Decades Of Sexual Abuse At Bucks County Prep School Detailed In Grand Jury Report

Teachers and faculty at an elite Bucks County private school sexually abused students for five decades, and school leadership failed to report the allegations to authorities, allowing the behavior to continue for more than 50 years, a grand jury investigation report on the Solebury School released Wednesday said.

The grand jury began investigating the boarding school after numerous victims came forward with disturbing allegations, including teachers having sex with students and another who brought a student to an off-campus party where he was violently raped.

Other former students testified that teachers consumed alcohol with students and provided illegal drugs to them.

The abuse was "enabled by a campus environment free of student-faculty boundaries and perpetuated by a culture of concealment among Solebury School’s past administrators," according to the grand jury report.

Though school authorities were made aware of the allegations of sexual abuse on many occasions, nothing was done to stop it or prevent it from happening again, the report concluded.

"Not a single teacher was contemporaneously or formally investigated by the school for the allegations of sexual misconduct," the report says. Solebury School is a college preparatory school for seventh- through 12th-grade boarding and day students.

The report reveals the assaults occurred on or near the private school’s 90-acre campus outside of New Hope, as well as at locations as far away as New York City.

The Bucks County District Attorney's office says the statute of limitations bars prosecution in all but one case, and the victim in that case has declined to pursue charges.

The 49-page grand jury report includes disturbing testimony from numerous students, as well as staff, faculty and their families.

The report includes the following testimony from victims:

• A now 77-year-old woman who graduated from Solebury School in 1954 told the grand jury teacher Robert Shaw, known as "Pop Shaw," sexually abused her on numerous occasions, even renting a cottage across from Phillips Mill so he could have sexual relations with her. Shaw, in his 50s at the time, forced her to have intercourse in the woods near Bowman's Tower and continued to pursue a relationship with her into her 20s. As a result, this victim has been in therapy her whole life.
• A now 62-year old man said English teacher Peter Brodie took him to an off-campus gathering at the home of a school volunteer in 1968, where he was served wine, passed out and raped anally. The 17-year-old's injuries were so severe, he was bleeding rectally and had to have surgery as a result. A school proctor who was aware the victim had been raped informed the headmaster at the time. No one from the school contacted him to find out what happened, and the authorities were not notified.
• Another victim told the grand jury students and teachers would do illegal drugs together. She said the school nurse would smoke pot and take methamphetamine with her, even taking her to a doctor in Doylestown to obtain a prescription for the drug. That victim reported a biology teacher at the school made sexual advances on her and forced her to have intercourse. That same teacher later attempted to get her expelled from the school because he feared she would tell people what happened, the report said.
• A student who attended in the 1980s said she was working at her part-time job on a tulip farm near the school when she was forced to her feet and kissed by the farm’s owner, who was a school trustee and a large financial donor. She reported the incident, but Solebury School’s headmistress refused to act, citing the man’s influence.
• A student in the early 1990s said a teacher molested her at age 15 at the school prom. After her 10th-grade year, she said she and the teacher engaged in a sexual relationship for years at his apartments in Solebury and New York City.
• A former student who is now 27 said she had a sexual relationship a with a married Solebury teacher who had pursued her since her junior year. The relationship continued for two years after she graduated, and the teacher continued to contact her until 2011. The teacher was fired in 2008 for embezzling funds from the school.

The grand jury said that it found each of the victim witnesses to be credible and identified nine adults associated with Solebury School who could have been prosecuted had their crimes been more recent. Several of those called to testify invoked their Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination; others were deemed not credible by the grand jury.

"We send our kids to school to learn, and we trust that they will be safe. Solebury School violated this social compact for over 50 years. Its prior administrations practiced willful blindness while its teachers took advantage of the parents’ trust and violated the children in their care. Preying on these children was like shooting fish in a barrel. This was child predation under the guise of progressive education. It’s unconscionable,” Bucks County District Attorney Matthew D. Weintraub said in a statement.

When Solebury School’s current headmaster, Tom Wilschutz, learned of the abuses, he urged victims to come forward and admitted the school’s guilt. New policies have been instituted, including implementing stronger policies for reporting allegations of sexual misconduct. The school has also added an annual instruction and training in setting boundaries with students.

While Wilschutz “is blameless and has taken some steps to correct the problems,” the grand jury said, “more must be done.”

The grand jury recommended stronger changes, such as drug and alcohol testing for faculty and staff, zero-tolerance campus drug policies, hiring added security for boarding students and immediate termination of a faculty member when there is a founded allegation.