Two alumni who sued St. Paul’s School this spring alleging repeated sexual abuse by teachers decades ago are engaged in settlement discussions with the school.
Efforts to resolve the case without a jury trial began early this summer, according to court documents. As a result, attorneys for the Concord prep school have filed three separate motions seeking more time to file a written answer to the civil lawsuit, with the latest landing Monday in Merrimack County Superior Court.
Judge Richard McNamara quickly granted the school’s request for another 30-day extension to answer the lawsuit, which alumni Keith “Biff” Mithoefer and George Chester Irons filed against the school in early May. The new deadline is Oct. 24 should the case proceed and not be resolved by agreement.
Irons, a former president of the school’s alumni association and board of trustee member, and Mithoefer say they were sexually assaulted by faculty and staff on multiple occasions between 1966 and 1976. Together, they have brought 10 civil claims against St. Paul’s including negligent hiring; retention and supervision of faculty/staff; negligent inflection of emotional distress; and vicarious liability. Additionally, Irons’s wife, Barbra Irons, alleges that as a result of the harm caused to her husband, she suffered loss of his “aid, assistance, comfort, society, companionship, affection, and conjugal relation.”
Irons and Mithoefer maintain that St. Paul’s had long known of the sexual abuse of students in their care, and yet chose to remain silent for decades while continuing to employ staff known to prey upon students.
That included Coolidge Mead Chapin, who had a long-standing history of taking students off campus without their parents’ permission. Irons said he was one of the boys taken to a New York City brothel where Chapin forced him to engage in sex acts with prostitutes.
Mithoefer said he was sexually assaulted by multiple St. Paul’s staff members, including Gerry Studds who taught at the school from 1965-69. Studds, the first openly gay member of Congress, was censured more than a decade later for sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old congressional page.
The lawsuit filed by Irons and Mithoefer is one of two public cases in mediation at this time. A former student – who was recruited by St. Paul’s at age 13 and enrolled in 2012 – filed a lawsuit pseudonymously against the school in May, alleging she was repeatedly sexually harassed and raped on campus.
Attorneys asked a U.S. District Court judge earlier this month to suspend for 60 days all legal proceedings in the case to allow for settlement discussions to continue.
(Alyssa Dandrea can be reached at 369-3319, adandrea@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @_ADandrea.)