A former Rye Neck teacher accused in a lawsuit of sexually abusing a student had two previous drunk driving convictions and was questioned by school officials about other alleged “concerning” behavior, The Record has learned.
Joseph Perlman allegedly had several “inappropriate” communications with Rye Neck students dating back to 2006, according to reports of a Village of Mamaroneck police investigation that began after a student accused Perlman of sexual abuse during the 2018-19 school year.
Perlman was placed on administrative leave in November 2019 during that investigation. Months before, former schools Superintendent Barbara Ferraro had warned Perlman that “your actions are concerning to me” because of his continued failure to “maintain appropriate boundaries” with his students, according to Mamaroneck Police Department records obtained through a New York state Freedom of Information Law request.
The Rye Neck district hired Perlman in 2001, and he agreed to a “voluntary” resignation from the district in 2020, before Mamaroneck police had concluded their investigation into the sexual abuse claims. His resignation paperwork stipulated in part that both Perlman and the district agreed to the terms “solely to avoid the time, financial cost and uncertainties of litigation.”
Ultimately, Mamaroneck police found “no evidence … to corroborate any of the [sexual abuse] allegations against Mr. Perlman,” in 2021, according to police records.
But the one-time Rye Neck teacher had a few unrelated convictions on his record before officials investigated those allegations.
Perlman was charged with driving while intoxicated in Mamaroneck in 2012 and again in Somers in 2016 — both while he was employed by the Rye Neck schools. In the first incident, he was convicted after pleading guilty to operating a motor vehicle with a blood alcohol level of .08 of one percent or more, a misdemeanor. He was ordered in Mamaroneck Village Court to pay a $500 fine.
In the second incident, he was charged with a felony and convicted of a lesser charge — driving while his ability was impaired by the consumption of alcohol, an infraction — after a jury trial and sentenced in 2017 to an “intermittent 14 days,” according to the police reports. The police reports said he faced “incarceration over the course of several weekends” and a fine of $750.
Rye Neck administrators allowed Perlman to keep his job after that second DWI conviction and subsequent jail sentence, district records show.
Perlman is currently employed as a math teacher in the Greenwich (Conn.) Public School District, though the district placed him on paid leave in December of 2025 after learning about the sexual abuse allegations in Westchester, said Jonathan Supranowitz, director of communications at the Greenwich schools.
Officials at the Greenwich schools were aware of Perlman’s drunk driving charges when he was hired there as a high school math teacher in 2023, Supranowitz told The Record.
“That would not have stopped us from hiring him,” he said, adding that all background checks of prospective school employees are conducted by the Greenwich Police Department.
He added of Perlman: “He’s been a very good teacher for us.”
Perlman is being sued by a former Rye Neck student who alleges that the teacher left the pupil secret-coded notes while the student was in middle school in 2018-19, and eventually groomed and coerced the 13-year-old to perform sexual acts on him. (The former student is referred to as a female student in police notes but now identifies as a man.) The September 2025 lawsuit was filed in Westchester Supreme Court through the Child Victims Act and awaits trial.
Perlman, who initially represented himself in court before hiring White Plains-based lawyers Richard Portale and John Phelan, has denied sexually abusing the student.
“These allegations are a completely fabricated tale by a mentally disturbed young person,” Portale told The Record. “There are no ‘secret notes,’ no ‘unmonitored platforms,’ there is no smoking gun or any evidence whatsoever for that matter.”
The Rye Neck district also denied the allegations that the student made against it.
Perlman allegedly wrote a message to the student at the time with the subject line “Last email” saying: “I am tired of the constant trouble etc and having to be displaced. You’re a cool chick, just wrong time,” according to the police records.
Perlman’s behavior, however, had raised concerns with Rye Neck officials more than 10 years earlier when they determined that he had allegedly engaged in “casual conversations with one or more former students” during the 2006-07 and 2007-08 academic years, police records state.
While there was no evidence to suggest those conversations with students, which took place over AOL Instant Messenger, were sexual in nature, school officials described them as “inappropriate.”
“While the district wants all teachers to foster a good rapport with their students, informal conversations related to your personal life can easily become inappropriate,” Ferraro wrote to Perlman in 2018. “Your interactions with students reflect not only on yourself, but on the district as a whole.”
School officials found that concerns about the conversations were “credible,” but they said they could not corroborate those concerns because AOL Instant Messenger had been discontinued by 2018, according to the police reports.
Perlman worked as a math teacher, 11th-grade advisor, and the math department chairman during his tenure at Rye Neck.
