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Former Greenwich Resident Identified in Rhode Island School Sex Scandal

By Don Lehman
Post-Star
January 21, 2016

http://poststar.com/news/local/former-greenwich-resident-identified-in-rhode-island-school-sex-scandal/article_7fced859-3924-5cb6-aad4-e59895cdd77d.html

A Greenwich man who is serving a state prison sentence for possession of child pornography is the subject of a police complaint of child sexual abuse at a prestigious prep school in Rhode Island.

The school is embroiled in an unfolding sex scandal, according to a lawyer and media reports.

Timothy H. Tefft was identified as one of five former employees of St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island, who had been accused of sexual abuse by former students, according to a report in Thursday’s Boston Globe newspaper.

Tefft was editor of the Greenwich Journal weekly newspaper in Greenwich, until his arrest in 2013 for possessing child pornography. He is serving a five-year federal prison sentence for the pornography conviction.

The public identification of Tefft in the Rhode Island case this week comes as more than 40 former students have come forward, alleging they were sexually abused decades earlier by staff members and older students.

Tefft, 67, was one of five former St. George’s School staff members who were identified in a report compiled by the school as it looked into the allegations.

Eric MacLeish, one of the lawyers who represents the former students, said one had accused Tefft of initiating sexual contact with him, and others alleged he provided them alcohol while underage. He taught at the school in 1971.

“He was only at the school for three or four months,” MacLeish said.

Police were not contacted by school officials at the time, he said. Instead, Tefft was fired and moved on to other schools.

He was previously identified in a 2013 report on sexual abuse of students at another prep school, The Brunswick School in Connecticut. The school publicly stated that three former students had accused him of sexual abuse when he taught there in the 1970s and 1980s, but no criminal charges were filed.

A former federal prosecutor has been hired by St. George’s School to investigate the allegations.

St. George’s School officials and lawyers who are representing the victims have also forwarded information to Rhode Island State Police for investigation, including the information about Tefft.

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Rhode Island State Police Capt. Matthew Moynihan said the police investigation was ongoing as of Thursday, but the agency was not commenting on the allegations.

“We will have more to release when the time comes,” he said.

The state has a longer statute of limitations than New York in sex crime cases, which can allow for prosecution in some decades-old sexual assault cases, depending on the allegation.

A sentencing memorandum filed in federal court in Tefft’s pornography case indicated he worked as an English teacher at boarding schools in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York, and was headmaster at children’s camp Pok-O-MacCready in Essex County for years.

It doesn’t mention his time at The Brunswick School in Connecticut, the school where he was accused of child sexual abuse by three former students, however.

Tefft is serving his prison sentence at Fort Dix Federal Correctional Institution in New Jersey and is eligible for release in January 2018.

Contact: dlehman@poststar.com

 

 

 

 

 




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