In 2020, the school's board hired a private law firm to investigate. BrentNibecker, the supervising deputy district attorney, told The Post he wasnt able to comment. The former student recently requested the sheriff's report during the law firm's investigation. ", Maria Cramer is a breaking news reporter on the Express Desk. Ojai boarding school, among the most elite in California - KTLA To survivors of sexual misconduct and their families in our community, we are deeply sorry, Yih wrote, adding, We have learned a great deal about our history over the past several months much of which has been difficult to confront.. The report names a total of four former Thacher faculty members against whom they received credible reports of sexual misconduct against Thacher students or recent graduates, and two who failed to maintain appropriate boundaries. Two more faculty members and several staff members accused of failure to maintain appropriate boundaries are not named. Because some of the allegations are decades old, authorities warned, many may fall outside of the statute of limitations. Investigators for the law firm reached out to the counselor to ask him about that and allegations of sexual misconduct with other female students. The Thacher School, an elite $64,000-a-year boarding school in Ojai Valley, California, has a rich history as the oldest co-educational boarding school in California. Edward Laurence Doheny (/ d o h i n i /; August 10, 1856 - September 8, 1935) was an American oil tycoon who, in 1892, drilled the first successful oil well in the Los Angeles City Oil Field.His success set off a petroleum boom in Southern California, and made him a fortune when, in 1902, he sold his properties.. The Wales squadron, reporting for duty! In a 91-page report, the private coed boarding school in Ojai detailed sexual assaults and harassment against students dating back to the 1980s. Need help? Si vous souhaitez personnaliser vos choix, cliquez sur Grer les paramtres de confidentialit. Ojai Valley School | California - American Boarding Schools A criminal investigation into dozens of allegations of past sexual abuse at the Thacher School in Ojai was hampered by a number of issues, authorities said this week. ICYMI:Thacher board vows to act as students, alumni demand accountability. Ojai boarding school counselor with abuse history sexually abused student, suit alleges Richard Winton 11/30/2022. Star reporter Tom Kisken contributed to this report. Those lawyers found the former head of school had committed a pattern of offensive verbal conduct and improper touching toward female students and staff and uncovered 17 incidents, including one in which Wyman asked two girls to wear slinky and sexy clothes at a dinner party at his house and placed his hand on a students butt. A few months later, as a sophomore, she said he raped her just before a camping trip. It also said it would increase resources for students to report sexual misconduct and improve counseling services. Jennifer Christiansen Vurno, who is now . Another case that had beenconsidered for prosecution in 1994 was closed for insufficient evidence. The remaining cases were not submitted to the district attorneys office because they fell clearly outside the statute of limitations, the victims sought no prosecution, or no crime could be established, authorities said. We've received your submission. The chair of Thachers governing board, Daniel W. Yih, wrote in a letter accompanying the report that none of the accused remained employed by the school. The school sent an email . The Thacher School, among California's most elite private schools, acknowledged Wednesday decades of allegations of student sexual misconduct, harassment and "boundary crossing" by faculty. One student described the campus lack of a response to his resignationand her subsequent distancing of herself from the Thacher communityas equally as painful as the shame of being touched and sexualized by a trusted coach, teacher, and college counselor., The accused faculty member told investigators he had been rightfully fired for a transgression with a specific student and had felt deep shame and regret ever since., Other instances of misconduct include a faculty member who allegedly sent a former student explicit emails and groped her breasts during her first year of college in the early 2000s, a female teacher who flirted with a male student and began a relationship with him after he graduated in the mid 2000s, and a pattern of inappropriate touching and sexual remarks toward students by a former headmaster. Sexual misconduct allegations surface at Ojai boarding school - Los Wyman resigned in 1992, and died in 2014. One of California's most prestigious private boarding schools, The Thacher School, has released an explosive report documenting four decades of alleged sexual misconduct by teachers and staff, including the rape of a 16-year-old