The diagnosis recorded on my St. Pauls infirmary referral form was aphthous ulcers. Canker sores. They let them go home. He did not test me for any diseases, sexually transmitted or otherwise. Its small, not much. One day Mom came bashing through the dining room door and said, as though the room were waiting to hear it, The district attorney said hes had enough with St. Pauls School., It means he wants to bring charges against thoseboys, because they were of age and you were fifteen, and because things like this have been happening at the school for years and the school has been burying it. //var LBtag_id = document.getElementById('buylinkLBCrawford-CM-070520,ph2'); The attorney generals investigation of St. Pauls did not result in criminal charges against the school but a settlement agreement that mandates three to five years of government oversight. But as the story unfolds, we realize something different: that men like Bill Matthews, Kelly Clark, John Buxton, and Cliff Gillespie, who had dedicated their lives to education and to their faith, were not there for her. I have been told that this happened both on the lacrosse field and in a teachers apartment. Courtesy This ended the investigation into decades of destroying lives, Crawfords and others. As the village continues to assess what to do with the shuttered St. Paul's School for Boys, trustees have . This broader context doesnt make the assault at St. Pauls somehow more understandable. It seemed to me that all I had ever done was try to give them what they wanted. I really went for it. We have 532 students and 113 faculty, with students from 37 states and 24 countries, and 40% receive financial aid. This was not the game Id thought it was, a civilized dance of virtue and discretion. The outpatient report of my herpes diagnosisthe one the pediatrician at school referred towas not among them. This article is about alumni of St Paul's School, Concord. Lacy Crawford and her brother at St. Paul's School in Concord in the early 1990s. Crawford is a martyr. And I cant imagine. Thats why were having this conversation. Rape was too severe, inaccurate even, and so for a long time she refused that word to label her own assault at the Concord prep school in October 1990. Well have to hire a lawyer., To protect you. After meeting with prosecutors at a later date, Curtin and Ford again called Crawford to report that prosecutors had refused her case file. I was not invited into the library for the call, so I stayed upstairs in my room, with my door closed, and stared out the window over our driveway. MacDonald wrote to Crawfords editor on June 26 that Little, Brown and Companys failure to call his office about the accuracy of the detectives statements is irresponsible, if not reckless.. if (photocredit.indexOf(sellablestring) > -1) { var currentheadline = document.getElementById("headline").innerText; I replayed his words in my head. Then they shamed me. It was to threaten me. By Crawfords account, his work was a successfor the school. Maybe just get a little more sleep?. I am sure the school has not had the full and open reckoning it needs to have about all the ways we fail to see and talk about gender, race, class, wealth, privilege and legacy, Crawford said. They stole your sense of self-respect and ruined your sense of boundaries.. Copyright 2020 by Lacy Crawford. They never reported. Concord Police knew nothing about it until my pediatrician called. Dad replied, She did. But these good men knowingly stood by when I was a student, year after year, as the senior men of the school used the handle of a cricket bat to sodomize young boys. The attorney generals office, although appraised of the letter, took issue with how Concord police had obtained it. var currentheadline = document.getElementById("headline").innerText; }, Lacy Crawford and her brother at St. Paul's School in Concord in the early 1990s. After all, investigators found a letter in 2017 that could finally prove the school committed a crime in the 1990s by refusing to allow her back on campus if she pursued criminal charges. Do you get that?. Here was the contract, as I understood it: I would not speak of the assault, and they would not do anything to interfere with my applications to college or my progress toward graduation. From Notes on a Silencing. Rick Banner We found 11 records for Rick Banner in OH, MS and 5 other states. My parents began holding conversations related to St. Pauls together in my dads office, in the den down at the end of the hall. Its an easy way out to say that perpetrators are bad actors or an even easier way out to say a girl asked for it., She continued, The only way forward is to be a whole lot more transparent, authentic and curious about who has power and who doesnt and about who has a voice and who doesnt, particularly at legacy institutions like St. Pauls.. Only a fool walked into what I had walked into. Matthews went on. They reminded her that a faculty member lived on the other side of the wall of their room. The rector only said, Why didnt Lacy tell anyone? According to the physicians report, the clinician in Concord was able to numb my throat and look past my tonsils to see that the hypopharyngeal space, where the esophagus meets the trachea, was badly abscessed. They contacted the school, which had an obligation to inform the police. //var LBtag_id = document.getElementById('buylinkLBCrawford-CM-070520,ph1'); The head of school is the rector, and for a century and a half almost all of the school's rectors had been ordained priests. In her