Draft:Private school scandals in the United States

• Comment: It still reads like an WP:ESSAY. Again, there is a large gap, perhaps, WP:UNDUEWEIGHT. How would you list few schools and leave others and still name the draft, "...in the United States." Since you listed few schools, it would be good if you open a WP:MERGE discussion to start or update an existing 'controversy' section. Safari Scribe^{Edits! Talk!} 04:26, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

• Comment: Echoing the decline comment, I too have no idea what this is but am certain it isn't an encyclopedia article. To have an article in this encyclopedia, you need to show that the subject of the article has been the subject of multiple reliable secondary sources. An admittedly poor example would be you couldn't get an encyclopedia article on "touchdowns" by citing articles on touchdowns being scored in football games. When you write an encyclopedia article, the author is not allowed to reach conclusions. The act of writing an encyclopedia article is not at all the same as writing an essay or an academic paper. When writing an encyclopedia article, you are simply reporting on what reliable secondary sources have said on the subject. What you've done here is taking several similar unrelated events and tried to tie them together. That's not what an encyclopedia article is. BTW, I removed the unnecessary header at the top of the article and some stray mention of a userspace page. By all means, you should read WP:My first article before you go any further. 4.37.252.50 (talk) 18:05, 17 September 2024 (UTC)

---

The estimated amount of educator sexual misconduct is that one in ten students experiences this between K-12 based on 2004 data largely from public schools. Private schools that do not rely on government money do not need to release information about the rates of educator sexual misconduct. Starting in the late aughts and through the 2010s and into 20s, media reports and school investigations showed that the problem is prevalent in private schools as well.

One of the early disclosures of historical educator misconduct was 2006 at St. Paul's in Concord, New Hampshire that has many times been the center of controversy over student sexual misconduct as well. The 2006 Vanity Fair piece "A Private School Affair" illustrated many of the issues that would be replayed in other sexual misconduct inquiries -- resistance by the school, alumni activism, press coverage, concern over reputation, and cultural aspects of elite schools that may contribute to these scandals. Horace Mann in the Bronx, NY in 2012 was found to have historical educator misconduct was uncovered in 2012 from as far back as the the 1960s and often by serial offenders. After the 2012 media reports, the Boston Globe published an investigation in 2016 on East Coast boarding schools that showed patterns similar to Horace Mann where misconduct was not addressed and added an aspect now called "pass the trash" in public schools where private school teachers were also given good references and sent to other private schools where they reoffended.

Educator sexual misconduct is a broad term that includes verbal and physical sexual abuse, and in 2004, the first study on the topic "The Shakeshaft Report" found that one in ten students experienced sexual misconduct before graduating from high school, and this may be an underestimation since researchers Carol Shakeshaft found that only six percent of students officially reported educator sexual misconduct. A 2020 study by the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights based on data from the 2017-18 school year on sexual assault and rape also showed a growing problem. And a 2020 study "The Nature and Scope of Educator Misconduct in K-12" found the number had increased to 11.7 percent.

St. Paul's in Concord, New Hampshire

One of the early media articles on the subject was the 2006 Vanity Fair article, "A Private School Affair" that includes multiple controversies at St. Paul's School, an exclusive boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire that for more than a century educated the upper crust. The writer Alex Shoumatoff wrote two books on the history of private schools and saw them as microcosms of society.

Shoumatoff, an alumni of St. Paul's, did not like the press treatment his school received after the controversies over financial impropriety, hazing, a student drowning, and allegations that dozens of teachers sexually abused students from the 1940s to early 1990s.

He reported that the sexual misconduct inquiry started with a student disclosure of past faculty sexual misconduct at a twenty-fifth reunion and some alumni joined a task force to present to the rector (the head). One former student was quoted as saying the board was protecting themselves after hearing first-hand accounts of misconduct.

The article also describes changes in the parent community at St. John's from the "artificial aristocracy" based on wealth and birth was being replaced by what Thomas Jefferson called the "natural aristocracy" of virtue and talent. One rector of St. Paul's in 1996 published an article that stated, ""Although the old-monied families still exert a considerable influence and control over their alma maters, they often do so in ways that reflect their own social and financial insecurities. ... caused the boarding school to do what it has often been accused of doing ... namely, to serve private rather than public interests."

St. Paul's student sexual misconduct

A book written about student sexual misconduct in 1990 at St. Paul's that was met with administrative inaction is Lacy Crawford's "Notes on a Silencing",. The 2020 memoir reflects the #MeToo movement that gained prominence in 2017 and Crawford writes about women's uneasy relationships with institutions. The Washington Post's review of the book stated, "The book, which chronicles her assault at a boarding school, is a reminder of how adults willingly and knowingly serve up children to trauma in exchange for maintaining their reputations."

Another significant case involving St. John's was a 2014 sexual assault on freshman Chessy Prout during the "Senior Salute" tradition where senior-year males competed for freshman-year females that resulted in the well-publicized trial where the senior Owen Labrie who maintained the encounter was consensual. Chessy Prout co-wrote the book "I Have a Right to" published in 2018 and her family created a nonprofit with the same name.

In 2023, Prout's parents wrote an opinion article in the Citizen Times that described an institutional approach to treating victims of sexual assault as DARVO, a term coined by psychologist Jennifer Freyd that stands for deny, attack and reverse, victim and offender

A related concept is institutional betrayal another term coined by Jennifer Freyd or Organizational Betrayal, the name for a book coming out on the subject by Carol Shakeshaft, who studies how to prevent educator sexual misconduct.

