RHODE ISLAND
Boston Globe
By Bella English GLOBE STAFF JANUARY 23, 2016
Three boys came to administrators at the prestigious Rhode Island prep school St. George’s in 2004 with disturbing allegations: their dorm master had touched them inappropriately. Timothy Richards, then dean of students at the Episcopal school in Middletown, said he and the headmaster, Eric Peterson, interviewed the students.
The accused staffer left the school abruptly, and students were told he had taken a personal leave of absence. But a former school official says the school never reported the allegations to child welfare officials, as is required for credible accusations of abuse.
Instead, the headmaster concluded that the employee “did not engage in sexual misconduct” and allowed him to return to work the next school year. Richards, now headmaster at another private school, said Peterson told him that “outside counsel” had advised him that reporting the matter to authorities was not warranted.
This week, with St. George’s embroiled in a growing sexual abuse scandal, Richards said he would have reported the 2004 incident. “If the decision was up to him, he would have reported it to the appropriate agency in Rhode Island,” said Richards’s spokesperson, Karen Schwartzman. “In the situation at St. George’s School, he’s relying on the judgment of his boss, who is head of school and also an attorney.”
The incident intensifies the spotlight on Peterson, who is still St. George’s headmaster and was already facing calls for his resignation for what victims say is his failure to respond appropriately to numerous allegations of unreported past abuse. On Dec. 23, the school released a report on its own investigation into sexual abuse there, mostly in the 1970s and ’80s, describing six staff and three student perpetrators. But it did not include the 2004 incident, even though the father of one alleged victim says he described the case in detail to the investigator.
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