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  • Restraining order in Chico State threat case ‘warranted, necessary and justified,’ judge rules

    Restraining order in Chico State threat case ‘warranted, necessary and justified,’ judge rules


    Suspended Chico State biology professor David Stachura “made a credible threat of violence” against two colleagues who cooperated in an investigation that found he had a sexual affair with a student, a judge found in a tentative ruling released Friday that orders him to stay off campus for three years.

    Protection of “the entire Chico State community is warranted given the nature of the threats and the events that have transpired,” Judge Virginia Gingery wrote in a 13-page decision that, when made final, will grant the university a workplace violence restraining order against Stachura, who witnesses said threatened a mass shooting on campus.

    In addition to professors Emily Fleming and Kristen Gorman, Gingery also extended protection to biology lecturer Betsey Tamietti, graduate student Jackelin Villalobos and members of Fleming’s and Tamietti’s families. The judge also banned Stachura from owning firearms for three years.

    Stachura’s arguments against the order were “unavailing,” Gingery wrote, including his claims that Chico State sought the order based only in reaction to news stories about the threats.

    The restraining order is “warranted, necessary and justified based on (Stachura’s)” conduct the judge wrote.

    Orders first identified as tentative such as the one Gingery released Friday are all but certain to be made final under California court rules. The Butte County Superior Court’s website did not list a hearing date Friday where that would happen.

    Stachuara’s lawyer, Kasra Parsad, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Neither did Chico State officials.

    Parsad told the judge during a hearing in July that if the restraining order were granted it would likely destroy Stachura’s academic career. He is an expert in fish biology, specializing in zebrafish and stem-cell research.

    The ruling comes following a two-part hearing that began in April as part of the fallout of revelations made public last year that Stachura had a prohibited sexual affair with a student in 2020 and allegedly threatened to kill the professors who cooperated in a university investigation of the matter.

    EdSource reported on Dec. 8  that the investigation found that Stachura and the student had sex in his office that could be heard through the walls. Stachura agreed to a settlement of the matter that included suspension without pay for a third of the 2021 spring semester. He has repeatedly denied the 2020 affair but has admitted he is currently romantically involved with the now-former student.

    The revelations roiled the 13,000-student campus in the northern Sierra foothills, resulting in several mass meetings and calls for Stachura’s removal. Provost Debra Larson, who signed off on the settlement in the sex case, resigned within days. The school also revoked an “outstanding professor” award it gave Stachura for the 2020-21 academic year.

    But it was the gun threats — at a time when the country is plagued with mass shootings in schools and elsewhere — that caused both students and faculty to express deep fears.

    As the sex investigation unfolded in 2020, Stachura allegedly told his estranged wife, Miranda King, that he’d bought weapons and ammunition — including hollow-point bullets, with the intention of killing Fleming and Gorman.

    King revealed the alleged threats in an application for a domestic violence restraining order in the midst of a deeply contentious divorce. King’s lawyer alerted Fleming and Gorman.

    A biology lecturer, Tamietti, revealed that Stachura allegedly spoke to her about committing gun violence in the biology department. At a Dec. 12 campuswide meeting, Tamietti quoted Stachura as telling her, “If I wanted you guys dead, you’d be dead. I am a doer. If I do go on a shooting spree, maybe I’ll pass your office. I am not sure.”

    Stachura, in both the divorce case and the current case, has claimed he told King that he had a nightmare about killing his colleagues and had no intention of acting violently. He has repeatedly said Tamietti is lying because he ended a friendship with her when she didn’t support him after King revealed the alleged threats.

    Stachura sued both King and Tamietti for libel. But the case against Tamietti was dismissed when another judge ruled in June that her statement at the meeting was a matter of public interest. Court records show Stachura dropped his suit against King last month. Their divorce case remains ongoing.

    Gorman, Fleming, Tamietti and Villalobos all testified of a deep fear of Stachura.

    Stachura testified twice. Much of his testimony centered on Tamietti, with whom he said he had “a really weird relationship.”

    He testified that after the date she claimed he threatened a shooting in the biology department in November 2021, she continued to email and text him even after he sent her “a dear John email” ending their friendship. Her contacts with him, he claimed, showed the threat was fabricated.

    But Tamietti testified in July that she felt safer by staying in communication with Stachura, a point Deputy Attorney General Shanna McDaniel reiterated in her closing statement.

    Stachura’s lawyer said the women named in the restraining order are “afraid of (Stachura) based on some article. I don’t believe that for the last three years, they have been terrified of him.”

    Parsad also told Gingery that a three-year order restraining him from stepping foot on campus would ruin Stachura’s career. “He has worked very hard in his career, and I don’t think any university would hire him (with a workplace violence restraining order) on his record.”

