Educator fired for sex discussion sues to reclaim job

By Scott S. Greenberger, Globe Staff

A Department of Education worker fired last spring for leading a graphic sexual talk with teenagers is suing the agency and the two conservative activists who secretly taped the session.

In a lawsuit filed yesterday, Margot Abels accuses Scott Whiteman and Brian Camenker of violating her civil rights and the state's antiwiretapping law by recording the sex education workshop she led at Tufts University last March.

Abels, who was a sexuality and HIV/AIDS educator with the department, also says Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll violated her civil rights by firing her after the tape became public and generated a storm of controversy.

The workshop at Tufts, designed to answer explicit sexual questions from teenagers too embarrassed to ask them in school, took place on a Saturday and was sponsored by the Gay and Lesbian Student Education Network, not the education department.

Abels, however, insists that the department knew of and supported her work. The department ''shamefully caved in to orchestrated pressure and heinous threats against Ms. Abels at the expense of her constitutional rights,'' said Betsy Ehrenberg, Abels's attorney.

Abels is asking that she be reinstated and paid back wages. She is also seeking punitive damages from Camenker and Whiteman, saying that she received threats and abusive phone calls after the tape was played on a local talk-radio show. In response to a lawsuit filed by another workshop leader and a teenage participant, a judge last May barred further distribution of the tape.

''The actions of Massachusetts conservative groups and of my former colleagues at the Department of Education are unconscionable,'' Abels said yesterday in a written statement.

A senior official said the education department stands by its decision to fire Abels, but refused to comment further.

Camenker described the lawsuit as an attempt to intimidate opponents of the ''homosexual movement.'' The Newton resident is founder of the Parents' Rights Coalition, which has won legislative limits on sex education and vehemently opposes teaching about homosexuality.

''They want to make sure that nobody hears this tape and knows what they're doing, and they want to ruin financially and in any other way anyone who challenges them,'' Camenker said.

Whiteman has since moved out of the state, according to Camenker. But Whiteman's attorney, Chester Darling, called Abels's lawsuit ''ludicrous.''

''My client taped the commission of a crime, and we're going to prove it in any court in the Commonwealth that we're dragged into,'' Darling said. ''If she wants to acknowledge participating in crimes, that's her prerogative.''

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