Investigator: Sex Assault Victims Had "Private Hell" at St. George's School

By Karen Lee Ziner
Providence Journal
September 1, 2016

http://www.providencejournal.com/news/20160901/investigator-sex-assault-victims-had-private-hell-at-st-georges-school

Systematic sexual abuse at St. George's School in Middletown created a "private hell" for dozens of students and marked a "betrayal of trust" for those students and their parents, an independent investigator concluded in a much-anticipated report released Thursday morning.

The report by Martin F. Murphy identifies 61 alumni as victims of sexual abuse at St. George's, whose experiences were "marked by (and for some, dominated by), faculty or staff who manipulated them and sexually abused them, or older students who targeted them for acts of sexualized hazing and sexual assault," Murphy wrote in a summary.

The 390-page report, on abuse dating to 1970, excoriates the elite Episcopal prep school.

"Many of these students remember St. George's as a place where their abusers created a kind of private hell for them — a place where they suffered trauma and emotional wounds that for many, remain unhealed," Murphy wrote.

"The abuse they experienced involved not only physical acts of sexual assault (as horrible as those were), but something that, for many, was even worse: betrayal at the hands of an adult entrusted with their care, at a school where they saw few, if any places to turn for help."