Indicted Johnston school board member claims in lawsuit that he was sexually assaulted

Johnston County school board member Ronald Johnson has filed a federal lawsuit over losing his job as a Smithfield Police detective and being indicted on criminal charges.

Johnson was indicted in April on charges of extortion, felony obstruction of justice and three counts of willfully failing to discharge his duties. In a lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court, Johnson says he was the victim of a conspiracy by multiple groups to remove him from office.

Johnson names multiple parties as defendants, including the Johnston County school board, the Town of Smithfield, former Smithfield Police Chief Keith Powell, Johnston County District Attorney Susan Doyle and Benjamin Zellinger, the special prosecutor handling his case.

Also among the long list of defendants is Johnston County teacher Angie McLeod Barbour, former Johnston County school board attorney Jimmy Lawrence and private investigator David Marshburn, who made accusations against Johnson on numerous Facebook Live broadcasts.

“As a result of the actions of the Defendants, which violated multiple rights protected by the United States and North Carolina Constitutions, Plaintiff has suffered significant pecuniary and non-pecuniary damages and irreparable harm to his reputation and livelihood,” Johnson says in the lawsuit.

Sexual assault allegation

Barbour is at the heart of the criminal indictment.

According to the indictment, Johnson is accused of asking her to record DeVan Barbour, no relation, or have sex with him. It’s unclear what he wanted her to record. The indictment says Johnson threatened to release a recording of DeVan Barbour, who was a U.S. Congressional candidate at the time, unless he pressured Angie McLeod Barbour to recant that she had an affair with Johnson, who is a married school board member.

Court documents allege that Johnson asked people to use hidden recording devices, conduct surveillance and even have sex with others to help him gain political “leverage.”

In the federal lawsuit, Johnson says Angie McLeod Barbour sexually assaulted him by demanding she have oral sex with him while he was driving her in a car on Interstate-40. He alleges she threatened him so he complied.

‘Contract’ for sex

Johnson said Barbour demanded they maintain a sexual relationship or else she’d tell her husband and his wife that they had oral sex. Johnson said he felt he was the victim of blackmail and extortion.

This led to various sexual encounters and, the lawsuit says, Barbour telling Johnson “she wanted a ‘contract’ giving her the right to have sex with Plaintiff two times a week.” When Johnson refused, the lawsuit says, Barbour said “that she could tell a ‘few people’ about their sexual encounters and that Plaintiff would be ‘done.’”

Johnson is alleging sexual discrimination, saying his allegations weren’t believed because he is a man. Johnson says in the lawsuit that he was told by a Smithfield Police lieutenant named as a defendant in the lawsuit that “her story makes more sense than you being raped every time.”

Angie McLeod Barbour did not immediately return a request from The N&O for comment on Thursday.

Johnson also says his rights were violated under the Civil Rights Act and the Americans with Disabilities Act because he was fired while suffering from anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Other grounds for the lawsuit include defamation, violation of his First Amendment rights and wrongful termination.

Johnson wants his job back at the Smithfield Police Department as well as damages.

Read the federal lawsuit filed by indicted Johnston school board member Ronald Johnson

Censure and dismissal

On Aug. 24, the school board voted 6-1 to censure Johnson on accusations of violating board policy by secretly recording conversations among board members. He also was accused of trying to have two special-education students removed from a school because of his personal issues with a parent.

On Oct. 6, the school board again voted 6-1 to censure Johnson for violating school policy by sending texts to Lawrence during school board meetings about wanting to have a relationship with a female school employee.

The board asked Doyle, the district attorney, to try to remove Johnson from office after he refused to resign. Doyle launched an investigation but turned it over to the N.C. Attorney General’s Office to prosecute.

On Oct. 14, Johnson was fired from his job as a detective in the Smithfield Police Department due to what town officials called his “detrimental personal conduct.” He had been an officer for 17 years.

“I believe the termination of Ronald Johnson from the Smithfield Police Department was appropriate following the professional standards investigation conducted by the police department,” Smithfield Town Manager Michael Scott said in an email to The News & Observer Thursday. “The public information that has surfaced since that time does not seem to contradict that. “

Scott is also named as a defendant in the lawsuit.

Accusation of politically motivated investigations

In the lawsuit, Johnson accuses Lawrence, when he was the school board’s attorney, of sexually harassing a female school employee. In an interview Thursday, Lawrence said he couldn’t comment on the lawsuit because he hadn’t seen it yet.

Johnson says Lawrence has close ties to school board members and town leaders. In retaliation of his complaint, Johnson said the Town of Smithfield and the school board launched politically motivated investigations against him.

One of the censures had cited texts where Johnson made comments to Lawrence such as “I’m feeling a relationship” when he saw a female school employee at a board meeting. Johnson says in the lawsuit that those comments hadn’t been considered to be an issue when the district investigated Lawrence in 2020.

Johnson also justified secretly recording the closed-session meetings because he said he was trying to protect the rights of a school employee who was facing a pay cut.

Johnson says a formal trial should have been held before the censure votes.

“The censures were adopted based on incomplete and biased investigations by the School Board attorneys and were adopted in violation of the School Board’s own processes and procedures and thus were null and void,” Johnson says in the lawsuit.

School board chair Lyn Andrews, who is also named individually as a defendant in the lawsuit, did not return an email or voicemail Thursday from The N&O requesting comment.

Allegations of police double standard

Johnson questions his firing, citing examples where he said Smithfield police officers were allowed to keep their jobs despite doing things such as:

▪ A supervisor who was allegedly photographed naked with his uniform in the background.

▪ A detective allegedly driving his patrol car, while on duty, to a neighboring county to have sex with a woman.

▪ An officer allegedly caught in a patrol car outside of his jurisdiction at 4 a.m. with a woman sitting on his lap.

▪ An officer who allegedly allowed his duty firearm to be passed around by various individuals at a nightclub in town.

▪ An officer who, allegedly while on duty, showed her colleagues pictures and video of herself performing oral sex.

▪ An officer who had been accused of sexual assault while off duty was allowed to return to work.

▪ An officer who allegedly admitted to sending text messages of a sexual nature to an 18-year-old woman while on duty, and while he was working an off-duty assignment and in full police uniform.

Johnson also accuses Powell, who retired this year as police chief, of using racial epithets.

Powell could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday.