RHODE ISLAND
Virtue Online
By Mary Ann Mueller
VOL Special Correspondent
www.virtueonline.org
May 4, 2016
The Boston Globe made headlines in 2002 for uncovering a massive pedophile priest scandal within the Catholic Archdiocese of Boston. Uncovering the archdiocese’s cover up eventually brought Bernard Cardinal Law to his knees, shed light on the pedophilia priest problem in the Catholic Church and earned the Massachusetts’ newspaper a coveted Pulitzer. The Globe’s journalistic achievement was also turned into an Academy Awarding movie — Spotlight.
Now The Globe is shining its investigative laser on St. George’s School, an elite Episcopal boarding-day school in Middletown, Rhode Island. The story, which ferreted out a decades-long abuse by clergy and teachers, broke in December, making St. George’s one of a growing list of Episcopal educational institutions to be recently entangled in sex scandals; some alleged abuse dating back decades.
A partial list of prestigious educational institutions with now tarnished reputations with or without Episcopal Church ties, includes: St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire; Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire; St. John’s Military Academy, Salina, Kansas; Milton Academy, Milton, Massachusetts; Horace Mann School, the Bronx, New York; Deerfield Academy, Deerfield, Massachusetts; Hotchkiss School and the Indian Mountain School both in Lakeville, Connecticut; as well as St. George’s.
The first inkling that St. George’s was keeping a deep dark secret slowly started to come to light a year ago. On April 7, 2015, Headmaster Eric F. Peterson and Board of Trustees Chairman Francis S. Branin, Jr. wrote to the members of the St. George’s Community: “We write to you today to share a sad and difficult matter with all members of the St. George’s community. In response to information provided by alumni who attended the School in the 1970s and 1980s, we have come to believe that at least one former employee of the School may have engaged in sexual misconduct with students in those years. Though the events in question took place many years ago, it is tragic and deeply troubling that anything like this could have occurred in our community.”
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