own home, a friend of her father stands before her drunk in his boxers and harasses her. I knew the morality but not the mechanism. I understood language like burying it and smoking gun to belong to my mothersome fire and brimstone came naturally to her, and never more than when she felt wronged. In the end, Notes on a Silencing is about mens care for power, and their brutalization of everything else. I got lucky because I saw behind the curtain. The author knocks on the doors bearing the darkest symbols, behind which lie guns, ammo, antisemitism, antiabortion dogmaand a belief in the coming civil war. It happens all the time, everywhere. To which Id reply: Youd be surprised what a kid can find it unimaginable to say. The records that remained of my visit appear woefully incomplete. Then the blood ran free. She chafed at the constant use of the male pronoun in the Book of Common Prayer, and would loudly sing at the Doxology, Blessed is she who comes in the name of the Lord. Mom loved a classy lady, dignified and reserved: vintage Lagerfeld or Halston. var photocredit = "'Courtesy' 'Notes on a Silencing by Lacy Crawford is out Tuesday. And then shed go out there on Sunday mornings and turn crackers into the body of Christ. You know, what they did. She gripped her throat to demonstrate. They wont include, will not include, anything from your file. The rector. Not the school. Theres something really wrong with my throat, I said. He would have hoisted his trophy high over his head in front of them all. In 2004, the Village Board of the Incorporated Village of Garden City voted to dedicate St. Paul's School's 48 acre (194,000 m 2) site as parkland, with then Mayor Barbara Miller . Herpes is very unlikely to present that waythat is, only in the hypopharyngeal space and nowhere else. There is a powerful lesson in this: We dont need to know more to understand what happened. The youngsters are skilled, speedy, coachable and eager to make their mark on the . When you support The American Prospect, youre supporting fellow readers who arent able to give, and countering the class system for information. View the profiles of people named Rick Banner. They held her down. The suspicion is that she has a sexually transmitted disease so deep in her throat it cannot be seen on a normal exam. Her body has never seen this virus before and is mounting a mighty response. She was an extraordinary young woman. You might think how ill-conceived this was. They remained in the dark. Concord Monitor Report For America Education, Concord Monitor Report For America Health, Support the I was studying for my finals, knowing that the events of that night in Rick and Tazs room were formally known to everyone now. The Parallel Universe of Ivanka Trump, Americas Dissociated Princess No, I Am Not Okay: A Black Journalist Addresses His White Friends Why Bankrupt Hertz Is a Pandemic Zombie Scenes of Fury and Mourning at the Minneapolis Protests Civil Rights Advocate Brandi Collins-Dexter on Why Facebook Chooses Trump Over Democracy Democrats Blue-Texas Fever Dream May Finally Become a Reality From the Archive: Taking Stock of Melania Trump, the UnpreparedAnd LonelyFLOTUS. Bill Matthews responded calmly: How do we know she didnt give it to the boys?. if (photocredit.indexOf(sellablestring) > -1) { tag_id.innerHTML = ''; He looked over her shoulder at me and shook his head. The most she could muster in response to these men was, Just dont have sex with me.. Basically, my father said, his voice rasping, theyre promising to destroy you. The rasp terrified me. Of the girls who get picked to be girlfriends and the ones who become prey: If you were not perfect, you were not safe. Of a note she receives from a friend she helped: I saved it, so I could remember how it felt to take care of someone I loved. The story is crafted with the precision of a thriller, with revelations that sent me reeling. I tried to understand her meaning: What did she want? var photocredit = photocredit.toUpperCase(); As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. please call (860) 828-1934 ext 109. Ad Choices. I had been waiting to be discovered since the moment I left their room, when I walked back as slowly as I could. In her new memoir, Lacy Crawford names the educators who, she says, knowingly hid her rape from the police and engaged in witness tampering: Bill Matthews, John Buxton, Cliff Gillespie, and Kelly Clark, teachers and administrators at the school. Hers is not a story of triumph over adversity, nor does she provide a reflection on how she achieved peace. She was an outstanding tennis player. Perhaps more of us need to get closer to the catastrophic experience of a silencing so that it stops happening, so that there will never be a need to ask a woman why now, because she will have been believed from the start. Trust me. I took a taxi from the infirmary into town and back again, with a referral page clutched in my hand and a scarf tight around my neck. Christ is the reason for St. Paul Catholic High School. They just stood there, opaque, like a WASP update of that exhausted hardscrabble couple in American Gothicgraph paper instead of pitchfork clutched in Dads hand. Through social media posts, court records, and other primary sources, author Kathleen Hale forensically reconstructs their lives before the crime, and the night they were killed. My father walked down the hall to the den where he kept his home office to call the vice rector. Live Trading Lab; Financial Literacy But the intent of the accusation was not to posit fact. And I dont think we can move forward until we figure out how we got here. Christina Norton, Administrative Assistant of Religious Education, please call (860) 828-1934 ext 125. Crawford was still very much a girlshe tells us of how crushed she was, around that time, when she lost her childhood blanket. Beneath how many streetlights did I linger? Here is a 15-year-old girl swallowing blood. So Ive written what happened, exactly as I remember. The terrified 15-year-old Lacy Crawford knew well what many of us are still unwilling to admit to ourselves. Vile things were nesting in my throat, and this was itshe was going to see it all. