A little while ago, it became known that there might be a history of sexual abuse and assault at St. George’s Prep School, an elite boarding school in Rhode Island. So the school hired an internal investigator to do some research into the alumni and former teachers, to see just how far back the allegations go. Today, that internal investigator announced that it had found 61 cases of sexual assault or abuse in the school’s history from the ’80s and ’90s, an alarming number of assaults in such a small period.
St George’s reached a settlement of an undisclosed amount with 30 alumni who claimed they were sexually abused back in the ’70s.
What Happened?
The internal investigator, Martin F. Murphy, released his report on the systematic sexual abuse at St. George’s. Alarmingly, one in five women interviewed by Murphy who attended the school from 1972 to 1979 stated that athletic trainer Al Gibbs (above) had sexually assaulted them. What’s more, Murphy “expects the number of women who were actually abused by Gibbs substantially exceeds the reported figure,” they said.
Furthermore, the report states that even after Headmaster Tony Zane had discovered the awful things that Gibbs was doing, he fired him and then gave him a favorable letter of recommendation and a distinguished service financial reward until he died in 1996. Here are Murphy’s feelings on that subject:
“In sum, in our view, the school’s treatment of Gibbs in the years after his termination, continuing to his death in 1996, reflected, at best, serious misjudgment, and at worst, callous indifference to the girls and young women the school knew he had abused.”
