BOCA RATON, Fla. -- A scathing report reveals administrators at a prep school in Palm Beach County failed to protect students from a teacher who had developed a pattern of having students over for secret sleepovers, private embraces and late-night excursions.
According to the Palm Beach Post, administrators at St. Andrew’s School looked the other way last year as one teacher seemed to have inappropriate relationships with four students despite repeated warnings. After conducting its own inadequate investigation, the school hired an outside firm to conduct an independent investigation, according to the report.
The findings of the report by New Hampshire attorney David Wolowitz were released to parents on Friday.
The report is critical of the private Episcopal school in Boca Raton for failing on numerous occasions last year to investigate “significant evidence” of misconduct by the former teacher with three teenage students. The former teacher has not been charged with a crime and the school’s own investigation found no evidence of sexual misconduct, according to the Palm Beach Post.
But what was found in the independent report was a pattern of a teacher having inappropriate contact with students who boarded at the school, which included having them over for sleepovers at his on-campus apartment.
The report says the teacher allegedly took a student on a midnight beach excursion in early 2015, and an administrator who spotted them didn’t try to stop them. A faculty member also saw the teacher and a different student engaged in a long embrace outside the boys’ dorm, according to the report, but didn’t notify supervisors until months later.
The report warns students there continue to be at risk from “a school culture which does not recognize, or overlooks, behavior by adults which is harmful to students, and found the school in violation of the state law that requires it to report concerns immediately to child-welfare investigators.
The school removed the teacher last year but did not alert the state Department of Children and Families about the allegations until April, five months later, the paper reports.
“In addition to the fact that a faculty member violated student-faculty boundaries, it is evident that the school had inadequate policies and procedures to protect students,” wrote Jim Byer, the school’s interim headmaster, in an email to parents Friday obtained by the paper.
“It is also painfully clear that, regardless of the fact that there have been no reports of sexual abuse, senior school administrators did not take sufficient action to protect students from potential abuse,” he added.
The school is implementing a “comprehensive overhaul” of policies and procedures that includes mandatory child abuse training for all staff, reports CBS affiliate WPEC.
The Palm Beach Post story says the school warned the teacher about having students come to his on-campus apartments but that an administrator witnessed the visits continue but did not report the occurrence.
The year-long investigation has touched off a firestorm at St. Andrew’s with parents and staff, with some staff members leaving on their own and headmaster Peter Benedict Jr.’s abrupt departure in April.
A lawyer for several school administrators called the report “one-sided,” telling the paper it was drafted without interviewing any of the administrators named.
