A New Jersey teacher with a second career as an actor is losing his job after an arbitrator concluded that he showed students a clip of himself in bed with an actress.
Technology teacher Richard Graffanino denied showing the film clip to six eighth-grade girls at River Dell Middle School in River Edge. In a ruling made public Tuesday, a tenure arbitrator said the evidence showed otherwise.
The arbitrator says the scene conveyed the impression that the characters were waking up after having sex. A sheet covers the woman just below her bare shoulders and the shirtless Graffanino up to his waist.
The arbitrator says seeing the 39-year-old teacher “as an actor in a sexual situation would be confusing and disturbing to the students.”
Graffanino tells The Record newspaper the girls gave conflicting testimony and the investigation was unfair.
Click here for more news from New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
