Investigators hired by Seton Hall University in New Jersey found no evidence to support accusations that its former board chairman sexually harassed its former president’s wife, according to a report released on Thursday.
The university hired a legal firm, Perry Law, in New York to examine the claims, made by the former president, Joseph Nyre, in a lawsuit that he and his wife, Kelli Nyre, filed in February. In the suit, Mr. Nyre also said that the former board chairman, Kevin Marino, had engaged in a campaign of intimidation against him.
After taking statements from more than a dozen university leaders, “not a single witness corroborates the alleged instances of harassment,” the investigators wrote in the report.
Armen McOmber, a lawyer for Mr. Nyre, responded that the Perry firm had acted “hand in glove” with the university “to threaten and disparage” Mr. Nyre and Ms. Nyre.
“The investigation report is an obvious sham,” Mr. McOmber said in an email.
Laurie A. Pine, a spokeswoman for the university, said in an email that the university was “satisfied with the diligence of the investigation and its conclusions.”
The investigation was led by Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a former assistant Manhattan district attorney and deputy chief of the office’s sex crimes unit. Investigators said they found evidence that Mr. Nyre had encouraged a former chief financial officer at the university to make a false claim of harassment against Mr. Marino.
Christopher Porrino, a lawyer for Mr. Marino, said in an email, “We will take the steps necessary to hold the Nyres personally accountable for their actions.”
For a time, Mr. Nyre and Mr. Marino were friends who worked together to lead Seton Hall, a Catholic university with 10,000 students. Their families vacationed together, including a trip to Mr. Marino’s home on Martha’s Vineyard in July 2021, according to the Perry firm’s report.
Their relationship appeared to rupture after a corruption scandal at the university’s law school in 2022, in which a group of longtime employees were found to have embezzled more than $975,000. The law school’s dean, Kathleen Boozang, resigned in November 2022.
Eight months later, Mr. Nyre unexpectedly resigned. He described it as a matter of timing, with new leadership needed as the university completed a strategic planning initiative.
But in December 2023, Ms. Nyre made allegations to the university’s Title IX office that Mr. Marino had sexually harassed her on several occasions. In one instance, Ms. Nyre said that Mr. Marino moved her hair away from her neck, kissed her neck and whispered into her ear, “You know I love you,” at a Board of Regents dinner on June 2021, according to the lawsuit.
In interviews with priests and regents who attended the dinner, investigators said they found no one to corroborate the allegation, according to the report. Mr. Marino called the claims “pure fiction” in an interview with Ms. Agnifilo.
The dispute became public in February 2024 when Mr. Nyre filed a lawsuit against the university in Essex County superior court. The suit did not name Mr. Marino as a defendant. But it accused him of abusing his power as board president, saying he tried to get a friend hired to a senior university position, and accused him of pressuring the school into admitting unqualified students.
When Mr. Nyre blocked Mr. Marino’s requests and reported them to university officials, Mr. Marino mounted a monthslong campaign of retaliation, Mr. Nyre said in his complaint. He said Mr. Marino berated him in public and made threatening phone calls “at all hours of the day.”
Mr. Nyre also claimed in his lawsuit that Seton Hall allowed the harassment to continue, leading to Mr. Nyre’s “constructive discharge.”
Mr. Marino said his relationship with Mr. Nyre remained “cordial and friendly” well into 2022, when the two men had a disagreement over Mr. Nyre’s handling of the law school investigation, according to Ms. Agnifilo’s report.
Seton Hall has filed a motion in Essex County Superior Court seeking to have Mr. Nyre’s lawsuit dismissed.
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