By John Schwing

WESTPORT — A Greens Farms Academy teacher, recorded making sexually charged comments about female students in an undercover video, has been fired.

In a letter sent Friday to the private school’s families, Bob Whelan, the head of school, wrote that Iman Rasti was terminated for “grossly inappropriate comments [that] are anathema to everything we stand for.” The letter was obtained by Patch and other media outlets.

Rasti, a middle school teacher and director of the academy’s writing center, was secretly recorded in a video released Thursday by the right-wing website, Project Veritas, in an apparent discussion about being sexually distracted by young female students.

The undated 10-minute video, which James O’Keefe of Project Veritas said was edited from two hours of filming, shows Rasti talking with an unseen woman, using sometimes explicit language, about situations he says are “brutal” in terms of sexual temptation. apparent fantasies that frustrated his concentration on classroom lessons.

O’Keefe described Rasti’s comments  as “twisted” and of a “graphic sexual manner” regarding adolescent female students. However, in an apparent liability disclaimer, O’Keefe also said, “To be clear, Iman Rasti has not admitted to acting on any of his sexual feelings toward underage girls in his classroom or anywhere else …”

A Westport police spokesman said Friday morning there is no active investigation into the matter.

In his letter, Whelan said that Rasti was placed on leave Thursday after Greens Farms administrators learned about the video. During an investigation, he said that Rasti explained that his comments in the video were edited out of context.

Whelan noted that when Rasti was hired by the academy in 2019 there were no indications in his background checks, as well as during his tenure at GFA, that “would have led us to believe he would act in this manner.” School officials “have not received a single allegation of misconduct against him or report of other concerning behavior,” he added.

The decision to dismiss Rasti, however, was made because there is “no tolerance for inappropriate conduct by adults in our community,” Whelan wrote, while acknowledging, “I recognize that the trust we seek to build every day has been challenged as a result of this incident.”

The circumstances under which the Project Veritas “interviews” with Rasti were arranged are not clear. His comments about female students were apparently made during conversations in restaurants with an unseen woman — described as a Project Veritas “journalist” — who casually questions him while she appears to drink wine.

The video was produced as part of what O’Keefe said is an “ongoing investigation” into education.

In late August, Project Veritas posted a video in which an assistant principal at Cos Cob Elementary School in Greenwich, also was recorded in similar undercover circumstances. He reportedly described discriminating against Catholic and conservative job candidates from being hired.

Both “sting” videos appear to be highly edited, a practice that critics have said is a technique Project Veritas uses to manipulate their content.