Total Lack of Awareness’: Elite NH Boarding School Bungled Previous Sexual Abuse Report

© Brian Snyder / Reuters

St. Paul’s School in New Hampshire has become the latest elite boarding school to publish a report outlining “substantiated claims” of misconduct by former faculty and staff members and admitting the school failed to protect students.

At the request of the private Episcopal school, the Boston, Massachusetts-based law firm of Casner & Edwards conducted an independent investigation into 34 allegations of sexual misconduct by former faculty and staff.

Their damning 73-page report found 13 substantiated claims of sexual misconduct by former faculty and staff who were named, 10 other reports of sexual misconduct by former faculty and staff who were not named, and 11 unsubstantiated claims of sexual misconduct by current and former faculty and staff.

“Put simply but starkly, several former faculty and staff sexually abused children in their care in a variety of ways, from clear boundary violations to repeated sexual relationships to rape,” the report said.

The school contacted the law firm last May after it was revealed that Reverend Howard Willard “Howdy” White Jr., a faculty member at St. Paul’s from 1967 to 1971, had been identified as one of a number of faculty members at St. George’s boarding school in Rhode Island who had engaged in widespread sexual abuse against students in the 1970s and 1980s.

White pleaded guilty last week in a Massachusetts court to molesting a St. George’s student during trips to Boston in 1973, the Boston Globe reported.

A total of four St. Paul’s alumni spoke with investigators about White. One of them described the reverend as a “predatory individual” who “molested” a friend of his.

Two women noted White’s “misogynistic tendencies but also indicated that there were far worse individuals on the faculty at the time,” the report said. Although the school had no documented complaints against White, investigators found that he sexually abused a 15-year-old student for an “extended period of time” while at St. Paul’s, which they referred to Concord police in 2016.

Along with investigating any potential misconduct by White at St. Paul’s, the firm was asked to scrutinize any other faculty and staff who may have engaged in inappropriate behavior or sexual misconduct with students. After speaking with school alumni, the investigators looked into 34 total claims that spanned from 1948 to 1988.

“While there was no single pattern or type of methodology used by former faculty and staff who committed these sexually abusive acts, the conduct collectively, the impact on the students, and the tolerance by those who had some understanding of the acts, as well as the total lack of awareness expressed to us by most of the other faculty and leadership, is all equally troublesome,” the report read.

There were three incidents outlined in the report where the student and faculty member married each other “almost immediately following the student’s graduation,” including a scenario where the faculty member was married while having sex with the student.

In another case, the faculty member followed the student to her home country, where they married. “Within months of their marriage, the faculty member died at age forty-eight (48), and the student committed suicide at the age of nineteen (19),” the report said.

The investigators also reviewed a previous report on faculty misconduct from 2000. At that time, former students identified 22 faculty members who had engaged in sexual misconduct but only three of them were investigated.

Rector Michael G. Hirschfeld and Archibald Cox Jr., president of the board of trustees, issued a written apology released to the school community with the conclusions of the investigation.

“We offer our most sincere apology to survivors for the wrongs that were done to them at St. Paul’s School,” the two men wrote. “The failures uncovered in this report have hurt every member of our School community, none more so than the survivors of these abuses.”

They also addressed the “inadequate” 2000 sexual misconduct report.

"There is no excuse for the failure to pursue allegations when they were initially made in 2000," the letter said. "That was an error in both priorities and basic judgment and it is important to correct those actions."

The investigation did not uncover any reports later than 1988, and the report noted that “beginning in 1995, SPS leadership began to undertake efforts to establish written policies on boundaries and sexual abuse and harassment, and to educate faculty on mandatory child abuse reporting laws.”

Since 2000, however, the school has fired six faculty members “for boundary violations that did not rise to the level of sexual misconduct,” the apology letter said.

The St. Paul’s report comes on the heels of similar independent investigations at St. George’s and at Choate Hall, an elite private boarding school in Connecticut once attended by John F. Kennedy. The inquiries were a response to a series of articles by the Boston Globe about sex abuse at New England private schools.

And don't forget Culture of Rape in Prestigious New England Prep School

Elite boarding schools provide an opportunity for such sexual misconduct to occur because of their insular nature, Paul Mones, a lawyer who represents victims of sexual abuse, told the New York Times after the Choate report was published in mid-April.

St. Paul’s will provide resources for survivors, noting that, while there is “no one-size-fits-all approach,” in the past, the school has “provided survivors with resources to support counseling, and we have compensated them for their pain.”

Concord, NH

A Private School and a Christian School Teacher on Today's P&P List

Private school teacher charged with CSA of student - D.C.

