WILLIAMSPORT – Problems with the accuser and a Williamsport police officer could delay the start Lycoming County sexual misconduct lawsuit against a suspended Williamsport Area High School principal.

One of the motions filed Wednesday on behalf of Roger W. Freed asks for a continuance if the issues cannot be resolved before Nov. 5, when the three-day trial is scheduled to begin. The jury has already been selected.

Williamsport police asked Judge Eric R. Linhardt to quash the subpoena for Officer Laura Kitko, who Freed wants to testify at her April 25, 2020, interview with the victim.

Her interview took place in an unrelated case in which allegations against the now-adult man included rape of a child and involuntary sexual intercourse with a minor.

Kitko would be unavailable for the trial as she is scheduled for major surgery next Tuesday and will be off duty for several weeks.

She will have to testify unless there is a stipulation because the man reported to her that the time frame for the rape charges was a two-year period ending in January 2020, defense attorney Leonard Gryskewicz Jr. argued. .

The defense claims the man used his allegations against Freed, which covered the same period, to provide an alibi for the rape.

Linhardt will also have to decide whether jurors being told the time frame of the rape allegations would violate a ruling by County Judge Nancy L. Butts that was upheld by a Superior Court panel.

Butts ruled in the case of former Williamsport High School English teacher Michelle L. Pulizzi, in which the same man was the victim, jurors could be told the time and place of the crime and the potential punishment, but no details of the charges.

Pulizzi did not go to court but pleaded no contest to the charge of communications harassment. She had been charged with institutional sexual assault and criminal solicitation to have sexual contact with a student.

The vacated defense also wants the court’s permission to introduce the content of a Sept. 11, 2022, phone conversation he had with state trooper Matthew Miller, the lead investigator.

In it, the man alleged that his first sexual encounter with Freed occurred when he was 16 outside of Williamsport and that the educator lightly penetrated his anus during a subsequent trip to Pittsburgh.

Court approval would be required because the rape shield law generally bars the admissibility of the victim’s past sexual conduct.

Gryskewicz explained that he wanted to use the information to challenge the victim’s credibility because what he told Miller about anal penetration contradicted what he asked Freed in text messages years later.

Freed, 36, of Cogan Station, is accused of performing oral sex on a student more than 30 times over a seven-year period ending in 2022.

The defense admits the two had a sexual relationship but claims it occurred after the man graduated and was an adult, which would not be a crime. Freed was not married at the time.

A search warrant states that released in an interview with state police on June 21 told him sexual contact with the student lasted more than seven years.

Freed, a former ninth-grade principal, is charged with 30 counts of sexual contact with a student and one count each of aggravated indecent assault, sexual assault and corruption of minors.

He is free on $75,000 unsecured bail and suspended without pay by the school district.