After public shaming scandal, former NYC principal takes on victims' rights work with her attorney
Annie Seifullah’s entry into law happened quite unexpectedly.
She was the principal at a public secondary school in New York City when in 2014, her ex-boyfriend accused her of sexual misconduct on school property and gave private intimate photos of her to her superintendent and the tabloids. Even though a Department of Education investigation ultimately found the accusations were baseless, she was removed from her position and put on administrative duty.
The next year, Seifullah was demoted to a teacher position. After another investigation for alleged violations of department policies, including that Seifullah brought “negative notoriety” to her employer by sharing her story with the media, she was suspended for one year without pay.
Seifullah filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against New York City’s Department of Education in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in 2018, and she won a $210,000 settlement.
“It essentially exonerated me from all the false allegations and really turned the story around,” Seifullah says. “I was a victim, and my employer threw me out when they should have been protecting me from what was intimate partner violence.”
By this time, Seifullah, a single mother of a young son, had begun taking night classes at the City University of New York School of Law. She wanted to not only rebuild her life but become an advocate for other victims of gender-based violence and discrimination.
She also wanted to work with Aurore DeCarlo, the attorney who represented her in her lawsuit. After graduating in 2018, Seifullah joined DeCarlo at victims’ rights firm C.A. Goldberg in New York City.
Quickly becoming a powerful duo, Seifullah and DeCarlo launched their own firm, Incendii Law, in 2024, handling cases involving sexual assault, defamation and other types of abuse and exploitation. This includes public shaming and image-based sexual abuse, which is often called “revenge porn.”
Seeking justice
DeCarlo began her own career doing tenants’ rights work at New York City-based nonprofit Housing Conservation Coordinators after graduating from Columbia Law School in 2003.
While there, DeCarlo trained Carrie Goldberg, the lawyer who went on to found C.A. Goldberg.
DeCarlo later moved to the Legal Aid Society, where she was the attorney in charge of the Brooklyn Office for the Aging. In 2017, she joined Goldberg’s firm and began focusing on sexual violence, harassment and discrimination amid the #MeToo movement.
She brought her brand of advocacy—which she describes as “unapologetic and fiery”—to those cases, some of which involved disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. She represented several complainants against the former film mogul, and while the details of their matters remain confidential, she says they successfully settled out of court.
“I’ve always worked for the underdog and the less powerful,” DeCarlo says. “Housing court is a brutal arena. It really trained me, so I don’t get cowed by anyone.”
When Seifullah became a client of her firm, DeCarlo was charged with working on her case. She was immediately struck by “the deep unfairness of it all” and wanted to hold the school administration accountable for its treatment of Seifullah.
“It all stemmed from a very abusive, coercive case that blew up into a huge public shaming scandal that the school district was just very reactive to,” DeCarlo says. “It totally failed to support one of its rising stars and someone who would have been an incredible leader in education.”
DeCarlo says she is “extremely competitive,” so in addition to seeking vindication for Seifullah, she wanted to win. She says she was able to find and craft claims in Seifullah’s case that a previous attorney had missed.
“I knew that I could position Annie’s claims, with factual support, so that they would be immune to dismissal on motion,” DeCarlo says. “And that is when [the NYC Department of Education] comes to the table and starts negotiating settlements.”
The exposure to the New York City Department of Education through discovery could have been “quite damaging,” DeCarlo adds.
“And I reminded them of that,” she says.
Dynamic duo
DeCarlo and Seifullah named their firm Incendii—which is derived from the plural word for fire in Latin—because it’s an expression of their different but comparably dynamic personalities. They are also a Leo and an Aries, which are both fire signs in astrology.
“I tend to have a warm, bring-everybody-around-the-fire energy,” Seifullah says. “And Aurore has the burn-your-enemy-to-the-ground energy. She’s like a dragon breathing fire—in the best way.”
They’ve been able to use those strengths to take on big cases against powerful bad actors, Seifullah says. This includes reaching a six-figure settlement in September with the New York City Department of Education for a client who says she was sexually assaulted by a male principal who worked in the same district as Seifullah. Complaints about inappropriate behavior by him toward female staff and students went back 10 years, and they were able to help their client finally hold him accountable, she says.
“Her courage in taking part in both the criminal prosecution and the civil lawsuit was instrumental in his resignation,” Seifullah says. “That was one of her deepest hopes—that no one else would have to suffer the way she did.”
Seifullah and DeCarlo also have represented many survivors of image-based sexual abuse. Their work for these clients usually involves getting images that were posted online taken down, securing orders of protection and holding perpetrators financially accountable through state and federal civil claims, Seifullah says.
Clients often seek out Seifullah and DeCarlo because they’ve heard their story, they add. They appreciate that DeCarlo helped Seifullah succeed against a major institution and that Seifullah has been in their shoes as a victim and former plaintiff.
“For people who feel like they don’t have a chance, we want to be the ones who are like, ‘Let’s go,’” Seifullah says. “We are going to have your back and hold your hand through the mess.”
“I very much want people to be able to access us and know that we can help,” DeCarlo adds. “For me, and I think it’s the same for Annie too, being able to change someone’s life and experiencing that with them, it’s just the most rewarding thing.”
‘Scarlet hashtag’
Seifullah wanted to help people who have experienced public shaming in another way—giving them the tools needed to take their lives back.
She wrote Scarlet Hashtag: Turn Your Public Shaming Into Power, a 10-step guidebook that walks victims through how to navigate their trauma and reclaim their control. Among these steps, Seifullah encourages readers to accept that they can’t change the past or other people’s view of it; to determine what they do have power over; and to drop their defenses so they can move forward.
“There’s so much public shaming now that just destroys people’s lives,” Seifullah says. “I mostly wrote this book because when I started looking around for resources, there was nothing talking about it this way.”
On Monday afternoon, Seifullah, a member of the ABA Commission on Domestic and Sexual Violence, will join its next Write & Tell Live, which features conversations with authors who have written about gender-based violence. She will share more about the experiences that shaped the guidebook and highlight some of its strategies and lessons.
Seifullah also will address how attorneys and advocates can take survivor-centered, trauma-informed approaches to supporting individuals who have been the target of image-based sexual abuse, online harassment and public shaming.
The program is free. Find more information or register here.
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