Deputy AG questions firm’s report amid criminal probe of St. Paul’s

By Alyssa Dandrea
Concord Monitor
August 22, 2018

https://www.concordmonitor.com/Reaction-to-third-faculty-abuse-report-St-Pauls-19641554

David Pook, 48, of Warner, New Hampshire enters the Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord, New Hampshire to hear his sentence after his gulity plea on Friday, August 17, 2018.

Former St. Paul’s School students interviewed as part of an independent investigation into faculty sexual abuse remembered ex-humanities teacher David Pook for the wet willies he gave girls and his frequent, unannounced visits to girls’ dorms.

One student recalled how Pook put his tongue close to her face and ear to demonstrate a “moral dilemma” in a religious studies class.

Another remembered how Pook recommended a novel about a literature professor who becomes “sexually involved” with a 12-year-old girl and a book about a high school student who marries her teacher.

The allegations are detailed in a supplemental report released by the Boston-based law firm Casner & Edwards, which St. Paul’s commissioned in 2016 to look into claims of faculty-student abuse. The most recent interviews with former students took place at the same time the New Hampshire attorney general’s office continues its criminal investigation into the school’s handling of sexual abuse and misconduct allegations.

Deputy Attorney General Jane Young told the Monitor that the school notified the office Tuesday that Casner & Edwards was going to release a 42-page supplemental report that night, but did not provide an advanced copy. The latest report substantiates claims against 10 former St. Paul’s faculty and staff, three of whom are named for the first time, including Pook.

“It was well-known by the school and their attorneys that this criminal investigation was ongoing, so the fact that they were speaking to witnesses, interviewing witnesses, specifically in regards to David Pook, is baffling and quite frankly disturbing,” Young said.

Prosecutors are now evaluating what impact the Casner & Edwards interviews could have on the ongoing state criminal probe. The supplemental report is the second of its kind to be released since the attorney general’s investigation began in summer 2017.

A total of 67 victims of sexual abuse have come forward to tell their stories since the Boston law firm’s work began in May 2016. The inappropriate touching, sexually suggestive comments and rape that they endured at the hands of 20 named faculty and staff – and more employees not identified – spans six decades of the Concord prep school’s history.

And yet, victims, their family members and attorneys say the abuse detailed in the three reports released by Casner & Edwards since May 2017 provides only a glimpse into the toxic culture that threatened student safety for generations.

“No one should believe that every person abused is in that report, nor are all the perpetrators,” said Cambridge attorney Eric MacLeish, who is representing a growing number of St. Paul’s victims. “It doesn’t tell the full story of who knew what when, and they don’t get into the failures at the administrative level.”

New Hampshire law requires any person who suspects that a child has been abused or neglected must immediately report that suspicion to the state’s Division for Children, Youth and Families. MacLeish said there is no indication that happened when faculty members who served as recently as 2008 became the subject of internal investigations and were quietly let go from St. Paul’s.

That includes Pook, who received a glowing recommendation for a teaching job at the Derryfield School, a private day school in Manchester, after his termination in October 2008. Then-rector William R. ‘Bill’ Matthews Jr. knew about Pook’s repeated “boundary violations” to include entering girls’ rooms unannounced while they were changing after having returned from the showers wearing only bath towels, according to the Casner & Edwards report released Tuesday.

Pook, who taught at St. Paul’s from 2000-08, is the first person to face criminal charges stemming from the attorney general’s investigation. Pook was sentenced Friday to four months in jail for conspiring with a former student to lie to a grand jury about their relationship.

Also named for the first time Tuesday was Richard Rein, a former ballet instructor and director of the dance department. St. Paul’s conducted an internal investigation in spring 2001 into Rein’s questionable conduct with students and found that “based on a preponderance of evidence that sexual harassment did occur.” However, the board of trustees said Rein was “capable of changing his behaviors” if he took “time away” from St. Paul’s and sought counseling.

Rein ultimately resigned in July 2001 and agreed to permanently vacate his campus residence that September.

The report reveals that Concord police opened an investigation into Rein’s conduct with students. One student said she told police that Rein never sexually assaulted or molested her, but that “he did slap me on the ass though … and talk about my breasts a lot.”

Criminal charges were never filed against Rein, who currently lives in Florida. Concord police Lt. Sean Ford said Wednesday the investigation was suspended pending any new information.

Of the 21 new victims included in the latest Casner & Edwards report, a couple have ties to a civil lawsuit filed against the school this May, alleging St. Paul’s was a “haven for sexual predators.” One former student, a witness in the civil case, said he came forward because he too was a victim of Coolidge Mead Chapin, who had a long-standing history of taking students off campus without their parents’ permission.

Multiple victims have said Chapin escorted them to brothels in New York City and forced them to engage in sex acts with prostitutes.

MacLeish said Chapin’s abuse of students spanned generations and that many of his victims, who are now grown men, are just now processing their trauma.

For decades, St. Paul’s strategy has been to “isolate, discriminate, discredit and silence victims,” said alumnus Alexander Prout, whose daughter, Chessy Prout, went public in summer 2016 as the survivor in the high-profile rape case against Owen Labrie. He added that St. Paul’s is trying to use the playbook from the Catholic Church, which has grappled for years with clerical sexual abuse of children.

“Thankfully now, due to the courage of victims speaking up, we see the groundswell and I hope that continues,” Prout said Wednesday. “Victims should refuse to be silenced.”

Prout said he is discouraged the Casner & Edwards report does not acknowledge the existence of student-on-student abuse, which he said “bridges the present and the era of teacher-student abuse.”

The New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence released a statement Tuesday night saying, “We offer support and solidarity to the brave survivors that have come forward, and we hope that their efforts to shatter the silence around decades of abuse on campus will help the school appropriately address the glaring need for change.”