Babylon teacher Timothy Harrison's 'disturbing' conduct reported to school district years before his arrest, records show

A parent reported a Babylon teacher’s "extremely disturbing" conduct with their daughter to the school district in 2017, one of three misconduct allegations the district knew of years before the teacher admitted having sex with a 15-year-old student, records show.

The disclosure that the district had prior knowledge of allegations against since-convicted teacher Timothy Harrison comes from letters Newsday recently obtained from Suffolk prosecutors via a Freedom of Information Law request.

In one letter, the State Attorney General’s Office asked Babylon officials in 2022 for records detailing its investigation into the parent’s 2017 complaint about Harrison's "inappropriate behavior" — as well as how the district dealt with alleged misconduct by four additional educators whose names are redacted. 

A letter Babylon attorneys sent prosecutors after Harrison’s 2022 arrest said the district had investigated a former board member's allegation that Harrison had a relationship with a graduate in 2012-13. The "alleged victim and parents were uncooperative" and the "allegations deemed unfounded," the letter stated.

That letter also references a mother reporting to the district in 2015 that Harrison had been texting her ninth-grade daughter. The mother said while "there was nothing terrible in the text," she found the exchange "unprofessional," records show.

The documents provide the first public look into the scope of the investigation Attorney General Letitia James launched into Babylon in November 2021 after multiple former female students appeared at an hourslong board meeting and accused a dozen teachers of sexual misconduct and blamed the district for mishandling the accusations.

In a statement to Newsday, Babylon schools Superintendent Carisa Manza said: "While we cannot comment on how the prior administration handled its investigation into Mr. Harrison’s conduct, we can say that under our current administration and board, we have and will continue to take concrete steps to ensure that the heinous crime for which Mr. Harrison was convicted can never take place under our watch."

One former student who raised misconduct allegations in 2021 told Newsday she is pleased to see the attorney general’s investigation tried to determine how Babylon handled misconduct complaints. But she says the four-year wait for the investigation to close has dampened hopes for meaningful answers.

"I don’t think we can prove exactly everyone who knew what when, but I know that people knew, and I think that this is a step in seeing what those records were like, if they were kept," said Babylon alumna Brittany Rohl, 32, of Pittsburgh.

Rohl, the first to publicly raise sexual misconduct allegations and accuse the district of not doing enough to protect students, called the wait for the attorney general's investigation to end "excruciating."

The attorney general’s office said its investigation is ongoing. Manza said, "Our staff and attorneys have been working closely with the attorney general."

Harrison, a longtime special education teacher who coached girls soccer, basketball and lacrosse, was the only teacher named at that 2021 board meeting to later face criminal charges. The charges included felony counts of rape and criminal sexual acts stemming from having sex with a 15-year-old student in 2013.

Harrison agreed to surrender his teaching license when he pleaded guilty in September 2023 to a misdemeanor count of endangering the welfare of a child, records show. 

A judge sentenced him to 3 years probation.

Harrison is one of five teachers named at the 2021 board meeting who have surrendered their teaching certificates, according to state education records Newsday has obtained. The state education department has declined to specify why each educator chose to do so, citing privacy laws.

Newsday obtained 648 pages of documents from the Suffolk District Attorney’s Office in June following a records request that sought all records in Harrison’s criminal case file.

The records detail a longtime Babylon educator who "decided to treat the classroom and athletic fields like Tinder," a dating app, Suffolk Special Victims Det. Patrick Boyles said in a 2023 email to prosecutors. Prosecutors also said Harrison had sex with an 18-year-old student in 2012 but said he did not face charges because she was above the age of consent.

Harrison, who had been on paid leave after his March 2022 arrest, resigned from Babylon after pleading guilty in September 2023. Babylon had hired Harrison in 2002, according to records obtained from the state teacher retirement system.

Harrison’s attorney, Kevin Keating, of Garden City, did not return messages seeking comment.

David Bloomfield, an education law professor at Brooklyn College and The CUNY Graduate Center, has followed Babylon developments since the 2021 school board meeting. He said the documents provide a reminder of the "unresolved trauma" felt by women as they await the close of the state attorney general's investigation into Babylon.

"The glacial pace of the procedure confirms ... that justice delayed is justice denied," he said. "The burden is not only on the attorney general's office but Babylon, too, for timely resolution."

Other women who also spoke up in 2021 are frustrated by the pace of the attorney general investigation, said Laura Ahearn, executive director of the Ronkonkoma-based Crime Victims Center. 

"For those who came forward with courage and vulnerability, the absence of public findings feels like a missed opportunity for accountability, transparency and healing," said Ahearn, who helped the ex-students file complaints with the attorney general's office.

Manza, hired as Babylon superintendent in 2023, said the district now has "a strict adult-student fraternization policy that explicitly codifies acceptable interactions between staff and students, as well as punishment for any staff member who violates it." She said people can report issues on the district website, and staff and administrators are being trained on handling sexual harassment allegations.

That gives Rohl hope. She said she feared the response would be silence when she accused the district of not doing enough to protect young women from teachers potentially grooming them for a relationship that turned sexual after they reached the age of consent.

"At this point, it's been so long, there's already been so many classes of students that have come through Babylon in that time," Rohl said, "and I just like to think that at least maybe their parents are talking to them about grooming now."

By Jim Baumbach

jim.baumbach@newsday.com

Jim Baumbach is an award-winning investigative reporter at Newsday, where he has worked since 1998. He spent two decades in the sports department, where he covered every professional team and league, including events such as the Super Bowl and World Series.