Project Veritas has done a pretty good job over the past few months of uncovering political bias at a variety of schools across the nation. But on Thursday the watchdog group discovered something even more sinister during an undercover interview with a Connecticut middle school teacher.
Project Veritas released a video showing Iman Rasti, a seventh-grade English teacher at the Greens Farms Academy in Westport, openly fantasizing about young female students in an extremely inappropriate manner.
Soon after the video was released, the teacher was placed on leave pending the results of an investigation.
“Earlier today, we were made aware of an alleged conversation between a member of Project Veritas and one of our faculty members. The employee has been placed on leave and the school is promptly investigating this matter and taking appropriate action,” school spokesperson Michelle Levi said in a statement.
In speaking with the Project Veritas journalist, Rasti acknowledged that some of his thoughts could get him into trouble:
“That possibly means me losing my job, my reputation — it’s way too risky. Like, one thing they [students] do these days, they sit down in front of me, they purposefully sit down somewhere in the class that is literally directly in front of me,” Rasti said.
A content warning going forward: Some of Rasti’s language is quite sexually provocative — and it’s about young teenage girls.
“They spread their legs wide open and that is just brutal. Brutal,” Rasti confided. “Every day, there is different panties on: green, black, white and they [students] make sure — it’s like they talk to each other, the three of them do that.”
“They open their legs, and I am teaching, and I see what I see. They make sure that the panties are positioned in a way that I actually see the thing,” the English teacher explained.
Rasti seemed to blame the students for his predicament, calling them “naughty.”
“Well, how can you concentrate? How can you continue talking with your classroom when you see that? I don’t know for women — if you see, I don’t know, I guess for women it’s sexy to see a man with a hard on. Maybe it’s sexy, I don’t know.…They [students] are naughty,” Rasti said.
The English teacher had some odd views on how puberty affects teenage girls and (in his opinion) their, apparently, ravenous attitudes toward sexual activity.
“So, you see a 15-year-old girl, and next year they come back to school, and she is a woman. She is a woman. There is no way — she has gained weight, just, doing nothing, so it is clear that she has had sex. A lot of sex,” Rasti said.
It’s unclear what Rasti is referring to here. Is he is saying that anytime a young woman begins to show any burgeoning secondary sexual characteristics that she automatically begins having, in his words, “a lot of sex?”
Rasti claimed that he has never acted on his schoolgirl fantasies but, disturbingly, admitted that he has thought about the possibility. He also believes that some of the girls he fantasizes about are probably willing to engage in sexual activity with him.
“I get the vibe, it’s obvious. But I refuse ’cause I don’t f**k my students,” Rasti said. “That’s my principle.”
“I don’t do that. But sometimes I make exceptions … sometimes,” the teacher said.
Rasti claims to have never had sexual relations with his K-12 students, but, as a college professor, his “principle” disappeared quickly.
“Not with my K-12 students,” Rasti told the interviewer. “But college, I had sex with many, many, many, many of my students.”
Project Veritas reached out to a retired police officer who has led many investigations into adults who use children for sex. Thomas McAndrew, formerly with the Pennsylvania State Police, called Rasti’s behavior “predatory.”
“It’s just very concerning … that this is where his mindset is. His mindset is not in welcoming back a teenager who is a student, but instead, he’s obsessed with a sexual connotation or the sexual aspect of that student,” McAndrew said. “Why his mind would go there is very concerning. Again, fantasy is one thing, thinking it is another thing. But when he has blurred the lines and started to justify all of his behavior, it is certainly a concern to us.”
“It is predatory. When somebody is this obsessed with a fantasy, it starts to rule their life. They start to move in a direction of losing the concept of reality. The reality is he’s a teacher. He’s in a power position. He should be worried about educating these children. Instead, his focus is more on constantly — it seems, constantly obsessed with sexual aspects of these children,” McAndrew concluded.
