NEW HAMPSHIRE
Concord Monitor
By ALYSSA DANDREA
Monitor staff
May 03, 2018
Two alumni have filed a civil lawsuit against St. Paul’s School alleging the school was “a haven for sexual predators” and did nothing to prevent their abuse by faculty and staff in the 1970s.
George Chester Irons and Keith “Biff” Mithoefer filed the 22-page lawsuit Tuesday in Merrimack County Superior Court in Concord. Irons, a former president of the Alumni Association and member of the Board of Trustees who graduated in 1976, and Mithoefer, of the class of 1970, are seeking compensatory damages for the emotional and physical abuse they suffered decades ago at the Concord prep school, which they say has long failed to protect children in its care.
Irons and Mithoefer have brought 10 civil claims against St. Paul’s including negligent hiring, retention and supervision of faculty/staff, negligent infliction of emotional distress and vicarious liability. Additionally, Irons’s wife, Barbara Irons, alleges in the lawsuit that as a result of the harm caused to her husband, she suffered loss of his “aid, assistance, comfort, society, companionship, affection, and conjugal relation.”
St. Paul’s had long known of the sexual abuse of students in the care of their teachers and advisors and yet chose to remain silent for decades, further augmenting the psychological harm that alumni like Irons and Mithoefer suffered, the lawsuit says.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.