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. I dont believe that the problem of sexual violence is caused by individuals and I dont believe the solution will come from individuals, Crawford said. St. Paul Schools serves students in grades Pre-K throug Now my mother was looking at me imploringly. Sign up for our daily Hive newsletter and never miss a story. Dad continued. When I got really hungry, I did this with skim milk. . She was brilliant. You dont want to go digging, Jim, he told my father. In 2017, during the New Hampshire state investigation into St. Pauls, I got hold of my records from the ear-nose-and-throat clinic in Concord. We must respect her witnessing. I workedI still workto restore the boys humanity as a way of restoring mine: they were symptoms of a sick system, they were tools of the patriarchy, they were fooled by porn. '"; Everyone knew. You are the smoking gun.. Reading Crawfords book, I realized three things about her time in high school. The case is currently suspended, and the City will be reviewing what if any documents can be released at this time.. By all accounts save mine, the encounter had been consensual. Previously, Rick was a Dean at Graland Country Da y School. They did, however, apparently find reason to enlighten my schoolmates about one thing. Those still surviving, no doubt, continue to maintain their goodness. Its not what we wanted for our daughter. Bill Matthewss ire at this redemption of Crawford led him to treat Ault brutally. Tonsils normal, perfectly clear. My mind forgets them anew, the white blast of nothing deploying like an airbag at the memorys approach. Oh my God, I said. Service of Others," the third event in our yearlong series celebrating 50 years of coeducation at St. Paul's School. The school never told the police. I moved from my window to my twin bed and folded myself up in the middle of it. tag_id.innerHTML = ''; Crawford will always remember what happened that night, but its not the sexual assault that demands her focus almost 30 years later. St. Paul's School (also known as St. Paul's or SPS) is a highly selective college-preparatory, coeducational boarding school in Concord, New Hampshire, affiliated with the Episcopal Church.It is often regarded as one of the most elite boarding schools in the United States. Salvation was not on the other side of that wall, only further violation. The community that forms around St. Paul's School students is lifelong a source of friendship, support and mentorship. His mouth funneled down into jowls previously invisible, and his eyes shrank not by narrowing but by deepening into his skull. Select the best result to find their address, phone number, relatives, and public records. Sensitive matter.. I do not know the substance of these conversations, but in the third week of May, the school psychologist, Reverend S., Vice Rector Bill Mathews, and the rector, Kelly Clark, sat down with the schools legal counsel and arrived at the formal conclusion that, despite what I had claimed, and despite the statutory laws on the books in their state, the encounter between me and the boys had been consensual. We are not going to do anything to mute that voice at this point. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Cond Nast. As part of the settlement, signed in September 2018, St. Pauls agreed to waive any claim of confidentiality in the grand jury proceedings to allow for the attorney general to release a public report at a later date. It is an effort of accompaniment as much as it is of witness: to go back to that girl leaving the boys room on an October night, sneakers landing on the sandy path, and walk with her all the way home. In my files is the release form I signed, months after the assault, so the Concord Police Department could retrieve my medical records. Unless you were willing to manufacture accusations to poison the place for her and poison her for it. The schools characterization of me as a drug dealer was the boldest lie I had ever encountered. //LBtag_id.innerHTML = ''; When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission. He heard she had it from someone his sister met at a bar in Los Angeles. When the boys did what they did to me, they denied the third person on that bed. They had not previously been on a first-name basis. Her first rendering was as true as her last. Wool boucl in spring. Linen or silk in summer. Maybe, multiple physicians told me years later, it was just that the sores were so deep. I dont know yet. The school had failed this first test. What interests me is not what happened. I did not contact Concord police and report my assault ever. var sellablestring = "MONITOR STAFF"; I have wondered if Im able to lose these particulars again and again because I know theyre written down, so I dont have to take care of thembut this is a curious piece of anthropomorphism. Inevitably, when a woman comes forward with an allegation of a sexual assault from many years ago, a certain type of person will ask, Why now? The question dogged Christine Blasey Ford during her Senate testimony in 2018 and was used in an attempt to discredit women victimized by both Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. Nothing really changes about the story of that first rape, presented in the opening pages of the book. Facebook gives people the power to. They chose not to inform the police. 