Lawyer says former college dean sought in sex assault hiding in Bermuda

From: MyWestTexas.com - Midland,TX,USA - Apr 24, 2005

Bob Campbell
Midland Reporter Telegram

BIG SPRING -- Believed to be hiding in Southampton, Bermuda, a former Howard College dean of students has been a fugitive since his March 2003 indictment on two felony charges for the alleged sexual assault of a college employee.

Liberia native Franklin Wellington Fahnbulleh III, 49, initially was charged with misdemeanor public lewdness after the Nov. 8, 2002, incident in the office of an accounts payable clerk, said a Houston attorney involved in a civil lawsuit related to the case.

Released on a $1,200 bond, Fahnbulleh allegedly fled the United States before a Howard County grand jury indicted him on two third-degree felony counts of official restraint, or using force to prevent a government official from doing his or her duty, attorney Kenneth McGwire said.

He's accused of pulling the female clerk out of her chair, bending her head back by her hair, putting his tongue into her mouth, biting her breast and trying to pull her pants down while making vulgar suggestions. He could be sentenced to two to 10 years in state prison if convicted.

Claiming the alleged victim can no longer work because Fahnbulleh tore her lumbar disk, McGwire filed the lawsuit last November in U.S. District Court in Midland. The woman is seeking an undisclosed amount of money.

The defendants were Fahnbulleh, the college and two administrators who allegedly recommended hiring him, Provost Ron Brasel and Bunmi Aina, a Gallaudet University faculty member in Washington who was then diagnostic director at the Howard College-affiliated Southwest Collegiate Institute for the Deaf.

The woman seeks unspecified damages for what she says were neck and back injuries that necessitated the insertion of titanium rods in her back, the loss of use of her right arm, post-traumatic stress syndrome and other injuries.

After U.S. District Judge Robert Junell of Midland recused himself, Senior Judge Harry Lee Hudspeth of Austin in March dismissed a claim filed by the alleged victim's husband and dismissed civil rights violation claims against Brasel, Aina and the college, leaving only the woman's sexual harassment lawsuit against Fahnbulleh and the college left to be adjudicated in a Sept. 19 trial in Midland.

McGwire told the Reporter-Telegram that Howard County District Attorney Hardy Wilkerson has declined his requests to submit a written application to the U.S. Justice Department for Fahnbulleh's extradition. Efforts to reach Wilkerson were unsuccessful.

"They're willing to do it, but it has to be on the written request of the district attorney," McGwire said.

He said a bailiff with the Bermuda Supreme Court served Fahnbulleh with the civil lawsuit, and the fugitive continues traveling from Southampton to an apartment he owns in New York City. "If a wanted fugitive can come in and out of the country that easily, it makes you wonder what a terrorist who doesn't have an arrest warrant out for him could do," McGwire said.

McGwire said Aina is deaf while Fahnbulleh "claims" to be deaf. He said there is a cap of about $250,000 on the alleged victim's sexual harassment lawsuit, but limits on the civil rights claims versus Brasel, Aina and Howard College "would have been much higher."

College Executive Vice President Terry Hansen last week said the school's lawyer, Kelli Karczewski of Nacogdoches, advised him to restrict his comments. "I can acknowledge there is a lawsuit and say we are defending it vigorously," Hansen said.

"At such time as this is resolved, we might be able to say something. But when you get into litigation, you have to follow the advice of your attorney."

Karczewski declined comment on the merits of the case but said she looks forward to defending the remaining sexual harassment claim against the college. "We have denied all allegations against the college," she said.

The alleged victim said Fahnbulleh came to work here from New York in September 2002 and accosted her in a college parking lot the night before the alleged attack, asking, "How do you like your boss?" and standing in front of her vehicle "blowing kisses" until she blew one to get him to move.

"I was sitting at my desk about 8:15 a.m., and he came over and grabbed me by my shoulders, pulled me out of my chair and started trying to undo my belt," the woman told the Reporter-Telegram. She said she repeatedly told Fahnbulleh she was happily married. "He snapped my head back and ruptured my lower back."

Efforts to reach Houston attorney Rick Morris, who represents Fahnbulleh, were unsuccessful.

Ron Lovett, an attorney in McGwire's office, said it would enhance the civil lawsuit if U.S. authorities extradited and convicted Fahnbulleh of criminal charges. "If we could get him back to Texas, it would make a world of difference for us," said Lovett.

McGwire said the fugitive was a student at Gallaudet, a school for the deaf, in the mid-1980s and completed his education at Towson University in Maryland and Louisiana State University.

©MyWestTexas.com 2005