Nicholas Sparks is the household name who penned every basic girl’s wet dream fantasy novel, The Notebook. If you’ve ever been forced to sit through the movie with Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, I genuinely feel sorry for you. But today multiple news outlets are reporting about a lawsuit in North Carolina alleging that the author of the sappy love novels is a racist.
Sparks founded a Christian private school in North Carolina called The Epiphany School of Global Studies. His former CEO Saul Hillel Benjamin alleges in the lawsuit that Sparks “physically intimidated, threatened and assaulted Mr. Benjamin while keeping him trapped in a room for hours without even access to a bathroom,” according to the suit. Benjamin was eventually fired from the job. There are some pretty damning allegations of racism and homophobia named in the suit too, via TMZ:
Benjamin says he began complaining to the author of “The Notebook” and others … the school had virtually no African Americans — 2 out of 514 students. Benjamin claims Sparks responded, “Black students are too poor and can’t do the academic work.”
Benjamin also says Sparks got incensed when he [Benjamin] met with the NAACP North Carolina chapter, telling the headmaster to “engage only in private and less visible contact with African Americans.”
The lawsuit goes on … claiming Sparks ignored bullying claims by gay students and even lent support to a student group that wanted to enact a “homo-caust.”
Oh yeah! Sparks also allegedly claimed Benjamin is suffering from Alzheimer’s, which is just so meta when you think about what the The Notebook is really about:
Benjamin says he was fired and Sparks — who famously wrote “The Notebook” about a couple’s love transcending Alzheimer’s — telling others in the school to ignore Benjamin’s claims because he was suffering from Alzheimer’s.
Working at Nicholas Sparks’ school really sounds like a walk to remember.