St. George’s School, an elite prep school in Rhode Island, has made a decision to settle with up to 30 former students who claim to have been sexually abused.
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St. George’s School in Middletown announced the pact Wednesday in a joint statement with a group representing sex abuse victims.
But Katie Wales Lovkay, who told the school she’d been abused by an athletic trainer in 1979, said it “was never about the money”. The agreement was mediated by Paul Finn, a Boston-based mediator and arbitrator who has helped settle claims in the priest sex abuse scandal in the Archdiocese of Boston as well as in several school cases, including the Horace Mann School in NY.
Rhode Island state police led a seven-month criminal investigation past year that did not result in any charges.
When she later tried to sue in her 20s, the school targeted her so aggressively that she gave up, the Boston Globe reported, in a series of investigations into St George’s and abuse at other elite private schools across New England. Leslie Heaney, Chair of the St. George’s Board of Trustees, released a statement Wednesday saying in part, “It is our honest hope that this agreed resolution will assist our survivors as they move forward with this healing”.
The school released a report of its own in December saying 26 students were allegedly sexually abused by six employees over the years. Authorities determined they could not prosecute because of the statute of limitations, changes in the laws since some of the abuse occurred and other reasons. In some cases, administrators didn’t believe the alleged victims and in others the accused were forced out, but went on to work at other schools, according to the Associated Press.
“We look forward to continuing to work with our survivor community so that the lessons learned can ensure the safety of our current and future generations of St. George’s students”, she said.
Eric MacLeish, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, attorney who represents the victims, said Finn will apportion the money based on the impact the abuse had on the victims.
Wednesday’s settlement does not gag any of the complainants, but will preclude them from now suing the school.
A lawyer for the victims said that today’s announcement, “does not represent justice, but validation”.
“It’s an acknowledgment by them that they are responsible and that’s a wonderful thing”, says Ann Hagan Webb, Rhode Island director of SNAP. Many had difficulties with trust, intimacy, even feeling that the abuse was their fault.
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MacLeish said that parents who sent their children to a highly regarded boarding school expected them to be safe.
