Five women who studied with Mr. Roma at Columbia University and at the School of Visual Arts said he behaved inappropriately.
In 1999, when Mozhan Marno was an 18-year-old sophomore at Barnard College, one of her professors began talking with her about having an affair. Inside his office one day, the professor, Thomas Roma, removed her coat, lifted her shirt and pulled down her pants, she said. He put his mouth on her breast and placed her hand on his penis, she added — behavior she described as consensual, overwhelming and “controlled and initiated by him from beginning to end.”
Afterward, Ms. Marno said, she heard that Mr. Roma — a prominent photographer who teaches at Columbia University — regularly pursued sexual relationships with students, and became uncomfortable when he made suggestive remarks after promising to act only as a mentor that semester. In January 2000, she made a written complaint to Columbia. But out of embarrassment, Ms. Marno said, she provided a watered-down account to the school’s investigative panel.
The panel determined that she and Mr. Roma were both complicit in the incident, she said, a decision that left her thinking Columbia “should be ashamed of itself” for not investigating Mr. Roma more thoroughly.
“Everybody talks about moving through the world through mentorship,” she said. “I never got close to a male professor ever again.”
Ms. Marno, now an actress with credits on “House of Cards” and “The Blacklist,” is one of five women who spoke on the record with The New York Times to describe sexual misconduct by Mr. Roma, the director of the photography program at Columbia’s School of the Arts and a documentary photographer whose work is owned by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago and other museums. The Times also interviewed people with whom the women discussed Mr. Roma’s behavior at the time of those events or later.
The accusations depict behavior said to have occurred mostly in the 1990s and that followed a similar pattern: Mr. Roma started relationships with young women he taught at Columbia and at the School of Visual Arts, flattering and cajoling them, making sexual advances — and, one woman said, placing his penis in her mouth. He would also often remind them of his professional stature, the women said.
That stature carries considerable influence, beyond the usual power disparity between professor and student: In the field of photography, Mr. Roma could make a difference by providing letters of reference, recommendations for grants, and introductions to art dealers and collectors.
Mr. Roma, provided with details about the accounts of the women, declined to be interviewed. His lawyer told The Times that Mr. Roma disputes any suggestion that his behavior was ever coercive and that the professor had cooperated fully with Columbia’s inquiry into Ms. Marno’s complaint.
The lawyer, Douglas Jacobs, issued a statement saying that Mr. Roma was “shocked” by the accusations from the other four women.
“The statements they are making about his asserted misconduct are replete with inaccuracies and falsehoods,” Mr. Jacobs said. “All four have taken isolated, innocent incidents, none of them predatory, and have created fictitious versions of reality that are libelous and in the present political climate designed to damage his career and his personal life. Professor Roma’s sympathies then and now lie with those who have been mistreated in any way and he completely fails to understand why these women have chosen to create these complaints two decades after the alleged facts supposedly occurred.”
Four of the five women attended the School of Visual Arts around the same time; some were friends there and have stayed close. Joyce Kaye, a spokeswoman for S. V. A., said the school “does not have a record of any complaints against Mr. Roma” when he taught there in the 1980s and ‘90s.
Suzanne Goldberg, Columbia’s executive vice president for university life, said in response to the accusations against Mr. Roma: “It is our standard practice to investigate whenever we receive a report that a faculty member may have sexually harassed a student.”
Ms. Goldberg said that university policy forbids faculty members from having sexual relationships with students they oversee. Columbia, like many schools, has been trying to navigate ongoing campus debates about how best to handle student allegations of sexual misconduct. Ms. Goldberg said Columbia “looks differently at these matters today than 20 years ago” when Ms. Marno filed her complaint. “Our policies on faculty conduct have been strengthened accordingly in recent years,” she said. In December, William V. Harris, a professor of Greco-Roman history, retired after accusations that he had harassed three students.
Mr. Roma, whose best known work includes black-and-white images of worshipers in African-American churches and portraits of people at the Brooklyn criminal courthouse, has received two Guggenheim fellowships and had solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography. He is married to a daughter of Lee Friedlander, a giant in the world of documentary photography, and has published 15 monographs with introductions by writers like Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Norman Mailer. His teaching career includes stints at Fordham, Cooper Union and Yale, according to his website.
The five women described Mr. Roma as a charming and charismatic teacher who cultivated a streetwise persona and emphasized perseverance, sacrifice and dedication to craft. The women, as well as some former students who posted anonymously online about Mr. Roma’s teaching, said that he could be an unsparing critic, but also had the ability to instill confidence and inspire.
One of the women, Ash Thayer, a filmmaker and artist in Los Angeles, said she studied with Mr. Roma in the mid-1990s at S. V. A., then in the graduate program at Columbia, where she was also his teaching assistant. In 1999, Ms. Thayer said, she was working in Mr. Roma’s office at Columbia shortly after a mutual friend, the photographer Raghubir Singh, had died. Ms. Thayer said that she was sitting at a desk when Mr. Roma asked her to turn around. His penis was erect, she said, and he moved toward her. She repeatedly said “no,” but Mr. Roma placed his penis in her mouth before she pushed him away and left, Ms. Thayer said, estimating that the encounter lasted perhaps 30 seconds.
“I froze,” she said. “He committed oral rape against me.”
Allison Ward, a student at S. V. A. in the mid-1990s, said she had several sexual encounters with Mr. Roma. One occurred in a classroom, she said, recalling that she “was mortified and embarrassed but went along with it.” Ms. Ward said that she had wanted to please Mr. Roma and gain his acceptance, adding “he was the first person in my life who had connected my passion for photography with a path forward.” Mr. Roma did not force any contact, she said, but had been “predatory” and had “crossed a line” by seeking a sexual relationship.
“He was coercive and would keep trying,” she said. “He was a little relentless.”
Another S. V. A. student in the mid-90s, Angela Cappetta, said that after repeated requests she allowed Mr.