student. The school's board of trustees retained the Los Angeles-headquarteredlaw firm Munger, Tolles & Olson last fall to conduct an independent investigation into the alleged sexual misconduct experienced by students and alumni. The newly released report lists alleged instances of sexual misconduct by faculty against students spanning 40 years and running the gamut from inappropriate comments and 'boundary crossing' behavior, to harassment, groping and rape. More than a year after an Ojai boarding school released a report outlining four decades of alleged sexual abuse and misconduct, detectivescontinue to workthrough a caseload that has climbed to nearly100. The findings divided alumni, some of whom questioned the independence of the report and felt a former head of school was scapegoated while the current administration was not held to the same scrutiny. According to the report, Mr. Mulligan recalled meeting with the students, but said that they never told him they were raped or characterized the sexual encounter with the boys as nonconsensual in any way. "We teach our students to face the mistakes they make and deal with the consequences," Yih wrote in a letter laying out araft of responsesto the first report. The Thacher School - Wikipedia Those steps included creating a therapy support fund for any survivors of sexual abuse related to their time at Thacher and implementing the corrective actions recommended in the report. "We take all cases seriously," the sergeant said. In my own process of healing, I have come to understand that trauma of this kind feeds off shame and secrecy. Dan Yih, the chair of the Thacher board of trustees, said the report makes clear that the board, the faculty and administrators failed to protect the students at the school. But days later, the Law & Crime piece was published, and sources told The Post that she left campus within 72 hours. Pidduck, the current head of school, said Thacher plans to provide regular updates on its actions moving forward. Flying high in military chic! The report states there was no other written evidence to suggest she had been disciplined other than being told that she would be dismissed if such behavior happened in the future. She alleged numerous instances of rape that began her sophomore year and lasted into her junior year. The law firm and the school were cooperative in providing materials to detectives and prosecutors, authorities said. It was the psychologist not affiliated with Thacherwho raised concerns to the Ventura County Sheriff's Office, weeks after the teacher'sresignation, the report says. Top 5 Best Private Schools in 93023 (Ojai, CA) (2023) Add to Compare (4) 723 El Paseo Road Ojai, CA 93023 (805) 646-1423. Ryan won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting with colleagues Matt Hamilton and Paul Pringle in 2019. Onecase, he said, was closed because it was outside the time limits for prosecutionandthe alleged offender was deceased. Vous pouvez modifier vos choix tout moment en cliquant sur les liens Paramtres de confidentialit et des cookies ou Tableau de bord sur la confidentialit prsents sur nos sites et dans nos applications. These questions speak to her responsibilityas head of school, not to her survivorship.. I particularly regret situations where certain decisions I made contributed to this suffering, and I fully accept that criticism, he wrote. In the firm's report, it documents her "shock and distress" at seeing the statements "consistent with the lies" that the teacher had told her to tell at the time. About a week before publicly releasing the report in June 2021, a Munger, Tolles & Olson attorney and a Thacher administrator delivered the initial notification to the Sheriffs Office, according to Wednesdays statement. We are going to look into them on a case-by-case basis, Sgt. The girl ultimately confided in her mother about the alleged rapes, and the woman reached out to the school, setting in motion a series of interviews with administrators and officials. It also had access to the school's electronic and hard copy filesand any documents provided byinterviewees. Many suffered lasting harm not just from the sexual misconduct itself but also from the schools handling of the misconduct, the trustees said in a statement. Investigators didnt receive the schools fullreport until Wednesday, the same day it was posted on the schools website, said Capt. Royal fans go wild over Prince George's striking resemblance to his father Now that's a trigger warning! Detectives gave every victim an opportunity to discuss and report their abuse, and to receive survivor benefits and resources, and investigators completed a report for every affected student, authorities said. In a 91-page report, the private coed boarding school in Ojai detailed sexual assaults and harassment against students dating back to the 1980s. The Thacher School in Ojai, Calif., is an exclusive educational