2 ex-Penn State officials plead guilty to cover-up - Pennsylvania

17 y/o sentenced for sex assaults on <10 y/o - New York

Christian School teacher has to wait for sentencing - New York

Tulsa's Most Wanted Man a Pedophile - Oklahoma

Man charged with CSA of <12 y/o held on $120,000 bail - Alabama

Registered sex offender arrested again for CSA - No. Carolina

Pedophile gives up after threatening to shoot self - Kentucky

Georgetown Day teacher charged with child sex abuse 

By Peter Hermann and Keith L. Alexander

Washington Post

A history teacher at Georgetown Day School accused of sexual misconduct with a student kissed a 14-year-old girl and touched her inappropriately, according to an arrest affidavit filed in D.C. Superior Court.

The teacher, Mark Elder Allen-Gifford, 31, of Northwest Washington was arrested Friday and made his initial appearance in D.C. Superior Court on Saturday on charges of felony and misdemeanor child sexual abuse. He faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.

His attorney, James D. Colt, declined to comment when reached Monday.

The private school in Northwest Washington has more than 1,000 students in prekindergarten through 12th grade. In a letter sent to parents by email Sunday, the school said that Allen-Gifford has been put on leave, is barred from the campus and may not contact students.

The letter said that staffers would speak to members of the high school baseball and basketball teams that Allen-Gifford coached. He also was a faculty sponsor for the middle school debate and gender-equality clubs.

Allen-Gifford is listed on the staff of DC Dynasty, a nonprofit youth baseball instructional league. A representative at the organization declined to comment.

The arrest affidavit made public Monday says the girl told police that she met with the teacher off-campus several times and chatted with him on an Internet messaging application between Jan. 1 and March 5. She said that the two talked about sex and that one time he kissed her and touched her on her thigh.

According to the affidavit, ­Allen-Gifford admitted to police that he met with the girl, talked about sex with her and kissed her one time. He said he did not recall touching her, according to the affidavit.

Allen-Gifford was released from jail Saturday and has a preliminary hearing scheduled for March 29.

2 ex-Penn State officials plead guilty in child-sex scandal

By MARK SCOLFORO AND MARC LEVY, ASSOCIATED PRESS

HARRISBURG, Pa. — 

Two former Penn State administrators accused of covering up child sexual abuse allegations against Jerry Sandusky pleaded guilty to reduced charges Monday, more than five years after the scandal rocked the university and led to the downfall of football coach Joe Paterno.

Tim Curley, a 62-year-old former athletic director, and Gary Schultz, 67, a one-time vice president, could get up to five years in prison for misdemeanor child endangerment. No sentencing date was set.

They struck a deal in which prosecutors dropped three felony charges of child endangerment and conspiracy that carried up to seven years each.

Former Penn State President Graham Spanier, 68, was also charged in the scandal, and the case against him appears to be moving forward, with jury selection set for next week. His lawyers and the lead prosecutor had no comment.

The three administrators handled a 2001 complaint by a graduate assistant who said he saw Sandusky, a retired member of the coaching staff, sexually abusing a boy in a team shower. They failed in their legal duty by not reporting the matter to police or child welfare authorities, prosecutors said.

Graham Spanier and Joe Paterno

As a result, prosecutors said, Sandusky went on to abuse more boys, one of them in the Penn State showers.

Sandusky was not arrested until a decade later. He was convicted in 2012 of molesting 10 boys and is serving 30 to 60 years behind bars.

Shortly after Sandusky's arrest, Paterno was fired over his handling of the matter. Paterno, one of the winningest coaches in college football history, died of lung cancer a few months later at 85. He was never charged with a crime.

A report commissioned by the university and conducted by former FBI Director Louis Freeh concluded that the beloved coach and the three others hushed up the allegations against Sandusky for fear of bad publicity.

Robert J. Donatoni, a past president of the Pennsylvania Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said state sentencing guidelines indicate the defendants could get probation or a jail term of several months.

Kristen Houser of the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape expressed concern that the defendants might be let off easy.

"It's nice to have accountability, that's important," she said, "but the possibility of such a low level of punishment in the end does not seem to fit the very high level of disruption and harm and trauma that have been experienced, first and foremost, by the victims."

Penn State's costs related to the Sandusky scandal are approaching a quarter-billion dollars.

That includes a recent $12 million verdict in the whistleblower and defamation case brought by Mike McQueary, the former graduate coaching assistant whose testimony helped convict Sandusky.

The university has also paid $93 million in settlements with 33 people who claimed they were sexually abused by Sandusky. In addition, Penn State was fined $48 million by the NCAA.

The NCAA imposed other heavy sanctions against the football program, cutting scholarships, barring the team from postseason play and stripping Penn State and Paterno of 112 victories dating to 1998. The NCAA later eased its penalties and restored the wins.

This past season marked the return of Penn State football as a top program. The Nittany Lions won the Big Ten championship and made it to the Rose Bowl.

According to investigators, McQueary went to Paterno a day after the shower encounter to discuss what he had seen. Paterno alerted Curley and Schultz, and McQueary met with both of them about a week later.

The administrators told Sandusky he could not bring children onto campus anymore, but they had no plan to enforce that rule, prosecutors said.

