KENT, Conn.—Kent School is facing a second lawsuit for allegedly failing to protect the privacy of employees and students from internet invasion by Daniel Clery of Brookfield, former network and systems administrator for the school.
He is said to have illegally accessed personal photographs and video files and viewed, copied, and retained them.
His activity was first reported to the school in 2022, and he was dismissed nearly a year later following a second incident.
Clery was arrested in June 2024 on two counts of first-degree computer crime, according to the lawsuit and is next due in the state Superior Court in Waterbury on March 20. His case is statutorily sealed.
Initially silent on the topic of accelerated rehabilitation for Clery, the school has since opposed granting it.
Kristen Ford of Falls Village, assistant director of studies at the school, brought the second lawsuit, which is separate from a class action suit filed Feb. 11 by three former students on behalf of 81 persons.
The attorneys for the plaintiffs in both cases are from Silver Golub & Teitell LLP of Stamford, Conn.
Ford, who is on leave because of the stress and anxiety engendered by the incident, cites a “devastating invasion of her privacy” and argues that she lost exclusive control over her highly sensitive images. She reports that she suffers from PTSD as a result of the incidents, has been undergoing therapy, and has felt “personally threatened, physically ill and emotionally distraught.”
She expects to have to hire data removal specialists to scour the internet to remove her personal information.
Her suit accuses Kent School of negligence because it failed to supervise Clery properly; invasion of privacy because the school provided Clery with the “authority and ability” to gain access to student and staff computers; computer crime because Clery engaged “in the crime of misuse of computer system information” while acting with the authority provided him by Kent School; recklessness because department heads did not act when informed of Clery’s activities; and negligent infliction of emotional distress because the plaintiff’s “emotional distress was a foreseeable consequence” of the school’s failure to act.
Ford is seeking compensatory damages, common law punitive damages, treble damages for injuries pursuant to General Statutes 52-570b(c), attorneys fees, and “such other relief as the Court deems appropriate.”
Ford was the whistleblower who discovered Clery’s unauthorized access of personal pictures, some of a highly personal and sexual nature, that were stored on her personal Google account. She reported the incident in 2022, but nothing was done until eight months later, in 2023, when he allegedly used RClone, a command-line program to sync files and directories to and from different cloud storage providers, to again access her personal Google account.
State police searched computers belonging to Clery, reportedly revealing “3,670 personal image files that either belong to or depict current and former Kent School students” as well as screenshots of text messages and emails.
The school engaged Vancord, a private cybersecurity firm, that reportedly found that Clery accessed and copied 81 persons’ personal files, both of students and former employees of the school. Seventy-nine of them were females.
