A dispute over personal facts at an intellectual fitness offerings middle on Concordia College’s campus in New York has led to a lawsuit that has embroiled directors, consisting of the spouse of the university president.
As first stated by LoHud, Erika Rexhouse, a certified scientific social employee terminated as director of the university’s Wellness Center in February, brought the case to Concordia in March. She claimed the college had violated kingdom whistle-blower laws. Rexhouse had criticized Monique Nunes, who had served as senior director of student revels at the time. Nunes is likewise married to John Arthur Nunes, the university’s president.
According to the lawsuit, Rexhouse alleges that on severa activities, Nunes attempted to get personal facts about students who had sought entry to the mental health services furnished using the Wellness Center. Rexhouse stated those instances to the college’s human resources officer and legal recommend.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/10329565/GettyImages_633196064.jpg "Privacy Lawsuit Embroils Wife of Concordia President 1")
The lawsuit lays out several times wherein Nunes allegedly attempted to attain facts of this nature despite the reality she is not a certified expert and consequently became allowed to accomplish that underneath. One incident includes an unnamed student who sought assistance from the Wellness Center because of records of sexual abuse. The scholar didn’t want Nunes to analyze the history, the lawsuit claimed, yet Nunes learned of it anyway, no matter the truth that it was informed in self-belief. The lawsuit claims Nunes shared the statistics along with her husband. After this occasion, Rexhouse again shared her issue concerning Nunes’s conduct with the director.
Shortly after this event, the university announced Nunes could surrender her role at the end of the semester.
Robert Bernstein, an attorney representing Rexhouse, stated the timing of Nunes’s resignation announcement seemed to suggest it was associated with the occasion.
“The timing of Mrs. Nunes’s resignation, coming as it did so quickly after Mrs. Nunes allegedly entered a non-public examination room where a student intellectual health patient in ‘crisis’ turned into watching for shipping thru ambulance to a local health center, Ms. Rexhouse’s right away raising the difficulty of Mrs. Nunes’s abuse of personal affected person records, once again, along with her superior … and the fear that understanding of what occurred would soon be circulating across the college campus, without a doubt indicates Mrs. Nunes’s resignation changed into a result of this case,” Bernstein stated in an email. “But we received’t understand for positive till we get discovery, which is the next [phase] of the case.”
Shortly after this, Rexhouse said she was using the college due to restructuring, and then the college would not fund intellectual health services. The lawsuit stated that the Wellness Center continued functioning after Rexhouse’s termination.
The in-shape claims the college unlawfully retaliated against Rexhouse, as she became protected via whistle-blower legal guidelines. Rexhouse is likewise searching for damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress. Despite a motion to disregard the lawsuit, a choice allowed one component to continue, alleging a violation of whistle-blower laws. The option denied some other element in the whistle-blower claim because the plaintiff hadn’t demonstrated a chance to the public and rejected the intentional infliction of emotional distress claim.
