After that Oscar, the Boston Globe targets sexual abuse in private schools
The paper that unveiled the full horror of priestly pedophilia in the US culminating in the Oscar-winning film Spotlight, has launched a new attack under the Spotlight banner.
This time the Boston Globe has targeted private schools in New England where pupils say they have been abused by staff.
Introducing a special report running across five pages, the Massachusetts paper says, “The story of abuse at private schools is as long as it is shocking.”
The dam broke, says the Globe, after a woman ended her silence about abuse years before at St George’s School in Rhode Island.
After that, former students at private schools all over New England spoke up about similar wrongs.
A Globe review found hundreds of such cases at dozens of schools — “pain long forgotten except by the victims.”
At a minimum, 67 private schools in New England have faced accusations since 1991 that staffers sexually abused or harassed more than 200 students.
Ninety lawsuits or other legal claims, at least, have been filed on behalf of the alleged victims.
The Globe said 37 school employees at a minimum were fired or forced to resign because of the allegations.
The Globe also found 11 cases in which private school employees who were accused of sexual misconduct went on to work at other schools — “an echo of the Catholic Church scandal in which abusive priests were often moved to other parishes.”
This week, two former students at Fessenden School in Masssachusetts demanded a federal inquiry there into alleged sexual assaults in the 1960s and 1970s.
They said in the Globe that they believed the suspected abuse “extends far beyond the 17 individuals the school says have come forward.”