Married Palo Alto politician confesses to 'steamy' affair with female student while she was Stanford dean

A married politician in California has admitted to a year-long affair with a female student while she was a dean at Stanford University 13 years ago.

Julie Lythcott-Haims, who serves on Palo Alto City Council, confessed to the relationship with Olivia Swanson Haas, which happened at a time when she was recognized for her contributions to undergraduate education.

Her book 'How to Raise an Adult' became a New York Times bestseller in 2015, and she was praised for her 'deep compassion' towards young people.

'Being in a relationship with a student was inappropriate when it happened 13 years ago, and it would be inappropriate now,' the politician said in a statement on Friday.

Haas first shared details about the affair on Thursday in a post on LGBT online magazine Autostraddle titled 'I Had an Affair With My College Dean,' but she did not name Lythcott-Haims.

Haas revealed she had an affair with a married dean at her university when she was 22.

'My first and only queer relationship was kept a secret, but not for the usual reasons,' she wrote.

'Rather, my first and only queer relationship was kept a secret because when I was 22 and a senior in college, I had an affair with a well-known dean at my university — a married woman twice my age.'

Haas described the dean as a 'school celebrity — charismatic, adored' and said she 'craved attention from powerful people.'

Discussing the 'tremendous amount of stress' she felt during the relationship, Haas said her 'massive' secret remained hidden from her friends and family.

'We weren’t breaking any rules — she checked the university’s policies — but it was clear that what we were doing put her job at risk, so I told no one,' she added.

She claimed the dean's husband, whom Haas called 'pale, benevolent shadow' and 'a background character' in their affair, knew about the relationship but accepted it, and he joked: 'Just don’t buy her a car.'

'At the time, I didn’t understand how someone could be happy for their spouse to have other sexual partners, but I rarely interacted with him and found I could mostly put him out of my mind,' she added.

The relationship between Lythcott-Haims and Haas ended when the student told her parents who were 'horrified.'

'Suddenly words like manipulated and abuse of power were being used and shame started to calcify in the parts of me that had desired her — tremendous embarrassment — as I began to see my great love story through a very different lens,' she wrote.

Her mother told the school about the dean's behavior by making an anonymous tip and it led to her departure.

Haas said Lythcott-Haims emailed her a few years ago to say she felt ashamed about what she had done.

'I apologized privately to Ms. Haas years ago,' the councilwoman said in a statement.

'Now I want to publicly apologize to her for my actions and their impact on her.

'I also apologize to my former colleagues and students who had the right to expect better of me. And to members of my extended family for whom the public airing of this matter may be difficult.'

Stanford officials did not change campus policy on staff and student relationships until 2013, which was a year after Lythcott-Haims left the university.

The 'Consensual Sexual or Romantic Relationships in the Workplace and Educational Setting' policy was changed to ban staff members from having relationships with students because of their 'broad influence or authority over students and their experience'.

But a university spokesman said relationships with undergraduates were always heavily discouraged before this.

DailyMail.com has contacted Lythcott-Haims, Haas and Stanford for comment.