A Yonkers couple is suing the city, its schools and a high school gym teacher who has admitted to inappropriate conduct with their teenage daughter.
The lawsuit was filed Jan. 20 in state Supreme Court in White Plains, two weeks before Matthew Hausman pleaded guilty in Yonkers City Court to endangering the welfare of a child, a misdemeanor. Yonkers Judge Evan Inlaw promised a two-year term of probation and scheduled sentencing for April 28.
While Hausman will not have to register as a sex offender, the probationary term is expected to include sex offender conditions, the Westchester District Attorney’s Office said.
“For months, Matthew Hausman transformed a public high school into a hunting ground, exploiting hisposition of authority to groom, manipulate and traumatize a vulnerable child,” lawyers Thomas Stufano and Nayel Sayegh wrote in the lawsuit.
They alleged that the “brazen” abuse that offered “open and notorious red flags” had to have been known to school officials, as Hausman would meet the girl in school before opening bell and would pull her out of other classes “eroding the boundaries between teacher and student while the institutional defendants failed to intervene.”
City and school officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the lawsuit. Hausman must surrender his teaching license, the DA’s Office said. A school spokesman said Monday, Feb. 8 that Hausman remains on administrative leave.
Hausman, 59, of Somers, worked for the district since 2000. He was a physical education teacher at Yonkers Middle High School before being placed on administrative leave following his arrest in July 2025.
According to the DA’s Office and the lawsuit, during the 2024-25 school year when the girl was a junior he made inappropriate comments and sent her improper texts over several months.
Hausman was accused of kissing the girl on her birthday and later expressing romantic feelings for her, even though he acknowledged that was inappropriate. He once suggested to her a trade with her father – Hausman’s wife and daughter for the student.
On one occasion he allegedly called her a “bitch” in class and displayed an open dog collar insinuating that she should wear it. He complained that it appeared she was ghosting him after a school dance and questioned whether it was because she had a new boyfriend. And when she saw her hug a male classmate once, he told her it drove him crazy and he was barring that student from his classroom.
The lawsuit references a school dance at which Hausman’s behavior was so inappropriate – it alleges that he grabbed the girl by the arm to take pictures and dance with him – that a vendor interceded to check if she was alright.
It also accused Hausman of getting photographs from the girl, trying to meet her away from school, giving her heart-shaped snacks, putting food and snacks in her bag, texting that he wanted to give her “motion sickness,” which the lawsuit claimed was a sexual innuendo.
Court records also show Hausman’s wife filed for divorce in September, two months after his arrest.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Yonkers teacher pleads guilty to endangering student, faces lawsuit
Reporting by Jonathan Bandler, Rockland/Westchester Journal News / Rockland/Westchester Journal News
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