Student Who Accused Professor of Sex-for-Grades Harassment Is Arrested on Related Charge

Champaign County, Ill., Jail

A clinical professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says the sexual-harassment investigation against him was supposed to end when he agreed to retire. The university contends the inquiry involving Joseph A. Petry remains open.

But the dispute over his employment isn’t the only puzzling development in the drama that has enveloped Petry.

This week the woman who had accused him of asking her for sex in exchange for raising her grade was criminally charged, along with another student, in a bizarre incident that involved holding another student at knifepoint. The police said Petry’s accuser, Summer S. Naqvi, deleted information from her former boyfriend’s computer and phone while her friend allegedly held a knife to the ex-boyfriend’s throat. The ex-boyfriend wasn’t physically hurt, and he told the police he believed the information Naqvi was after related to her harassment complaint against Petry.

University police officers reported that Naqvi, 21, and William T. Farrell, 23, were charged with felony counts of aggravated battery and aggravated unlawful restraint of another person.

The alleged victim reported that Farrell and Naqvi came to his apartment last week after she asked to speak with him. When they arrived, Farrell demanded that he delete his Reddit account, said Julia Rietz, state’s attorney for Champaign County, in an interview, summarizing the police report.

When he refused, a physical struggle followed, and the former boyfriend grabbed a folding knife from Farrell’s hip holster and threw it aside, Rietz said. Naqvi picked it up and returned it to Farrell, the report states. Farrell then held the ex-boyfriend at knifepoint while Naqvi deleted files from his computer and cellphone, Rietz said.

Thomas A. Bruno, Naqvi’s lawyer in the criminal matter, said she had been released on bond and would not be commenting while charges are pending. “She has pleaded ‘not guilty’ because she is in fact not guilty, and we intend to vigorously fight these charges,” he wrote. He said he expects the charges will be dismissed “when the proper investigation has been completed.”

Petry, who was placed on leave in February, has admitted sharing photos and “communications of a social nature” with Naqvi, a former student he met on a social-media platform. In a statement released through his lawyer on Tuesday, he denied offering to raise her grade in exchange for sexual favors. He said their communications happened nine months after the class had ended, and he didn’t know she was a former student. That’s not surprising, he said, because in a typical semester he has at least 1,000 students.

News-Gazette photo

Petry said that his communications with the student were always consensual and that she had asked him to send her pictures on Snapchat because “the pictures disappear on there and it’s totally safe to use.”

He said that when he met with the student in September in his office, “it became clear to me that this individual was focused on convincing me to change her grade from the prior year, or to provide assurance that, if she retook my class, I would give her an A. I said I was not willing to do either of these things.” He said he didn’t see or hear from her after that.

The accusations against Petry came to light last month, when Naqvi wrote about them anonymously on the social-medial platform Reddit.

On Sunday she repeated those accusations on Facebook, using her name.

In her Facebook post she said Petry had “relentlessly sent messages and pictures to me, attempting to solicit pictures back, sex in exchange for an A+ in his class, and even attempted to pay me to have sex with him. Even though I came forward to campus police with evidence, including unwanted text messages and pictures in the fall of 2018, the university did not put him on administrative leave until months later,” she wrote. “I am disappointed that they would continue to let him teach during these months because other girls may have fallen victim to sexual harassment from him.”

She added that she had decided to speak out after learning that the university was describing his absence as due to a family emergency rather than a sexual-harassment investigation. She added that she had received messages from Petry’s family and friends urging her to keep quiet.

Even though he insisted he didn’t violate university policy, Petry expressed “sincere regret that my participation on this internet platform was the start of events that eventually led to my retirement. I exercised poor judgment and placed myself in a compromising position harmful to many,” he wrote in a letter released through his lawyer.

In an earlier statement, he said was saddened to be leaving but proud of his “excellent” ratings as a teacher.

“I feel strongly that, should the investigation of these allegations have continued, the university would have concluded that I did not violate the policies in question,” he wrote. “Nonetheless, the process of confronting these allegations has taken its toll on my family and me. Accordingly, I have entered a binding agreement with the university under which the university has agreed to end this investigation in exchange for my resignation.”

Robin N. Kaler, a university spokeswoman, said in a written statement that Petry is on administrative leave while the accusations against him are being investigated.

“It is our practice to not comment specifically on personnel matters,” she wrote. “However, the safety and security of students and employees is our top priority, and we work hard to ensure that.”

Katherine Mangan writes about community colleges, completion efforts, and job training, as well as other topics in daily news. Follow her on Twitter @KatherineMangan, or email her at katherine.mangan@chronicle.com.