enclave with a $68,000 annual bill and a roster of illustrious alums, from politicians to CEOs to Hollywood types, including Howard Hughes, Noah Wyle and Joely Richardson. Wyman was succeeded by Mulligan, who served as dean of students during the scandal involving the English teacher in the 1980s. The firm said more than 120 people includingcurrent and former students, parents, teachers, staff, administrators and board memberswere interviewed for the report. In one harrowing case, a teacher allegedly raped a 16-year-old student, then continued to abuse her for at least a year. Wyman, who led the school from 1975 to 1992, was also accused of inappropriate conduct. The board and school leadership have established a support fund to be "independently operated" by the nonprofit Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, commonly known as RAINN,to providecurrent and former students with therapy related to trauma from sexual misconduct at Thacher. Still, authorities reviewed every case in an attempt to uncover facts triggering the longest statute of limitations available, according to the statement. When a teacher later reported to Mulligan that the soccer coach was spending a lot of time alone with a student, including in the coachs house and car, Mulligan directed that teacher to counsel the coach about it. The criminal inquiry began nearly a year after Thacher School trustees in August 2020 hired Munger, Tolles & Olson to conduct an investigation spurred by an alumni social media campaign that included the Instagram account @rpecultureatthacher. Those actions include revising policies and procedures; improving training and education; implementing general strategies to reduce the risk of sexual misconduct, and strengthening oversight, among others. 723 EL PASEO RD OJAI, CA 93023 About Ojai Valley School. But a few years later, in 1987, that same teacher was hired at Thacher as the girls varsity soccer coach, according to the report. The report also described the accounts of a former student who said she and her roommate were sexually assaulted by two male students in the 1990s when she was a senior. Girls were first admitted in 1977, with the first co-ed graduating class being the class of 1978. Last week, Thacher officials shared with the Ventura County Sheriffs Office a synopsis of approximately 20 incidents outlining myriad alleged misconduct, according to Sgt. Wednesday'sreport recounted harrowing experiences of students with peers and with faculty and administratorsfrom the 1980s to as recentlyasthe late 2010s. Ventura County Sheriff's Sgt. If Ms. Pidduck is so attunedto survivors, why didnt she, her administration and the board report in a timely manner as required by law the May sexual misconduct choking event to MTO or the county sheriff?, Thacher alum and former longtime trustee and audit committee chair Philip Pillsbury told The Post. Allegations in the report dated to the 1980s at the bucolic 427-acre boarding school, where academic rigor is pursued along with an outdoor ethos. The sheriffs and district attorneys offices said schools and other institutions that are made aware of past sexual assault allegations should contact law enforcement as early as possible, noting that in the Thacher investigation the passage of time made many potential crimes both difficult to investigate and outside applicable statutes of limitations.. The psychologist who counseled the girl later wrote to the then-Head of School Willard Wyman that he and school staff had convinced the girl's mother that it would be in her daughter's 'best interest not to press charges, as it would further isolate her from her peers. He could not immediately be reached for comment by The Times. Clark said most of the cases are from the past two decades, though several of the allegations date back to the 1980s and '90s. The report includes accounts from other students and parents who described one headmaster who was often drunk and touched girls on their thighs and buttocks. All rights reserved. Now we have their names, The Un-Becoming: A former Eastside gang member finds his resurrection tale at UC Berkeley, News Analysis: Outrage over Times journalism exposes LAPDs ignorance of a free press, experts say, Created in California: How Dr. Bronners became the soap for every subculture, Christopher Nolan goes deep on Oppenheimer, his most extreme film to date, Is Mexico City getting too cool for its own good? Students and faculty members seemed aware and even concerned about the English teachers association with the girl, according to the report. Mulligan told the lawyers compiling the report thathe regretted supporting the coach's hiring, and then not confronting the coach himself. The law firm noted that it was unable to find any record of when a report was made or to what agency, and the coach went on to work at other schools.
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