A version of this story, by Virginia Ray, was first published by The Commons on Jan. 31.
More than two years after the Windham Southeast School District hired an attorney to investigate allegations of sexual abuse in the district, the investigation has apparently come to an abrupt ending, creating disappointment, sadness, frustration and anger in the community.
At the WSESD board’s Jan. 23 meeting, chair Kelly Young read a brief statement:
“This Board engaged Aimee Goddard, Esq. to conduct a privileged and confidential investigation. Attorney Goddard analyzed allegations of sexual assault, sexual abuse, sexual harassment, and retaliation. Attorney Goddard has made confidential factual findings,” the statement started.
The board, it said, “has relied on Attorney Goddard’s findings and other information to improve District policies and practices, and to take other action necessary to protect students, employees, and other members of the educational community.”
“While we anticipate that this statement may be a disappointment to some, we do not expect to make any further comment on the investigation,” the statement concluded. “Thank you to those of you who participated in the investigation.”
Attorney Martha Carol, attending the meeting via Zoom, said it was “an injustice to survivors to not release further information.”
“The community needs accountability to heal, and I think this leaves people feeling alone,” said Carol, an associate attorney with the Justice Law Collaborative, which represents five individuals who have alleged sexual abuse or harassment by school district employees.
“So this is a disappointing outcome, and I think it’s allowing secrecy and injustice to continue,” she said.
The Commons has reported the alleged sexual harassment of a former student, identified in these pages as “Jane Doe,” that apparently resulted in former Brattleboro Union High School Principal Steve Perrin’s firing. (The Commons does not identify victims of sexual or domestic violence.)
Perrin is currently suing the board, and his case is in the discovery stage.
Since the investigation started, several people, including Brattleboro High School alum and survivor Mindy Haskins Rogers, who alleged a decades-long history and culture of sexual abuse in the district in an August 2021 essay in The Commons, have asked for information at meetings.
Those requests included asking for metadata, such as how many people have reported abuse to Goddard and how many former/current educators have been named in those reports — none of which has been publicly shared by the board.
Time and again, Young asked the public for “patience” and said the board would share what it could in time. She also encouraged survivors to contact Goddard.
Immediate condemnation
Haskins Rogers, also attending the Jan. 23 meeting via Zoom — as she has every meeting since the investigation started — condemned the board’s lack of disclosure, calling it “an incredible deception.”
“To entice people to come to you and speak to your ‘independent investigator’ about harms they suffered in your schools with promises — ongoing, constant promises of transparency and action and justice,” Haskins Rogers said.
She said the board did not meet the demand of a September 2022 petition signed by 188 community members urging a third, neutral party to head the probe.
Instead, the board hired Goddard, a private attorney, “to conduct a privileged investigation,” not releasing her findings and refusing to be forthcoming about the burden of proof being applied to reports, numbers of reporters or numbers of educators named.
“This is not transparency,” Haskins Rogers said. “You haven’t even met the commitment set forth in your own statement of Dec. 10, 2022, in which you promised transparency and to work with law enforcement as results came in.”
BUHS alum and survivor Sherri Keefe has also attended the board’s meetings throughout the investigation and was present via Zoom on Jan. 23.
“This is incredibly outrageous,” she told the board. “You have not addressed the harm that was done to survivors, and you are continuing to cause additional harm by not releasing the information.”
Keefe said the district spent $135,000 — “perhaps more” — of public funds, “yet refused to release this information.”
“I don’t know how you could say this was an impartial investigation when this is the outcome,” she concluded. “This is just beyond belief. That is no consolation to those who have already been harmed. None at all.”
Haskins Rogers, who has encouraged survivors to meet with Goddard, said that Young, when asked if the board had met its mandated obligation to report names of alleged abusers, had replied that “the lawyer would tell them if they had to do anything.”
There is nothing in the law that says a mandated reporter should first consult with a lawyer, Haskins Rogers said, calling the notion “outrageous.”
Noting that the board had promised to release the results of the report in consultation with law enforcement, Haskins Rogers added that the only other people in the board’s numerous executive sessions have been lawyers.
“This is just another incident of institutional betrayal of the people who have already been harmed in your schools,” she said. “I find it outrageous and incredibly disappointing that individuals I respect and like would fall into this pattern of institutional behavior once they joined the board.”
She accused the board of “acting to cover up what happened in your schools once again,” calling it “a huge betrayal to survivors and to people who were harmed in your schools.”
“It’s not a service to the community when there are still people who have been named by a number of former students as alleged to have committed acts of sexual misconduct, and they’re still in your community and engaging with children in your community because nobody knows these things have been alleged,” Haskins Rogers said.
“This is a betrayal of everybody,” she added.
Young then encouraged anyone alleging abuse about anyone currently in the school system to contact Superintendent Mark Speno.
Haskins Rogers added that Justice Law Collaborative is “representing people who have been harmed in your schools, and survivors should be aware that that’s also an option for them, if they do not feel served by this process.”
