ABUSE - Choate Rosemary Hall

"Prep school Choate owns up to decades of abuse allegations" PBS NewsHour 4/14/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Decades of sexual abuse have been uncovered at one of the nation's elite prep schools.  A new investigation details the experiences of 24 adult alumni of Choate Rosemary Hall who, between 1963 and 2010, allegedly suffered offenses such as kissing, groping and rape.  Hari Sreenivasan discusses the report with Paul Mones, a sexual abuse attorney, and Jonathan Saltzman of The Boston Globe.

HARI SREENIVASAN (NewsHour):  The report released last night focused on a dozen former teachers at the prestigious boarding school in Connecticut, Choate Rosemary Hall.

It recounts the experiences of 24 adult alumni who were allegedly abused between 1963 and 2010.  Investigators said the offenses ranged from kissing to groping to rape.

Choate hired a law firm with no previous ties to the school to lead the investigation.

Jonathan Saltzman was part of The Boston Globe Spotlight team that helped break the story.  And Paul Mones is an attorney who has represented sexual abuse survivors at private schools and other institutions.  He is not involved in any of the Choate cases.

Jonathan, I want to start with you.

You and your team launched this series a while back about this happening at elite prep schools in the Northeast.  What did this report reveal to you?

JONATHAN SALTZMAN, The Boston Globe:  Well, we had reported on about 110 private schools in New England that had faced allegations of sexual abuse over the past 25 years.

And we mentioned Choate.  But this report was initiated in response to that story, and it laid out in extremely graphic detail the accounts of about 24 survivors of abuse.

And as you said in your introduction, some of these are extraordinarily graphic descriptions of abuse, rape.  And, to me, the most startling thing about the report was that, first, the school named 12 teachers that they said had abused kids.  That's an extraordinary number, and we haven't seen that before in other schools.

And then what they also did was they essentially owned up to the fact that they had never reported these cases of abuse to child welfare authorities in Connecticut, even though it had been required.

MALE CHAUVINIST WORLD - Teen Consent

"Prep school rape trial raises questions about teen consent" PBS NewsHour 8/28/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Nineteen-year-old Owen Labrie, a former student at a prep school in New Hampshire, was accused of raping a freshman girl in 2014, but a jury cleared him of felony rape, convicting him on other lesser charges.  Jeffrey Brown discusses the case and the idea of sexual consent with Deborah Tuerkheimer of Northwestern University School of Law and Emily Bazelon of The New York Times Magazine.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  ..... we return to questions and concerns being raised about sexual assault among teens at the high school and college level, and what sort of consent can and should be given.

A trial over an alleged case of rape at an elite boarding school in New Hampshire concluded today.  The case has attracted national attention, and it touches on some broader issues.

Jeffrey Brown starts with some background.

WOMAN:  Guilty or not guilty?

WOMAN:  Guilty.

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  Owen Labrie wept as the verdict was read aloud in a New Hampshire state courtroom.  The former prep school student had been accused of raping a freshman girl before his graduation in May 2014.

But the jury this afternoon cleared him of felony rape and instead convicted him on three misdemeanor sex charges and one felony count of using a computer to lure a minor for sexual contact.  During the trial, prosecutors argued Labrie forced himself on the alleged victim during a so-called senior salute, a tradition at Saint Paul’s where some older students arrange trysts with younger ones, including for sex.

OWEN LABRIE, Defendant:  I thought she was having a good time.

JEFFREY BROWN:  Labrie said there was consensual sexual contact between the two, but later testified that — quote — “divine inspiration” compelled him to stop short of intercourse.

OWEN LABRIE:  I thought to myself, maybe we shouldn’t do this.  It hadn’t been my intention going into the night to have sex.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The identity of the victim, now 16 years old, has not been released.  She testified that she said no to Labrie three times during the encounter.