NEW YORK (NY)
New York Times
By Colin Moynihan
August 8, 2016
[Note: See the letter discussed in this article. Fr. Eugene J. O’Brien, S.J., Mr. Beck’s superior for many years at Fordham Prep, has also been accused of sexual abuse, as has another Jesuit, Fr. Roy A. Drake, S.J., who taught at the Prep during Beck and O’Brien’s tenure.]
The gathering, in June 1984, was like many others involving recent graduates of Fordham Preparatory School, a Jesuit all-boys secondary school in the Bronx. It took place at a home in Westchester County, where many of Fordham’s students lived. Most of those at the party drank and several ended up spending the night, according to a former Fordham Prep student, Michael Meenan.
That night, Mr. Meenan said, a Fordham Prep teacher who had driven him to the party performed oral sex on him while he slept in a room along with others. When he woke up and pulled away, sliding beneath a coffee table, Mr. Meenan said, the teacher grabbed his leg and tried to drag him back.
Mr. Meenan said that he had told the school’s headmaster about the episode not long after it happened, but that it appeared no action was taken. The teacher remained on the faculty.
Now, 32 years after the episode, Fordham Prep has acknowledged Mr. Meenan’s account of abuse as credible and said the teacher he accused would not return to the school.
“We received an allegation from a Fordham Prep alumnus of the class of 1984 that religious studies teacher, Mr. Fernand Beck, sexually molested him shortly after he graduated,” the school’s president, the Rev. Christopher J. Devron. wrote in a letter dated Aug. 5. “While Mr. Beck has denied this allegation, an investigation led by an independent counsel retained by Fordham Prep determined that the allegation is credible.”
Mr. Beck could not be reached for comment on Monday. Although Father Devron did not identify the person who had lodged the complaint, Mr. Meenan said that it was him and that he had also recently reported the 1984 episode to the Westchester County district attorney’s office. (This reporter also attended Fordham Prep during the same period but did not then know Mr. Meenan or have classes with Mr. Beck.)
“What Beck did was criminal,” Mr. Meenan said during a recent telephone interview. “The school should have fired him long ago and he should have gone to prison.”
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