Choate Rosemary Hall is known for being one of the most prestigious boarding schools in the country, an institution with alumni like President John F. Kennedy, two-time presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson and playwright Edward Albee.
The elite Connecticut private school is also a place that has for decades fostered a pattern of sexual abuse and misconduct between teachers and students, according to a troubling new internal investigation initiated by the school to address abuse allegations.
The 48-page report, which was released Thursday, was produced by Nancy Kestenbaum of Covington & Burling LLP, a former federal prosecutor, who was retained by Choate. School officials said Kestenbaum and a team of investigators spent seven months reviewing more than 23,000 pages of documents and interviewing more than 100 people, including alumni and former and current faculty, staff and trustees.
The report names 12 former Choate faculty members who engaged in what it said were substantiated instances of sexual misconduct with Choate students dating back nearly 60 years, five of whom are no longer living. The report recounts the alleged abuse in explicit detail, documenting the experiences described by 24 survivors, some of them as recently as 2010. The report notes that in some cases the school acted swiftly to address the alleged abuse, but in many cases the school failed to alert police or allowed faculty members to resign, avoiding serious legal consequences.