Report to the Board of Trustees of Trinity School
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Report to the Board of Trustees of Trinity School The content of this report is sensitive, personal, and graphic. It is not intended for children. Reader discretion is advised. Nancy Kestenbaum Jason P. Criss Covington & Burling LLP January 2020 I. Introduction In September 2018, Head of School John Allman wrote to the Trinity School community to report that Phillips Exeter Academy had recently issued a report describing possible sexual misconduct by members of the Exeter faculty and staff, including a former teacher at Exeter, Henry Ploegstra. The September 2018 message also explained that Ploegstra had taught at Trinity after leaving Exeter. Allman invited any member of the Trinity School community who had any concerns or issues that they would like to raise to contact him. No one responded to the September 2018 message with information about Ploegstra, but some former students reported information about other former Trinity faculty members. On March 14, 2019, Allman and the Board of Trustees President sent out a follow-up letter to the school community. That letter explained that in response to the September 2018 message, the school had received several reports of sexual misconduct or harassment by former faculty and that the Board had asked Covington & Burling LLP to investigate reports the school had already received, and to investigate any new reports of sexual misconduct against any student by Trinity School faculty or staff, review records of any reports of sexual misconduct the school received in the past, and conduct additional investigation or follow-up that Covington determined was warranted. The March 2019 letter provided an email and telephone hotline that members of the Trinity community could use to contact us. Trinity informed us that it sent this message by email to 7,750 individuals and by physical mailing to 8,644 individuals, including all of the email addresses in the school’s database for Upper School students, and all of the email and mailing addresses in the school’s database for former students, current and former faculty and staff, current and former trustees, and current and former parents and grandparents of students. II. Investigative Process Twenty-six former students and two Trinity employees contacted our hotline to provide information. No current Trinity students contacted the hotline, and we did not receive any reports about potential sexual misconduct by current Trinity faculty or staff involving Trinity students. We interviewed everyone who contacted our hotline to provide first- or second-hand information about potential adult sexual misconduct involving Trinity students. We also contacted and interviewed former students who had contacted the school previously to report sexual misconduct by former faculty members. Consistent with best practices for investigations concerning sexual misconduct involving minors, we did not directly contact former Trinity students who might have experienced sexual misconduct unless the former students first contacted us. We also requested and conducted interviews of current and former faculty members, school administrators, and others whom we identified as potentially having relevant information. In total, we interviewed 50 individuals, including former Trinity students, current and former Trinity administrators and teachers, and parents of former students. We also reviewed a variety of documents relevant to the issues we investigated, provided by the school and by others. We wrote to all of the living former Trinity faculty members who were the subject of reports of sexual misconduct whom we considered naming in this report and asked to speak with them. We note below if we interviewed a particular individual accused of sexual misconduct, if the individual declined or did not respond to our request for an interview, if he or she declined to answer our questions but provided us with a statement directly or through counsel, or if the former teacher is deceased. Trinity did not impose any limitations on our work and gave us the autonomy to conduct a thorough investigation. The school provided us with access to all of the documents that we requested, and helped us locate and contact people with whom we wished to speak. III. Criteria for Inclusion in this Report and Confidentiality A key issue we confronted when preparing this report was whether each faculty member accused of sexual misconduct should be included in this report, and whether we should name him or her. We carefully considered this question for each individual we investigated and we reached different decisions based on a number of factors, including the scope of our mandate and the information we learned. We made a holistic assessment regarding each individual’s reported conduct, rather than trying to follow a strict formula. The factors we weighed when deciding whether an adult accused of sexual misconduct should be described or named in this report are as follows: • Our mandate to investigate all reports of adult sexual misconduct against any student by Trinity faculty or staff that we received or could find, and to conduct any additional investigation or follow-up as we decided was warranted. • The severity of the individual’s reported conduct. • Whether we received direct, first-hand reports about the individual. • Whether we received credible reports of the individual having engaged in incidents of sexual misconduct with multiple students. • Whether we were able to corroborate the incidents described to us and the amount and quality of this corroborating evidence. • In the case of reported conduct that was more ambiguous, whether the students who experienced and reported the conduct perceived it to be sexual misconduct. 2 After weighing these factors, we decided to name two teachers, described in Section IV. We decided to describe, but not name, six other teachers, whom we identify as Teacher A through Teacher F. The reports we received about those six teachers are described in Section V. Finally, there were five faculty members who were the subject of less specific or less serious reports than the reports about Teachers A-F; they are described briefly at the end of Section V.1 We are not naming any former Trinity students in this report. Instead, we are referring to certain former Trinity students with a numerical identifier such as “Student 1.” Where appropriate, given their involvement in responding to incidents described below, we are naming certain current or former senior Trinity administrators we contacted and interviewed, or who were involved in the school’s responses to misconduct reports. IV. Teachers Named in this Report Based on the investigation we conducted, and after weighing the factors enumerated above, we decided to name two former teachers who were the subject of multiple first-hand reports of sexual misconduct: Larry Cantor and Robert Kahn. A. Larry Cantor Larry Cantor taught physical education at Trinity from 1968 to 1972 and from 1979 to 1983, and he also coached wrestling, track, and cross-country. We received first-hand reports of sexual misconduct by Cantor that took place over a decade, from both periods of Cantor’s employment at Trinity. These reports came from male members of classes of the mid-1970s (Students 1 and 2), early 1980s (Student 3), and mid-1980s (Students 4 and 5). Students 1-4 described misconduct they experienced in connection with wrestling practices at Trinity and Student 5 described similar misconduct on a camping trip. All five former students described conduct that they recognized went well beyond acceptable contact between a wrestling coach and student athlete. Student 1 reported that when he was in middle school, Cantor told Student 1 that he had a “wrestling hold” he wanted to show him, even though Student 1 was not on the wrestling team. Cantor and Student 1 walked into the wrestling room and got down on the wrestling mat together in a horizontal position. According to Student 1, Cantor proceeded to put Student 1 in a headlock and hold him on the mat until Cantor sexually climaxed, which happened quickly. Student 1 told us that he told two of his friends from Trinity about this incident after they had graduated from high school. He put us in touch with one of these friends, who confirmed that in the past ten or fifteen years, Student 1 told him that Cantor had 1 As noted above, Trinity did not receive any reports about Ploegstra in response to its September 2018 message. We also did not receive any reports about Ploegstra. 3 rubbed against Student 1 to “pleasur[e] himself” under the guise of showing Student 1 a wrestling move. In 2010, Student 2 provided Trinity with a written statement that primarily discussed Student 2’s sexual relationship with a different former Trinity teacher that began after Student 2 had graduated from Trinity. In that statement, Student 2 also described misconduct by Cantor that Student 2 experienced when he was in middle school. Student 2 wrote, “Everyone knew about Cantor. He would find a boy and hold him back after class and wrestle (shirtless now, so as to toughen the skin for the mat, or so he claimed). Cantor chose me one term to be [h]is wrestling buddy and while I sensed there was something wrong about it I went along with it. On one occasion there was the distinct wet-spot on his shorts which signaled he had cum.” We asked to speak with Student 2, but he declined our request.2 Student 3 told us that when he was in high school, Cantor would urge him or other members of the wrestling team to stay after practice for extra individual coaching. According to Student 3, during these sessions, which began when Student 3 was 13 years old, Cantor would turn off most of the lights, and start wrestling with Student 3, possibly with the gym door locked.