Top boarding school Choate Rosemary Hall acknowledges sexual abuse cases dating back decades

Top boarding school Choate Rosemary Hall acknowledged sexual abuse cases dating back decades.
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At least 12 then-teachers at Choate Rosemary Hall sexually molested students in a string of cases starting in the 1960s, the elite Connecticut boarding school revealed Thursday. The school said the investigation was prompted in 2013, after it was alerted to possible objectionable behavior by two alumni who said they had experienced sexual misconduct.

In one case, a student reportedly was raped during a school trip to Costa Rica. Other allegations uncovered by an investigator in a report to the board of trustees included "intimate kissing" and "intimate touching." None of the cases were reported to police, and some of the teachers were allowed to resign after being confronted about the evidence against them. Others were fired, but administrators wrote letters of recommendation to help them get new jobs.

Choate's revelation is just the latest in a series of accusations of sexual abuse by faculty members at prestigious private schools, The New York Times notes, including at St. George's School in Rhode Island and at New York City's Horace Mann School and Poly Prep Country Day School.

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Harold Maass

Harold Maass is a contributing editor at TheWeek.com. He has been writing for The Week since the 2001 launch of the U.S. print edition. Harold has worked for a variety of news outlets, including The Miami Herald, Fox News, and ABC News. For several years, he wrote a daily round-up of financial news for The Week and Yahoo Finance. He lives in North Carolina with his wife and two sons.