another email a day later with the news that Cherry was on leave as of Sept. 26. He apologized that the process was “so difficult for everyone involved.”
Three months later, in early December, News Center Maine reported that Cherry resigned amid sexual harassment allegations.
During the course of the investigation, Cherry told the district he would respond with a discrimination lawsuit, according to someone familiar with the matter. He signed a resignation agreement outlining the terms of his departure.
That agreement included a severance payment of $68,000, a positive letter of recommendation from the superintendent, and a sealed record of all materials related to the “recent personnel investigation” to be kept off-site at Drummond Woodsum, the school district’s law firm.
The file, according to the agreement, will remain accessible to the district but “be confidential to all other parties to the fullest extent legally possible.”
In response to questions about the nature of his departures from Portland and Kennebunk, Cherry said there were many factors at issue, “specifically, the well documented leadership and personnel changes and instability and at times highly dysfunctional relationships involving the school systems and their communities.”
Lewiston
Following the separation agreement, with a positive recommendation and clear record in hand, Cherry secured a job with Lewiston Public Schools.
The school district did not see his Kennebunk investigation documents or know about the separation agreement. His letters of recommendation from Kennebunk describe him as a competent administrator focused on restorative justice in student discipline. He was hired as a behavior support teacher but was also responsible for teaching lessons on puberty, according to a parent in the district.
When Cara Courchense walked into Montello Elementary School in Lewiston last August, she came face to face with Cherry, whom she says sexually harassed her two decades ago at an Upward Bound program at Bowdoin College. After a quick Google search, she learned about what had just happened in Kennebunk.
She reached out to Superintendent Jake Langlais and shared what she found. Lewiston school officials opened an investigation into Cherry, but he was soon allowed back at the school. That’s when Courchense got in touch with Rotundo about a bill. He later resigned in December.
Cherry said he and his attorney cooperated with investigators during the months-long process, after which he was exonerated.
“I tried to return,” Cherry said. “But it quickly became clear that no real support would follow me back into that building, from (Lewiston Public Schools) or from school administration, so I made the decision on my own terms, to leave.”
But Cherry is just one example of the loophole that Courchesne’s bill aims to close.
In February, during the public hearing for the bill, Courchesne and several other women shared their stories, in person or through written testimony read by lawmakers.
Their experiences were similar: a school employee resigned after misconduct was reported; an investigation was opened but never completed; and the employee was hired in another school district.
“There was no mechanism to prevent this. There was no requirement that the receiving school be informed. He simply moved on,” said Kate Beever in emotional testimony.
Districts were previously required to report to the state if they disciplined, suspended or terminated a credential holder who was “alleged to have engaged in misconduct that threatened a child’s health or safety.” Over the last six years, an average of one person annually has had their teaching credential revoked by the state, while about six have surrendered their credentials, and another 11 per year have been denied credentials outright when they applied, according to DOE data.
Groups like the Maine Education Association, the statewide teacher union, and the Maine Principals Association, the professional organization for school administrators, testified against the bill, saying that it could have “profound unintended consequences” by violating the due process rights of school employees, and the American virtue that people are innocent until proven guilty.
The final version of the bill took out the requirement for applicants to disclose if they were ever subject of an investigation (even one which did not result in discipline), which upset Courchesne, but satisfied groups that had reservations about the bill.
“We don’t design fire codes around false alarms, we design them around real fires. False alarms matter, but they’re not the thing burning buildings down,” she said in an interview in May after the law passed.
Eileen King, executive director of the Maine School Superintendents Association, spoke neither for nor against the bill as originally written, but supported its final form. King said the law will improve consistency and vetting in the school hiring process.
“We hope this additional layer of protection will close existing loopholes and ensure districts have as much information as possible in the hiring process,” she said. MSSA and several other state organizations, including MECASA, belong to a working group that will review investigation procedures as the new law rolls out.
Cherry said he supports the law “if it leads to better outcomes for educators and students,” but in his situation, he said, everything played out publicly, and he was “transparent” with Lewiston before they hired him.
“I have no interest in retribution and wish no ill on anyone,” he said. “What I am asking for is for this vendetta to end.”
According to a records request to the state retirement program, as of mid-July Cherry has not secured another public school job in Maine.
This story was originally published by the Maine Trust for Local News. Emily Duggan can be reached at eduggan@sunjournal.com. Riley Board can be reached at rboard@pressherald.com.