A former Western Albemarle High School associate principal, teacher and coach denies he molested a 12-year-old student in Louisiana in the early 1980s.
The New Orleans Advocate reports his accuser told a New Orleans detective in early 2016 that, while attending Isidore Newman School, she had a crush on teacher Greg Domecq, who allegedly kissed her in a classroom on one occasion and rubbed her thigh on another. And during winter break of 1982, the teacher invited her to the Pontchartrain Beach amusement park, but took her to a “cheap motel” instead, she told investigators.
There, Domecq allegedly digitally penetrated the 12-year-old and masturbated in front of her, according to an April 2016 search warrant.
Domecq, 59, has not been charged for the alleged sexual abuse, and the district attorney said by the time his office was informed of the alleged crime last year, the statute of limitations had lapsed, according to the Advocate.
Now retired, Domecq denied the accusations in an email. He also shared with C-VILLE a message he sent to family and friends after the story broke in the New Orleans Advocate on July 5, and a subsequent article appeared in the Daily Progress.
“I am weary from the attacks I have endured for the past several years from a core group of individuals in both the Charlottesville and New Orleans area who have sought to make my life and the lives of members of my family miserable,” it reads. “The accusations in the Daily Progress/New Orleans Advocate article are both vulgar and false. As I have been taught by my religion, I have forgiven those individuals and I am trying to move on with my life, and I hope that one day they may also put this hatred behind them.”
In his note, he mentions the hundreds of notes and letters from parents, students and teachers that thank him for making a positive difference in their lives during his 35 years in education. Domecq shared some of them with C-VILLE.
He also wrote he’s been happily married to Julie Campbell Domecq for 26 years. Campbell was a senior at St. Martin’s Episcopal School in Metairie, Louisiana, when Domecq coached basketball there in 1988. “We did get together and eventually married in August of 1991. You can imagine the rumors and the feeding frenzy that caused,” he says.
And he made headlines again in 2012 when his daughter, Christine Domecq, a Western Albemarle soccer player, was allegedly bitten during a match against Western’s rival, Fluvanna County High School. Convicted biter Kat Ditta was charged with misdemeanor assault, but the Domecq family eventually decided to drop the charge.
Regarding the molestation allegation, Domecq’s alleged sexual abuse victim also provided contact information for another student the teacher had “exhibited inappropriate behavior towards,” according to a search warrant obtained by the Advocate. She also told police she didn’t tell anyone what happened until about seven years later, when she told her mother, and that she is now ready to come forward after “much therapy.”
A detective interviewed Domecq’s colleagues at Newman who worked with him from 1982 to 1985, and one of them said he “exhibited inappropriate attention to female students.”
But in a 1986 recommendation letter for a job at the Holy Cross School, Newman’s then assistant principal Ed Graf wrote, “He was a most responsible and effective teacher and would certainly be an asset to any school.”
Says Domecq, “I have come to the conclusion that those individuals who will believe the negative attacks will believe them no matter what. The people who know me and my family know who we are and what we have been through.”
Updated July 19 at 1:50pm.