When We Were Boys: Sandusky Gets a Minimum of 30 Years

Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Sandusky Gets a Minimum of 30 Years

From this morning's Wall Street Journal, I found the quote from Judge John Cleland to hit it exactly. Like Sandusky, RND took pleasure and satisfaction not only in the physical abuse but also in the manipulation of so many young hearts and souls, often under the noses of their parents.

"The tragedy of this crime is that it's a story of betrayal," Judge Cleland said before handing down the sentence in Centre County Court. "Those who have never encountered a pedophile can hardly begin to understand the anguish of those who have been so expertly deceived.…The crime is not only what you did to their bodies but what you did to their psyches and souls."

If you were abused by RND and the statute of limitations has not expired, please consider a criminal action against him. For me at least, he is not entitled to my forgiveness.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...: Davis was my teacher at the Harvey School in Katonah NY in the late 50s and early 60s. By the time I finished there at the end of eighth grade it was pretty clear to me that he was a predator. Weekend ski trips with him and other boys were great fun, but after I reported some mildly salacious behavior to my parents, I was never again allowed to go on trips with him. They knew. I was never abused by him, but my late brother told me that he was. I have always wondered if my brother's miserable life was not a result of that abuse.

What astonishes me is to learn from reading these posts that he continued to get teaching jobs in very good schools. I believe he left Harvey after some scandal, and yet he managed to move on to another position. In those days the teacher-pedophiles just went off to other schools, much as the priests were re-assigned to new parishes.; December 14, 2012 at 7:10 PM
Anonymous said...: County Executive Rob Astorino wants to keep Westchester County schools safe. But he did nothing when he was given documentation that Victor Rosselli, of Lake Carmel, had voluntarily resigned from the Harvey school maintenance department (after working there for 19 years) when the Harvey school was given documentation that Victor Rosselli had sexually abused a close family member for years (Rosselli's wife will not turn him in). The Harvey school refused to inform the parents of children who had attended the school because no one ever came forward to say Rosselli did anything to them. C. Graziosi went to Astorino for help, but he did not respond.; October 16, 2014 at 1:30 PM
Anonymous said...: Please contact me about this story. Cgraziosi1@yahoo.com; March 20, 2015 at 5:45 PM

Post a Comment

What Happened

This is George Peabody. For two years during the mid Sixties, I was sexually abused by an English teacher at Park School in Brookline, Massachusetts. His name is Richard Neville Davis. What happened to me was the most difficult and damaging event in my life. It lasted for over two years. Its impact has echoed on for over forty more. At last, mostly healed, it’s time to tell the story.

I do so for two reasons. First, to make sure no others are in harm’s way today and, as important, to help those others who were abused by RND find peace and healing of their own.

In 1996, I reached a crisis point of depression. Knowing part of the cause was the abuse, I started to tell the story to family and friends. One of these was my childhood friend John Howland (we met when we were three!). John, to my utter astonishment, told me the same thing had happened to him. Here I was, thinking I’d been the only one, and John tells me that he, too, had been abused by RND.

In 2002 or so, at a Park School reunion, David Merrill, another long-time classmate at Park School, approached me and told me that we had RND in common. From a class of perhaps 15 boys, RND had abused three of us!

I was blessed to work with a remarkable therapist from 2003 to 2006. At last, I felt healed, no longer fundamentally broken. And have, since then, felt compelled to do something, to not simply walk away from all the work. To tell the story perhaps to give a purpose to the pain and hard work. But still I did nothing about it. While never completely out of my mind, life gets busy.

But earlier this year, David Merrill sent me the link to Daniel Weinreb’s Opening BBN Minds. The three of us met last summer, had breakfast in Watertown and then walked in Cambridge’s Mt. Auburn Cemetary to tell our stories. Daniel had bravely confronted Buckingham Brown & Nichols over its handling of the Washburn affair. His effort met with resistance until this fall when, after over a year of telling his story and gathering community support, the BB&N administration turned around handsomely.

And that was inspiration enough for me to finally move. I contacted Jerry Katz, headmaster at Park School, a week later. He committed to communicating our story to alumni/ae from that era and to his school community. He also put me in touch with the Brookline Police Department and Sergeant Detective Bill Riley with whom I met a couple of weeks later.

Where We Are Now

Detectives have met with RND. They are satisfied that children are not in his way. The Brookline Police are trying to establish if the statute of limitations has expired or not. Given that it was just six years in those days (I didn’t tell anyone for five years!), it is a long shot but one I expect the police to pursue. I pursue an action simply as a means to find the others who RND abused. There were three of us at Park. I saw him with two other boys from other schools. I know there are many more than five of us.

What We Want

To find the others.

To let them know they are no longer alone.

To help them, as we can, find support.

To see that justice is done.