    It was not immediately clear Friday what action the university will now take. Court records show it opened another investigation of Stachura in March that focuses, in part, on whether he was dishonest during the investigation of his affair with the then-student.

    Gingery seemed to key on Stachura’s repeated denials of the affair as undermining his credibility. She noted that in testimony, he had even claimed the investigation of the affair “came back negative” despite the fact that an investigator found the affair occurred and Stachura entered into a settlement with the university that resulted in his pay being temporarily reduced as discipline.

    Michael Weber of the Chico Enterprise-Record contributed to this story.





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  • Chico State professor hit with legal fees in failed libel case

    Chico State professor hit with legal fees in failed libel case


    Suspended Chico State professor David Stachura’s failed effort to sue a colleague for libel has hit him in the wallet.

    A Superior Court judge has ordered Stachura to pay the California State University system more than $64,000 it spent to defend a lecturer he sued after she said at a campuswide forum nearly a year ago that Stachura threatened to shoot up the biology department. The university indemnified the lecturer, Betsey Tamietti.

    Judge Stephen Benson threw out the suit in July under a California statute that allows successful defendants to recoup the cost of beating back such litigation. He issued the fee order late last month. Stachura also sued his estranged wife for libel but withdrew the suit.

    “As a public institution, we must be responsible stewards of the money allocated to us by the state of California,” Chico State spokesperson Andrew Staples said in an email. The school looks “forward to recovering the attorney’s fees the university was forced to incur to fight this lawsuit that the court agreed was without merit and would have chilled free speech.”

    Stachura’s lawyer, Kasra Parsad, didn’t respond to a request to comment on the ruling.

    David Loy, legal director of the San Rafael-based First Amendment Coalition, said the law worked as intended in the Stachura case. “It protects those who speak out on matters of public concern from being intimidated by frivolous and costly lawsuits,” he said. It allows defendants to quickly beat back bogus suits meant to intimidate critics without years of costly litigation. In libel cases, “the process itself is the punishment,” Loy said.

    The lecturer’s remarks came days after EdSource reported that Stachura’s estranged wife said in court documents in the couple’s divorce case that he threatened to kill two colleagues who cooperated in a university investigation that found Stachura had an inappropriate affair with a graduate student that included sex in his office.

     A different judge in August granted Chico State a three-year workplace violence restraining order against Stachura. It requires him to stay off campus and away from Tamietti and others, including the professors who reported his affair with the student.

    Stachura was put on paid suspension in December, a status that continues, Staples said. An investigation of the threats against the co-workers and other matters “is complete and has moved to the next stage of the personnel process,” he said.

    The CSU chancellor’s office in Long Beach is overseeing an outside investigation of how the Chico State administration handled the Stachura affair, including the original investigation of the sex case and the gun threats. It is expected to be concluded in a month or two, Amy Bentley-Smith, a spokesperson, said in an email. Stachura received light punishment in the sex case and was later named the school’s ‘”outstanding professor” of the 2020-2021 academic year.

    During hearings in the restraining order case, Shanna McDaniel, a deputy state attorney general, said that the fact Stachura was likely to lose the libel case and be hit with the type of fee motion that Benson approved made him even more dangerous and a greater threat to the campus community.

    In a written declaration in the libel case, Stachura said he’s suffered financially over the last year, losing consulting jobs he had for several companies. He is now listed as the founder and chief executive of a company called Philanthropic Pharma, according to its website. He is listed as its only employee.





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  • Report finds Chico State followed existing policies in investigating embattled professor

    Report finds Chico State followed existing policies in investigating embattled professor


    Chico State University followed proper procedures in how it handled the sex investigation of suspended professor David Stachura and its lengthy aftermath, including not informing faculty and students that Stachura allegedly threatened gun violence on campus, an independent investigation has found.

    The 20-page report by San Diego lawyer Nancy Aeling was released late Monday afternoon by the university, nearly a year after EdSource first reported on findings that Stachura had an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student and allegedly threatened to shoot two colleagues who cooperated in an investigation of the matter, and was later named the university’s Outstanding Professor of the 2020-21 school year.

    “The university acted consistently with policy by not notifying the Chico State community of Stachura’s alleged threats of violence,” Aeling wrote. Stachura, according to court testimony by his estranged wife, had told her of his intent to kill two professors who cooperated in the 2021 investigation that found he had an inappropriate relationship, which included sex in his office, with a student. Separately, a biology lecturer revealed — and later testified — that Stachura spoke to her about committing a shooting in the biology department.

