CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) — Heidi Gilman Bennett, an outgoing officer with Albemarle County Public Schools Family Council, revealed sexual harassment allegations against ACPS Assistant Superintendent for Strategic Planning Dr. Patrick McLaughlin online and during the public comment portion of Thursday night’s School Board public hearing.

Gilman Bennett said another division employee had filed a Title IX and EEOC complaint against McLaughlin, in which that employee included the allegation that four times over the past three-and-a-half years, McLaughlin had displayed a photo of Gilman Bennett in her Stanford University dance team uniform from 1991 during meeting’s at the county’s central office.

Gilman Bennett made her accusation during what was scheduled as a public hearing on ACPS’ new policy on Professional Boundaries and Prevention of Sexual Misconduct and Abuse during the School Board’s meeting on Thursday, calling the incident “a collective failure of central office leaders to prevent sexual misconduct.”

Speaking to Cville Right Now, Gilman Bennett said she had learned of the incidents just days before the meeting, when the employee sought her permission to include the incident in her EEOC complaint.

Gilman Bennett shared a redacted and unsigned copy of the EEOC complaint, titled “Memorandum for the Record” with a subject line of “Sex Harassment, Discrimination, Intimidation toward Women by Albemarle County Public Schools Assistant Superintendent, P. McLaughlin” and dated July 13, on Substack on Thursday.

According to the complaint, McLaughlin, on at least four separate occasions, projected a photo of Gillman Bennett on the large screen monitor in the Strategic Planning Team meeting.

The photo, dated from 1991, shows Gilman Bennett and four other members of the Stanford dance team at a Cardinal football game.

“He smiles and nods while directing his gaze and the attention of attendees to the display screen,” the Title IX complaint states. “One phrase he would use was ‘There’s our Family Council President, hard at work dancing.’”

The complaint states there are at least four witnesses who can corroborate the complainant’s accounts. Their names are redacted in the Title IX complaint Gilman Bennett shared online.

“As an attendee at the meeting observing (the) display, my fear was that my picture would be projected for the purposes of embarrassment,” the employee wrote in the complaint. “I also interpreted this as a macroaggression against women intended to serve as a warning about what could happen to me if I were outspoken or challenged the status quo. I am silent no more as P. McLaughlin’s need for dominance of women and minoritized parties continues.”

Gilman Bennett said she believes McLaughlin should be fired over the alleged incidents, calling it “utterly inappropriate, and just disgusting.”

“The funny thing is, I’m exceedingly proud of that, my dance experience at Stanford,” she said. “So it backfired in that way, but I think the real, really important thing right now is that this is a really horrifying example of the culture within Central Office, that he could do something so blatantly sexist and wrong, repeatedly for three-and-a-half years, and it wouldn’t be reported at all, to HR or anybody.”

Reached during the meeting, ACPS spokesperson Jason Grant did not offer a comment on the allegations.

Gilman Bennett’s frustration at ACPS was shared by many of the speakers during the forum, who repeatedly called for a third-party investigation into the district.

“I’ve heard this board talk about new policies to fix the problems,” Albemarle County Republican Committee Chairman Phil Riese said during the forum. “I fully support new policies, but you don’t really know what to fix until you investigate and know exactly what’s broken.”

Riese previously called for a full independent review at last week’s school board meeting. with another speaker on Thursday referencing and supporting Riese’s previous request.

The forum came just over a month since the arrest of Hollymead staffer Michael Swiney in June. A week later, Superintendent Matthew Haas was asked to resign by the board, and Hollymead Principal Joe McCauley, who was previously placed on administrative leave on June 13, resigned last week.