In 2017, the New Hampshire Attorney General's Office started an criminal investigation into St. Paul's sexual misconduct going back decades but prompted by the Owen Labrie case. A grand jury reviewed thousands of documents and a 2018 settlement was reached that a state overseer would be established at the school. This Independence Compliance Officer's role is to ensure mandatory reports are made and and after the first quit and reported it was because of retaliation by the school that didn't want investigations into criminal matters, the second officer has released at least one biannual report in July 2021 that found ten new reports of sexual assault.

Horace Mann in Bronx, NY

In 2012, the New York Times Magazine feature "Prep School Predators: Horace Mann School's Secret History of Sexual Abuse" was an early example of private school scandals that the writer Amos Kamil later made into a 2015 book, "Great is the truth: Secrecy, scandal and the quest for justice at Horace Mann School." This uncovered three teachers serially molesting students at this elite private preK-12 in Bronx, New York from as far back as the 1960s that many administrators knew about but didn't stop also got coverage in New York Magazine and Newsweek in 2015.

Newsweek's 2015 piece on Horace Mann starts with a quote from the alumni group Making Schools Safe that independently funded an investigation when the school did not act, "Our goal is not to rehash or accuse, but simply to understand how more than twenty abusers operated for decades with little fear of reprisal."

Thacher School in Ojai, CA

This Boston Globe 2016 investigation prompted schools like the boarding school Thacher in Ojai, California to start investigations. Thacher eventually published two reports of historical sexual misconduct the last one issued in 2023. With the first report, the then-head of school Blossom Pidduck apologized for the historical failures. Past students who were interviewed for the investigation said that when they complained at the time of the instances, they were met with "indifference and shame," according to the New York Times.

This 2021 article states that the findings from the first Thacher report "echoes accusations that have roiled other prep schools in the last decade." The Venture County District Attorney's office said in December 2022 that it found more than 50 instances where the school failed to make a mandated report but that it was past the statute of limitations for those issues.

With the first report in 2021, the then-head of school Blossom Beatty apologized for the historical failures. Past students who were interviewed for the investigation said that when they complained at the time of the instances, they were met with "indifference and shame," according to the New York Times. This 2021 article states that the findings from the first Thacher report "echoes accusations that have roiled other prep schools in the last decade."

The National Association of Independent Schools' blog in 2021 that responded five years later to this Boston Globe article and was titled "The long-term vision for healing abuse on campus" that asked, "Was it more shocking that abuse happened or that schools worked so hard to conceal the truth?" The writer Vanessa Orange states, "Prestige has its pitfalls; the illusion of perfection can get in the way of acknowledging problems...Taking ownership of a problem on campus is an investment in trust between a school and the public."

Ten percent of United States students attended private schools in the 2021-22 school year, according to Pew Research. Public schools operate under federal Title IX rules for sexual harassment and discrimination and the federal K-12 law, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, suggests states pass laws to prevent educator sexual misconduct. These laws do not apply to private schools.

St. Anne's in Brooklyn, NY

In 2024, New York Magazine published an article "The Shame of St. Anne's" about a 37-year-old teacher at the elite Brooklyn private school, Winston Nguyen, who had been arrested and charged with eleven felonies that included posing as a student on Snapchat and asking St. Anne's students to send him sexual images. Nguyen had served prison time for fraud before joining St. Anne's and that was known before his hire.

The article stated, "Parents say they feared interrogating leadership about Nguyen could be interpreted as their clashing with the school's liberal bent, and none of the 12 interviewed for this article would speak with their names attached, out of fear that they would upset the administration or get canceled by other parents for breaking ranks."

This is after a 2019 letter went out to parents with the results of an independent firm's sexual misconduct investigation that found six nineteen former St. Anne's teachers or staff who had potentially engaged in inappropriate behavior or sexual misconduct from the 1970s to 2017.

Press coverage

Vanity Fair Magazine covered similar scandals in feature articles "The Prep School and Predator" about Marlborough School in Los Angeles in March 2015, "St. George's Hidden Dragons" in 2016, "Dangerous Privilege" in 2016 also about St. Paul's, "The Code of Silence" in 2019 about Brett Kavanaugh's Georgetown Prep in Bethesda, Maryland, and "Mr. Weber's Confession" about Phillips Exeter in Exeter, New Hampshire in 2021.

In 2016, the Boston Globe published an article about sexual misconduct at New England boarding schools titled, "Private Schools, Painful Secrets: Educators accused of sexual misconduct often find new posts" that revealed trends on the subject that were not well known before this story.

In the overview video, the then-executive director of the Association of Boarding Schools Peter Upham said, "Thirty years ago wrongly or rightly, and it was probably wrongly, a lot of abuse was handled quietly. And what I think that demonstrated was a failure to recognize that people who abuse are likely to abuse again."

The Boston Globe's 2016 investigation surveyed all the boarding schools and got responses from ten percent of them. The investigation found that at least 67 private schools in New England were accused of employees abusing or harassing at least 200 students since 1991. This included eleven cases where employees who faced sexual misconduct and then went on to work at other schools.

This Boston Globe's Spotlight Team's investigation determined that boarding schools did not find the balance between investigating sexual misconduct allegations and protecting their reputation. That the schools often originally concealed or ignored allegations. In 2016, the article states that as private institutions the boarding schools were exempt from public records laws.

The article states that it can take decades for victims to report sexual misconduct in school. In the 2010s, this culture began shifting as victims began publicly describing their sexual misconduct from schools such as St. George's in Rhode Island where in 2016 an investigation found 50 credible allegations of sexual misconduct by both staff and students; Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire that in 2016 admitted to not disclosing an award-winning teacher's sexual misconduct in the 1970s and 80s that led to other disclosures; and the boys' preK-9 day and boarding school the Fesseden School in Massachusetts that in 2016 also had extensive educator sexual misconduct uncovered from as far back as the 1960s. A commonality in these investigations is that they were often not reported to the law enforcement or child protective services as in some cases is mandated by law.