Former Georgia State professor found guilty of sexual misconduct with student, charged with sexual battery
Professor now prohibited from working at school and barred from university properties
Terry Bozeman, who taught at Georgia State’s Perimeter College in Dunwoody, came under scrutiny after being 0700806 with sexual battery on April 19. The mother of one of his students told campus police that her daughter was “sexually assaulted” by the 43-year-old professor, according to a GSUPD report. The victim claimed “Bozeman told her to lift up her shirt and...touched her in the buttocks area,” the arrest report says.
Bozeman said in a police witness statement that he touched his student’s rear during a hug after “light-hearted, joking conversation” in his office. “We jokingly talked about having lunch next week, and when done I gave the student a playful hug. During the hug, I lightly touched the student’s bottom.”
Although the school’s Title IX investigators — administration officials who work to prevent discrimination in schools — said the June 9 judgement against Bozeman would have prompted his termination, the English teacher had already resigned on April 26, the same day another student filed a complaint with GSUPD alleging that Bozeman also touched her in a sexual manner.
“With a heavy heart, I do what’s right for my family, my team, and ultimately the institution I love so dearly,” Bozeman wrote in his resignation letter, which made no reference to the allegations against him. Creative Loafing has been unable to reach Bozeman, who in 2014 was named a Governor’s Teaching Fellow, for comment.
The second student told university police that Bozeman had “lured her” into his Dunwoody campus office on three separate occasions from Jan. 11 to April 19. There, the GSUPD report says, “Bozeman convinced her he needed near-nude photographs of her to send to his modeling connections.”
“Bozeman took photographs with his cell phone from the front, back, and both sides,” the April 26 police report states. “He asked her to pull up her bra so he could touch her breasts to obtain her measurements.”
University police handed over the woman’s complaint to Georgia State’s human resources office, although she wasn’t personally involved in the investigation thereafter.
After the seven-week Title IX investigation prompted by his April 19 sexual battery arrest, and using the second student’s April 26 police report as further evidence, the university found Bozeman guilty of misconduct on June 9. The school’s staff handbook says: “People in positions of authority within the university community must be sensitive to the potential for conflict of interest as well as sexual harassment in amorous relationships with people over whom they have a professional power/status advantage.”
Although Bozeman’s photo subject told police that she consented to his sexual advances, the first complainant said she did not, and the school decided his behavior breached policies of “equal opportunity, amorous relationships, sexual harassment, and employee conduct,” according to the notice of the infraction that Georgia State sent to Bozeman.
Because of the Title IX violation, Bozeman is prohibited from working at Georgia State and barred from all university properties and school-sanctioned events. The sexual battery case was handed off to the DeKalb County Police Department after the April 19 arrest, and a court date has not been scheduled.