RHODE ISLAND
Boston Globe
By Bella English GLOBE STAFF APRIL 08, 2016
A top administrator at the embattled St. George’s School has been on paid leave since January pending an investigation of allegations about “boundary issues” with students, headmaster Eric Peterson and board chair Leslie Heaney told the St. George’s community in an e-mail on Wednesday.
Robert Weston, the associate head for external affairs, served along with his wife as longtime “dorm parents” in a girls’ dormitory. “The Board of Trustees and the Administration were advised of second-hand allegations concerning Mr. Weston observing appropriate boundaries with students,” the letter said. “These allegations relate specifically to his work as a dorm parent at St. George’s in the late 1990s.”
Through his lawyer, Weston rejected the allegations and expressed frustration with what he had thought would be a brief leave. Lawyer Paul V. Kelly told the Globe that Weston “served as dorm parent at the school for 16 years — without a single student complaint or expression of concern.”
“He was a loyal and good soldier for the school and agreed to what he understood would likely be a very short period of administrative leave while the independent investigator reviewed the specious allegation against him. It has now been four months, and unfortunately he is still in limbo,” Kelly said.
Since December, more than 40 alumni of the elite Episcopal prep school in Middletown, R.I., have told lawyers that they were victims of sexual abuse there from faculty or other students, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s. In January, Martin Murphy was appointed by the board and the victims to investigate abuse allegations.
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