It was not until nine years later that an anonymous email sent to a district attorney led investigators to approach McQueary in the case.

Prosecutors on Monday also cited a 1998 complaint against Sandusky over his showering with a boy on campus that led to a campus police investigation and notification of the county prosecutor but no charges. Sandusky admitted hugging the youngster in the shower, and promised never to shower with a boy again.

That left Sandusky free to continue working with boys at his charity, his summer football camps and the nearby high school.

The U.S. Education Department fined the university a record $2.4 million for not recording the 1998 case on its daily crime log, as required under federal law.

Teen sentenced in child sex abuse case

By SCOTT DESMIT

A 17-year-old boy who admitted sexually assaulting two children was denied youthful offender status and sentenced to six months in jail Friday in Genesee County Court.

Judge Charles Zambito also sentenced Shawn T. Rushok to 10 years of probation and Rushok will have to register with the New York State Sex Offender Registry.

Rushok was arrested in August after an investigation into allegations that he sexually assaulted a child under age 11 while in Le Roy in December, 2016. Further investigation led to more charges against Rushok, who pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree sexual abuse.

Rushok was 17 and living in Le Roy at the time of his arrest and has since had a residence in Batavia.

A former teacher at a Christian school

had his sentencing adjourned

Daniel J. Brown, 29, of Farmington, Ontario County, was scheduled to be sentenced for third-degree criminal sexual act. Brown admitting having sexual contact with a child under age 17.

Brown was arrested in both Genesee and Ontario counties after a state police investigation revealed he was having a sexual relationship with a child under 17, with instances happening in both counties. The victim is from Genesee County, Assistant District Attorney Kevin Finnell said.

Brown’s case was first heard in Ontario County Court, where he pleaded guilty to third-degree rape. Brown was sentenced on Feb. 21 to two years in prison.

Brown, before his arrest, worked as a part-time music teacher at Genesee Country Christian School in Geneseo. The victim was not a student and investigators do not believe Brown committed any inappropriate conduct while teaching at the school.

Brown is now scheduled to be sentenced March 22 in County Court.

Farmington, NY

Man wanted for child sex abuse named

Tulsa's Most Wanted

by Jessica Remer

TULSA, Okla. (KTUL) -- Tulsa police are searching for a man wanted for child sex abuse.

Cesareo Martinez, 38, is wanted out of Tulsa County for sexual abuse of a child younger than 12.

Upon his arrest, Martinez will be jailed on $100,000 bond.

Police describe Martinez as Hispanic, about 5 feet 5 inches tall and 160 pounds with black hair and brown eyes.

Anyone with information on Martinez's whereabouts is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (918) 596-COPS or email crimestoppers@cityoftulsa.org.

Alabama man charged with sex abuse of a child,

held on $120,000 bond

By Carol Robinson | AL.com

A 32-year-old man is behind bars in Tuscaloosa County, accused of sexually abusing a child.

Daundre Freeman was taken into custody Saturday, according to Tuscaloosa County Jail records. He is being held on $120,000 bond.

A grand jury indicted Freeman in February, but that indictment wasn't made public until Monday. He is charged with sex abuse of a child under the age of 12, according to the indictment, but court records don't provide further details.

Freeman made his first court appearance via video Monday morning, at which point he was appointed a public defender. No further court dates have yet been set.

Convicted sex offender charged with more

child sex abuse crimes

by Jennifer Saylor

MCDOWELL COUNTY, N.C. (WLOS) — The McDowell County Sheriff’s Office has charged Christopher Scott McEntire, 44, of Camp Creek Road in Old Fort, with six counts of taking indecent liberties with a child.

Deputies say it is alleged that McEntire had inappropriate sexual contact with a 12-year-old male acquaintance on multiple occasions earlier in 2017.

McEntire is already a registered sex offender, having been convicted of five counts of second-degree sex offense in McDowell County in January 2004. 

The sheriff’s office received the case on a referral from the McDowell County Department of Social Services.

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison and was released and registered as a sex offender in May 2010.

I'm presuming he is in cells now. It would be nice if this article mentioned that.

Old Fort, NC

Man Accused of Child Sex Abuse Allegedly

Threatens to Shoot Himself

Rita Dukes Smith, SurfKY News Director

OWENSBORO, Ky. — Daviess County deputies responded to a report of a man making threats with a handgun yesterday afternoon after allegations of him being involved in a sexual assault with a victim under the age of 12.

According to the Daviess County Sheriff’s Office, police responded to 6770 Lamplite Circle, Owensboro, after a report that Ricky Goatee, 61, had threatened to shoot himself. Witnesses reported to the deputies that Goatee had stepped outside and fired a round from his 40 caliber handgun into the air, and then went back inside the trailer.

Deputies negotiated with Goatee for several hours after which, Goatee was taken into custody. After an interview with police, Goatee was charged with first-degree sexual abuse – victim under 12 and second-degree wanton endangerment.