11152 Falls Road P.O. Lacy Crawford spent years trying to find a word or phrase that would best describe what happened to her as a 15-year-old on the campus of St. Pauls School. She said MacDonald may have intended to provide clarity but, from her perspective, the letter makes the situation worse. The boys who first raped her talk about their threesome to others, spreading word of her sexual availability, and upon hearing the story, a recent graduate from St. Pauls drives down from college, walks into her room at night without her permission, and rapes her as she cries into her pillow. I suspect that what I did was worse. Police told Crawford back in late 2016 that her case file contained the smoking gun that would prove the school engaged in witness tampering. My throat was hard against the threat of vomit, which would have burned terribly. The conversation simply ended. //LBtag_id.innerHTML = ''; Theres no mention of a diagnostic process at all. Nearly two years have passed since the attorney generals office announced the conclusion of its investigation. Tears escaped the corners of my eyes and ran along my hairline, into my ears. Follow-up as needed. My parents stood side by side in front of me. They let the boys graduate. She was beautiful. She was the top pupil in the school. Its so simple, what happened at St. Pauls. Two, Lacy is a drug dealer, who has sold her Prozac and other drugs to students on campus, endangering them. var currentLocation = window.location; His body seemed to pause in its animation, and he wore a look I had never seen before. Hm, said the nurse. Get the latest chatter, from Kensington Palace and beyond, straight to your inbox. All of that. Crawford tells of her depression and her lack of self-awareness. Dr. Kerrow asked me to tell her exactly what had happened. In the 1960s, John Kerry played hockey alongside Robert Mueller, who was the second St. Pauls alumnus to serve as a prosecutor investigating a sitting president. var photocredit = photocredit.toUpperCase(); Not her parents. But I was the fool. tag_id.innerHTML = ''; Id had literally hundreds of occasions to speak up. Lacy told her parents about what happened months after her first rape. Try again, she instructed. Midway through the book, Crawfords best friend, Elise, leaves the school because of mental-health struggles. Crawford had yet to have sex. It would have been hopeless to try to support their investigation without my parents supporting me. And maybe against the school. What interests me is not what happened. THE REVEREND ALICIA CRAWFORD she wrote in all caps, showing them who she was, who we were, and above all, who she imagined me to be. She tries to run by him, and he sticks his tongue down her throat. In Lacy Crawfords erudite and devastating memoir recounting her time as a student at St. Pauls School, an elite boarding school in Concord, N.H., the question does not arrive until the last 15 pages of the book. Osgood told the Monitor that he is aware of a records request made by Crawford in January 2018. These men in power, however, worked not to protect the young, but to protect the rights that came with power and status. Id waited so long to say something. To introduce the virus only there would have required an aggressive act, and maybe that was unimaginable? The damage to me was done. Published by Little, Brown. Later, I went back to teach at St. Pauls for a year, 2004-2005, and wrote a book about it (Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Pauls School). I have told this story, or some version of it, dozens of times since then. I would drown myself at dawn, Crawford thinks. Crawford calls her attacker Rick Banner; when he asks the question, he is speaking to a female detective who comes to his doorstep as part of a criminal investigation opened by the state of New. I felt the tug as clots pulled away, and I felt myself swallow them. He set up his pad of quadrille paper, clicked out a few millimeters of lead, and told Reverend Clark that we werent making progress. if (photocredit.indexOf(sellablestring) > -1) { The head of school is the rector, and for a century and a half almost all of the schools rectors had been ordained priests. The school officials illegally accessed her medical information and failed to inform her of her own sexually transmitted illness. That is, if you agree to press charges against the boys, they will get you on the stand, and heres what theyre going to say.. Please, become a member, or make a one-time donation, today. var tag_id = document.getElementById('buylinkCrawford-CM-070520,ph4'); He made it sound like a personal crisis. There could not have been a clearer instance of the ravenous paternalistic entitlement of this school, to help itself to my doctor and my privacy even in my absence. Perhaps this was best left to the adolescents to understand. Serving children from infancy through grade 12, our three schools share a 120-acre campus, an Episcopal tradition, and a focus on developing confident, well-balanced students who will use their education and ethics to improve the world. They stood