The problems could delay the start of the sexual harassment trial of a suspended Pennsylvania high school principal.

WILLIAMSPORT — Problems involving a prosecutor and a Williamsport police agent could delay the start of the investigation. Lycoming County Sexual harassment trial of suspended Williamsport Area High School principal.

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

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

Her interview was about an unrelated case in which charges against a now adult man included child rape and involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a minor.

Kitko will not be able to attend the trial because she is undergoing major surgery next Tuesday and will be off duty for several weeks.

She will have to testify unless it is stipulated that the man told her the time limit for filing charges in the rape case was two years, ending in January 2020, attorney Leonard Gryszkiewicz Jr. argued.

The defense claims the man used his allegations against Freed, covering the same period, to provide an alibi in the rape case.

Lienhardt will also have to decide whether jurors who will be told the time frame for the rape charges will violate District Judge Nancy L. Butts’ ruling, which was affirmed by a Supreme Court panel.

Butts ruled in the case of former Williamsport High School English teacher Michelle L. Pulizzi, in which the victim was the same man, that jurors can be told the time and location of the crime and the potential punishment, but not details of the charges.

Pulizzi did not appear in court, but pleaded no contest to a charge of stalking by communication. She was charged with institutional sexual assault and criminal solicitation of sexual contact with a student.

Fried’s defense also wants the court’s permission to present the contents of a phone conversation he had on Sept. 11, 2022, with State Trooper Matthew Miller, the lead investigator.

In it, the man claimed that his first sexual encounter with Freed occurred when he was 16 years old, near Williamsport, and that the educator lightly penetrated his anus during a later trip to Pittsburgh.

Court approval will be required because rape shield laws generally prohibit the admissibility of the victim’s past sexual behavior.

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

Freed, 36, of Kogan Station, is accused of performing oral sex on a male 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 happened after the man graduated and became an adult, which is not a crime. Fried was not married at the time.

The search warrant affidavit states that Freed, when interviewed by State Police on June 21, said that he 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 a minor.

He is released on a $75,000 unsecured bond and suspended without pay by the school district.