A judge there found her in "immediate and present danger of abuse'' from Proa and ordered him to cease all contact with her. In February 2008, as Proa continued to send her "crazy'' letters, the student went to court in New England. Her mother issued an ultimatum: Either talk to authorities about Proa or "I was out of the family, they were not going to pay for college." "I was, like, this guy is blackmailing and stalking me.'' There was no return address but the girl told her mother who had sent them. She screamed at him, "Stay out of my life."Īt Christmas break, her mother confronted her with a large envelope stuffed with Facebook photos, some that showed her drinking. They stayed in a hotel, she says, but had a fight. He lied and said he was dying of cancer."įeeling guilty, she invited him to visit. Proa repeatedly called and texted her, she said, "doing anything to make me feel sorry for him. His contract wasn't renewed, he says, only because of "structural changes'' in which other people also lost their jobs.īy then 18, the girl had gone off to college in New England. But Proa says that he received positive evaluations. The principal at the time could not be reached for comment. In June 2007, at the end of the school year, Proa parted ways with New Gate.
I started to become like that, I was lying about my entire life." That's his lifestyle, to be a compulsive liar.
I'm spending the night with friends, the student would tell her mother. They continued to see each other outside of school. Once, on the way to Brandon, he asked her to pull off at a rest stop and perform oral sex, she said. Or went to Orlando ("He was obsessed with Disney") and even to his house when his wife was away. "We couldn't go out in Sarasota without the risk of seeing someone," she told the Tampa Bay Times, so they sometimes drove to Brandon, where they walked around the mall and ate at the Cheesecake Factory. But then, she says, she developed a "bit of a crush" and he reciprocated the attention. Too bossy, too cocky, too flabby for someone who harped about healthy eating, she says. At their annual convention in Hawaii in 2006, fellow AAU members elected him a regional representative.īut during that same year a relationship began to develop between Proa and an athletic female student, then 17. As its national aquatics chairman, he was in Largo in 2005 for a major diving meet. Over the next few years, Proa continued to teach at New Gate while playing a prominent volunteer role in the AAU. A judge granted a temporary injunction but lifted it in November 2003 when Pierce failed to prove she feared an imminent threat to her safety. Proa countered that he had been "exhilarated" to learn he was a father and intended to support the child. I can honestly say I don't know who Todd Proa really is, Pierce wrote. He had also served as national aquatics director of the Amateur Athletic Union, in charge of the swimmers for the 1999 Junior Olympics in Cleveland. Originally from Ohio, Proa had landed at the private Sarasota school by way of Cleveland State University, where he majored in history, and the YMCAs in Gainesville and Sarasota, where he taught swimming.
It listed his employment: "Teacher New Gate School.'' Stopped a short time later, he told officers he had followed her home to ask her to dinner. In 2001, a 26-year-old woman in North Port found Proa crouched on her doorstep. For going on three years, he had also been CI 1528 - a confidential informant for the Sarasota Police Department. To outward appearances, he was still a model of respectability - doting father of two, husband of a successful gymnastics school owner, former high-ranking director of one of the nation's oldest and largest volunteer sports organizations.īut Proa was finding it harder to keep secret a lurid double life of sex and drugs. Once again, Proa had managed to bury part of his past. A background check came back clean, and the soccer association allowed him to continue coaching. But within 24 hours, Proa produced records showing he had never been prosecuted and that the case had been expunged - wiped off the books as if it never existed.
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