Choir Director Hodgman Resigns Adrian College Position

By David Panian
Daily Telegram News
January 30, 2018

http://www.lenconnect.com/news/20180130/choir-director-hodgman-resigns-adrian-college-position

A long-time Adrian College choir director who has been dogged by allegations he had a sexual relationship with a student when he was a high school teacher in the 1980s has resigned from the college.

Adrian College said Tuesday that Thomas Hodgman has resigned.

“The college will make no further comment regarding this matter,” Frank Hribar, vice president for enrollment and student affairs, said in an email.

Hodgman did not immediately return a call from The Daily Telegram seeking comment.

For years, the woman who claims Hodgman abused her when she was a 15-year-old student at a Catholic high school in Southern California has tried to get the college to cut ties with Hodgman.

“The college didn’t want students to know what Hodgman did to me,” Joelle Casteix said Tuesday in an email. “When students found out, (current college President) Jeffrey Docking, (former college President) Stanley Caine, and Hodgman himself did everything in their power to discredit me. Even when the courts said that I was in the right. Even when I had documents to prove every word I said was true.”

Casteix sued Hodgman, the Diocese of Orange, California, and Mater Dei High School in 2003. The lawsuit, which was grouped with others regarding sexual abuse by priests, was settled in 2005. The file in her case was supposed to have been sealed but became public for a short time and was made available to some media outlets. Casteix has since posted what she says are those documents on her website.

“After the college finally conceded that what I said was true, Docking and Hodgman still thought that things could be ‘business as usual,’ ” Casteix wrote in her email. “They thought that Hodgman could go on tour with high school students. They believed that the public, the student body and that Carnegie Hall would turn a blind eye. They believed that the world was as callous as they were.”