Speno: District has used process to improve
Speno supported the board and his administration, saying at the meeting that the board has been “steadfast and committed to this investigation and working with the administration to establish very clear protocols, trainings, that we’ve presented many times.”
He offered a litany of ways in which he says the administration has reacted to the investigation and evidence of abuse in district schools.
Examples included improvement in how abuse is reported; increased information via notices, email updates, and website postings; regular discussions; improved restorative practices; policy and professional development; “more clarity” around the role of the Title IX coordinator in complying with the federal civil rights law against sex discrimination in education; and a “clear abuse prevention policy.”
After the meeting, The Commons asked him for specifics about the improvements he listed so that people could readily understand more exactly what they are.
Speno said the measures include training in Act 1, the state law that governs Vermont’s sexual abuse response system, for all staff, “aligned with the statutory duty of mandated reporters to report to [the state Department for Children and Families].”
“This has also included school outreach to families about prevention efforts and open house invitations,” he continued. “School safety nights have been offered at various schools, including internet safety.”
The district also has “conducted school-based work around trauma-informed education,” he said.
“Last year, we worked closely with education consultant Chris Overtree to analyze school climate data and to work on goal setting for individual schools and the school district,” Speno said.
The district, he noted, has also invested in social-emotional learning curriculum, which offers instruction on such skills as building relationships, regulating emotions, and setting goals.
Speno said that the WSESD focuses on following laws that have been enacted “to protect students and staff” and on working with our Title IX coordinator to implement procedures and to offer district employees “continuous professional development.”
The community reacts
Jane Doe, the former BUHS student, told The Commons she hopes readers “are spurred to make their dissatisfaction with the process known and push for accountability.”
The Commons reported in 2022 that when Doe was a sophomore in 2010, Perrin allegedly made unwanted and inappropriate sexual and romantic advances toward her.
“It is incredibly harmful and hypocritical of the board to continue to work in the shadows at every step of the way, while pretending to be doing so out of respect for survivors,” Doe said.
“Respect for survivors, particularly survivors whose abusers have been protected by their institution for years, if not decades, means taking accountability and giving the community time to heal,” she said.
“That these elected officials, trusted with maintaining our schools, have chosen to keep quiet and purposefully not be on the side of students being mistreated, sexually assaulted, abused, and harassed in what should be their one safe learning environment, is stunning and shameful,” Doe continued.
Carol affirmed her practice’s commitment to finding justice for victims of district sexual abuse through the courts.
“Our clients bravely agreed to speak about these painful topics with the District’s investigator, Aimee Goddard, in the hope that this would result in justice and healing,” Carol said.
“The board’s decision not to release any information about the investigation into sexual abuse and harassment within the school harms survivors,” the attorney continued.
She charged that the WSESD “failed to protect survivors when they were children and most vulnerable.”
“The District has harmed them once again by refusing to acknowledge the abuses that have occurred and allow accountability,” she said.
Former board member Lana Dever, a sexual abuse survivor herself, pointed out the conundrum her former colleagues on the board face.
“The board cannot speak on any matters to do with lawyer confidentiality; the board can’t even say, ‘Our lawyers told us not to talk about that,'” Dever said.
“They’re in a really hard position. There are laws and rules forcing them to be very, very careful about what they say – to protect everyone,” she said. “It’s unfortunate, but this is our bureaucracy speaking.”
The problem, she said, is that “the system isn’t designed to protect victims.”
She described the current WSESD board members as “a group of dedicated, really compassionate people, many of whom have students in the district and who care about the issues. They did not stop caring when they joined the board — they became aware of the rules and laws.”
“I know individually every single board member cares deeply,” Dever said, adding that she has “never seen such a work ethic for people who are doing so much work and putting in so much time and effort, for no thanks.”
“They care, and they are devoted, and when they don’t say something, it’s because they can’t; they’re not allowed to,” she said.
Former board member David Schoales, who served as chair when the investigation started, said he was “surprised” by the board’s decision to “keep the sex abuse investigation private,” calling it “the worst possible outcome.”
“This was always going to be a hard decision for the school because board members are constantly aware of potential liabilities, but the board wholeheartedly endorsed a commitment to an independent investigation and releasing the findings,” Schoales said.
Even with two lawsuits already on the books, he said that “the stated intention of the school board from the beginning was to be transparent.”
“The child psychologist/consultant we hired had experience in abuse investigations, and he was clear that the best legal strategy for the school would be transparency,” Schoales said.
“We knew we would be sued, and because a former administrator had publicly stated that the [administration] knew about the abuses, we knew the school would lose those suits,” he added.
“The best thing we could do was to uncover the scope of the problem and publicly share any information that could be verified,” Schoales said. “Up until the time I retired from the board, that was the plan.”
He described the release of the statement as “the worst possible outcome.”
“I want survivors to be heard,” Haskins Rogers said. “This was never supposed to be about me. I’m still in awe of the power and courage of the people who came forward to share their stories.”
Haskins Rogers vowed to “keep fighting to change this culture,” she said. “This is the WSESD’s failure, not ours.”