Appalling

[Periwinkle]

In her testimony, the St. Paul’s victim stated under oath she said no. http://nymag.com/thecut/2015/08/where-the-st-pauls-school-rape-case-stands-now.html

There is a huge reluctance to believe victims; there are far more silent victims than those who step forward. Few accusers does not mean nothing happened. Yesterday the report about St. George’s came out. If posters want to discuss it in detail, please start a new thread.

Of interest to the current discussion, though, is the sheer scale of the incidents the investigator found in the alumni of the '70s and '80s:

The most egregious case of abuse centers on Al Gibbs, an athletic trainer who, according to the report, allegedly abused 31 of the 51 victims of staffers. Murphy said nearly one in five girls who attended the school from 1972 to 1980 made first-hand reports of abuse by Gibbs, who “began sexually assaulting female students nearly as soon as” the campus went coed in 1972 and continued until he was fired.

The total is probably higher, Murphy said, since many victims choose not to report: “We expect the number of women actually abused by Gibbs substantially exceeds the reported figure.”

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/09/01/stgeorges/4so7ElWQwjTsnDkv5eI3NJ/story.html

If you recall, when the first St. George’s victims spoke up as adults last year, they also recounted how the school had made their accusations go away. One victim had given up, after the school’s attorneys played hardball:

When she filed her suit against the school, Scott faced a different kind of pain, in the tactics of St. George’s lawyers. They told the court that Scott either could be lying or could have had consensual sex with the trainer, who was 67 years old when the assaults began. She was 15.

Court records revealed that four other girls had told school authorities that Gibbs had also molested them, MacLeish said.

School attorneys also sought to change it from a “Jane Doe” case and reveal Scott’s real name. “Maybe people will come forward and say the plaintiff is a, with all due respect to those in the court, has a tendency to lie, and that would be relevant, also,” said defense attorney William P. Robinson III of the Providence firm Edwards & Angell. (In 2004, Robinson was appointed to the Rhode Island Supreme Court. Robinson did not return calls from the Globe.)

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/2015/12/14/stgeorges/QBq1IfsItk6relwmPQJbRP/story.html

At the time, at St. George’s School, the actual tally of abuse victims at the hand of this one man was not one victim; it wasn’t four victims. It was almost 20% of all the female students. It is very sad the school put all its effort into making the scandal “go away.”

At St. Paul’s School, Owen Labrie deleted 119 of his online messages. Competitions are about racking up a score, aren’t they? Do you think there was only one case of statutory rape in this “Senior Salute?” I don’t, although I certainly understand if some victims and their families choose not to go through the public torture of a statutory rape trial.