by as students ran to their offices, having been assaulted by teachers. Now. Want to make the question of Why now? obsolete? CONCORD, N.H. (AP) In a story published June 28, 2020, about an allegation of sexual assault at a New Hampshire prep school, The Associated Press erroneously reported that former student Lacy Crawford was kicked out of St. Paul's School in Concord. Yes, Rick did hold me down on top of Tazs cock. The St. Paul's Hall of Fame celebrates the rich tradition of St. Paul's athletics by recognizing individuals and teams who have led our programs to success. var currentLocation = window.location; Before we all left campus that spring, a vice rector sat down with members of the boys varsity lacrosse team and told them that he didnt want to ask any questions, but if any of them had ever been intimate with Lacy Crawford, he should go to the infirmary right away to get checked out. He did not tell me and he did not tell my parents and he did not tell my doctors. I hated the girl who had done those things. var photocredit = photocredit.toUpperCase(); Anyone can read what you share. But reading through the book, I saw her potential power. By phone last week, she said St. Pauls is committed to doing better by its students, and will continue to receive survivors stories and respect their experiences. var tag_id = document.getElementById('buylinkCrawford-CM-070520,ph04'); She also details for readers her experiences as a victim in New Hampshires criminal justice process. 136 were here. I dragged my mind from the thought of being a Prozac dealer to the far less interesting accusation of teenage sex. I did not think I deserved to get better, but I was a girl with a firm sense of doom. He knew what had been done to her. But then the school went and did the same thing, denying my humanity, rewriting the character of a girl. }. Why now? wonders the man who as a sixth former (St. Pauls speak for seniors) lured Crawford to his room with a deceitful tale of woe (something terrible had happened to his mother and he needed help). Its actually not that complicated. In a letter dated June 26, Attorney General Gordon MacDonald wrote Crawfords editor to say the information chronicled in chapter 12 of Notes on a Silencing does not tell the full story. More interesting to Crawford is the silence over the decades that followed the attack and the power structures in place that kept her a 15-year-old girl from speaking her truth and seeking help. No court of law. Id been so careful and so worried. Crawford certainly does not present herself as one. But what was there struck a note so sharp I could hear it, a chip of ice so cold it must be the hard center. A community where learning from and about each other never really ends as we each build purposeful lives in service to the greater good. Certainly not at the infirmary. The impact of this violation only sharpened with time. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. Basically, my father said, his voice rasping, theyre promising to destroy you.. But everywhere else, I was waiting for it to be revealed. That overseer remains at St. Pauls today. '"; A popular teammate who throws her arm around Crawfords shoulder after her coach has shamed her, a queer female priest who invites a crying Crawford to cuddle her dog, the glamorous mother of an old classmate who gives this pitch-perfect response when Crawford worries shes made some bad decisions since the assault. She found him there, mostly naked, and with another man. A knock at my door. In American terms, I was a junior. All speech that followed was cannily performative, every line parry or thrust. Who told them? The second time, Concord police reached out to me after I contacted the attorney generals office in 2017, Crawford said. Okay, you can close., Nothing there, she told me. And nothing short of an organized program by men sought to make sure she could never exercise that power. There was not a shred of evidence of that, not the smallest whisper. They are going to start college in the fall just like nothing happened.. Crawford was prepared to testify before the grand jury but the call from the attorney generals office never came. She said she believes Giles is first and foremost trying to serve students in the schools care now, and that she is working with Giles because she shares that goal. My mother was (is) a priest. Lightning strikes caused a 2-hour, 19 minute delay in Saturday's girls lacrosse battle between Darien (CT) and St. Paul's School for Girls at US Lacrosse Stadium. A sexual assault at a New England boarding school. Courtesy Lacy Crawford's. Dad lowered the page and aimed his eyes at me, querulous and hard, with my mother beside him avoiding my face. But we should not fool ourselves. With this book, she seeks, instead, to make it about the shame of these powerful men. If Id been so upset, why hadnt I alerted a teacher or advisor straight away? I stayed away. Weve said it before: The greatest threat to democracy from the media isnt disinformation, its the paywall. The St. Paul's Schools. My name is first, and below it, because I was a minor, is Moms signature. While a multi-agency task force was formed to look into potential crimes committed by St. Pauls, MacDonald wrote that New Hampshire Rules of Professional Conduct for attorneys required the investigation to unfold in a certain way, meaning that because St. Pauls had legal representation all communications had to go through attorneys and not school administrators.
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