    Aeling did not respond to a phone message left at her office on Monday.

    The report was also not critical of the university’s Campus Violence Consultation Team, which recommended that Stachura be allowed to return to campus after investigating the alleged threats against his colleagues and “did not find that he posed a threat of violence.”

    A member of that team, Chico State Police Chief Christopher Nicodemus, testified in a court proceeding earlier this year that he did not agree with the team’s findings.

    “There were concerns” about Stachura, Nicodemus said on the stand in a legal proceeding that resulted in a judge issuing a three-year workplace violence restraining order against Stachura that bars him from going on campus or near the people he threatened.

    Nicodemus said on the stand that he believed “it’s safer to err on the side of caution” when making a threat assessment. He added that it would have been better to have mistakenly fired Stachura than live with the aftermath of a violent event.

    Aeling wrote in the report that she did not consider “the appropriateness of Stachura’s actions or communications with his colleagues nor his colleagues’ responses to Stachura and his continued presence on campus, or the overall effectiveness of the procedures or policies in place to address the situation presented by (his) actions or communications.” Rather, the report was limited to “whether (the) responses were reasonable given the information available at the time and were consistent with the policies and procedures governing them.” The report makes no policy recommendations.

    A faculty union officer ripped the report Monday night.

    “It’s absolutely demoralizing and heartbreaking that no one has taken any accountability for what has happened,’’ Lindsay Briggs, a public health professor and a California Faculty Association Chico Campus Executive Board member, wrote in an email to EdSource.

    “This is why survivors of violence don’t speak out and why we don’t feel safe at our jobs; because we’re not. No one cares to do anything other than offer empty platitudes.” Eleven “months of hand wringing and we’re no better off than we were before,” she said. 

    Gordon Wolfe, a professor who turned over court records about Stachura’s alleged threat to kill witnesses, said in a phone interview Monday evening that he received an email from Chico State saying that Aeling wanted to interview him, but that “she never followed up.”

    Stachura remains on administrative leave as the university finishes an investigation of his alleged threat to kill witnesses in the sex case. He was recently ordered by a judge to pay more than $64,000 for the legal fees of a lecturer he unsuccessfully sued for libel. His lawyer did not respond to a request to comment on Aeling’s report.

    In a prepared statement that accompanied the report’s release, Chico State President Stephen Perez said, “I appreciate the thorough review and the opportunity to consider our practices moving forward.” 

    Without mentioning her by name, the report found that former Chico State President Gayle Hutchinson considered the sex case against Stachura as well as the alleged threats he made when approving “Stachura’s promotion to” full professor in 2021. Hutchinson found him “to be a highly productive citizen of the academy, with a strong record of teaching, service and research,” the report states.

    Hutchinson retired in June. She could not be immediately reached Monday night.





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  • Chico State biology professor parts ways with university

    Chico State biology professor parts ways with university


    Embattled Chico State biology professor David Stachura is no longer employed by the university, a spokesperson said in a two-sentence statement issued Thursday.

    The spokesperson, Andrew Staples, would not say if Stachura, who had been on paid suspension for more than a year, was fired or resigned. He was the subject of two investigations that were nearing conclusions. One was on appeal to the chancellor’s office and the other was scheduled for mediation in April.

    Reached later by phone, Staples cited personnel privacy laws in declining further comment.

    Stachura’s lawyer, Kasra Parsad, did not return messages Thursday.

    The end of Stachura’s tenure at Chico State comes after a contentious court case to ban him from the campus and a failed libel suit he brought against a colleague.

    EdSource reported in December 2022 that an investigation found that Stachura had an inappropriate relationship with a student that included sex in his office in 2020 that could be heard through the walls, causing colleagues to report him. Stachura has repeatedly denied the affair.

    He received only light punishment for the affair and within months was named the university’s  “Outstanding Professor” of the 2020-21 academic year. The award was rescinded after EdSource reported on it.

    Stachura’s estranged wife later filed court papers in their ongoing divorce case alleging that he had threatened to shoot the professors who reported him and cooperated in the university’s investigation.

    Stachura was a tenured biology professor and was considered an expert in the use of zebra fish for medical research.

    A member of the biology department expressed relief  Thursday that Stachura is no longer on the faculty.

    “It’s about time,” Gordon Wolfe, a semi-retired biology professor, said. The biology department, he said, “is no longer dysfunctional. People are happy again.”

    Wolfe had reported to the university the allegations that Stachura’s wife made in court filings. A university investigation of the threats found that Stachura was not a danger, and he was allowed to keep working. The university’s police chief, who was a member of a panel that probed the matter, later testified that he disagreed with that finding.

    In November, a report by a San Diego lawyer hired to investigate how Chico State handled the Stachura matter revealed that former campus President Gayle Hutchinson knew about the affair with the student and the alleged threat to shoot colleagues when she approved his promotion to full professor. She retired last year.

    The report found that the university violated no existing procedures in how it handled the Stachura matters, including not informing faculty and students that Stachura allegedly threatened gun violence on campus.

    The saga did get the attention of state lawmakers. An Assembly committee cited EdSource’s reporting on Stachura multiple times in a report issued earlier this month that concluded that students and faculty members across the state don’t trust how schools deal with matters of sexual misconduct as governed by Title IX of federal education law.

    The report’s recommendations included forming a task force to examine whether “a statewide office to provide guidance and to monitor the compliance of post secondary education institutions with sex discrimination laws” can be formed and also having the leaders of the three systems issue annual compliance reports on sexual misconduct cases to lawmakers.





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  • Chico State professor resigned after findings of dishonesty, retaliation

    Chico State professor resigned after findings of dishonesty, retaliation


    Chico State University.

    Credit: Jason Halley / Chico State

    Chico State University was about to fire former biology professor David Stachura for dishonesty, sexual harassment and retaliation when it agreed to withdraw the charges last month in exchange for his resignation in a deal that bans him from working again in the California State University system, documents obtained by EdSource show.

    In return for his resignation, Stachura dropped several appeals that were in process, including ones to the State Department of Civil Rights, the Division of Occupational Safety and Health and the California State University’s Chancellor’s Office, documents show.

    Stachura’s lawyer, Kasra Parsad of Santa Rosa, did not respond to messages on Tuesday.

    Chico State began investigating Stachura anew last year after EdSource reported in December 2022 that a previous investigation concluded in 2020 that he had an inappropriate affair with a student that included sex in his office and that court records showed he had allegedly threatened to kill two professors who cooperated in the university’s probe of the matter.

    The newly released records, obtained under the state Public Records Act,  show that the university found in the two separate investigations that Stachura was untruthful about his affair with the student and that he retaliated against two professors who cooperated in the investigation of that matter.

    Documents described his court testimony last year when the university sought and won a workplace violence restraining order against Stachura as inconsistent with other statements about his relationship with the student.

    There were “numerous important inconsistent or misleading statements by Dr. Stachura throughout the evidence,” according to a report.

    “Given Dr. Stachura’s inconsistent answers, it is clear that Dr. Stachura is altering his statements regarding his relationship with (the student) to suit his needs at any given moment,” Scott Lynch, the university’s director of labor relations wrote in an Aug. 24, 2023, report.

     A separate investigation found Stachura retaliated against two professors who cooperated in the sex investigation.

    Title IX investigator Gloria Godinez wrote in a 45-page report dated Aug. 24, 2023, that a witness said Stachura said the two professors were “going against him,” that he referred to them as “f—— bitches,” said he “hated” them, and “often ranted about the investigation.”

    The professors described Stachura as often glaring at them, blasting loud music they could hear through office walls, and going against their positions in meetings. Another witness told the investigator Stachura talked “about being a troll, an annoyance.”

    “Stachura took every opportunity he could to discredit” the professors, Godinez wrote.

    The settlement agreement between Stachura and Chico State also shows the university dropped a court claim that Stachura owed it more than $64,000 in legal fees for the defense of a biology lecturer that Stachura sued for libel last year. A judge threw out the suit last year and ruled that Stachura was responsible for legal fees. “The university will not enforce the judgment,” the settlement states.

    The workplace violence restraining order that a Butte County Superior Court judge issued last year that bans Stachura from the university for three years will remain in place. Stachura has appealed the order to the state 3rd District Court of Appeal in Sacramento. No date for oral arguments has been set, according to court records. The parties agreed to abide by whatever decision the appeals court issues.

    The university will also remove 5,466 pages of investigative and disciplinary documents from Stachura’s personnel files and will respond to any reference or employment-check requests by only providing his dates of employment, salary and job title.

    “Chico State entered into this settlement agreement only after careful consideration and in consultation with the CSU,” a spokesman, Andrew Staples, wrote in an email Tuesday. “This settlement puts an immediate end to what has been a lengthy personnel matter and is the best path forward for the university and our campus community.”

    The agreements also make it clear that Stachura will not teach in the 23-campus CSU system again. Stachura agreed “to never apply for or accept employment with any campuses of the California State University or their auxiliary organizations,” the document states. “If the university or its auxiliary organizations inadvertently offer Stachura a position, (or) Stachura breaches this agreement by accepting a position with the university or its auxiliary organizations Stachura shall be terminated.”





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