Physical Abuse and a Culture of Wealth at the St. Paul’s School
“Remember that time when you choked me in the stairwell for so long that I dropped my Twizzlers on the ground?” I sent my query to Silas through Instagram in a moment of rage, maybe laden with a few more expletives. Silas (whose name is not actually Silas) and I had been in the Nash dorm together at St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire. He was a junior, I was an incoming freshman. My parent worked at the school, which was the principle reason for my attendance, and I never felt that I fit in. “Fac-brat” was the term for a student whose parent was employed by the school, denoting pejoratively more lenient admission standards. I would leave the following year and eventually send this text to Silas. During my freshman year, he had also punched me repeatedly and his roommate had typewriter-ed me (for the uninitiated, typewriter-ing someone involves straddling a victim and punching them repeatedly in the chest while orating a message to the victim’s parents — a new line is a slap across the face). But, my helplessness in the moment of being choked beneath the concrete stairs is my principle memory of Silas and of St. Paul’s.
When I first met him, he was riding my bike down the second floor hallway of the dorm. I was green at the school and still yet to unpack. My bike, a most cherished possession, was ricocheting off recycling bins as his knees swung wildly from side to side. He was clearly amused, mostly at the amusement of the peers that surrounded him and perhaps the fear in my eyes. Silas was a larger than life figure on campus, with a grandiose facade you loved or hated. He radiated confidence and admittedly, I was jealous of his affability. Outwardly, he was ego incarnate. By many, he was known colloquially as “the Pear”, for the shape bestowed upon him by cafeteria indulgence. So like a heavy set Lance Armstrong, he raced down the hall knowing that the small rush of acknowledgement was greater than any repercussions for his actions. As with the choking incident, I was powerless as the fire exit door clicked shut behind me and my jaw dropped. I could count on one hand my days at the school and now Silas was headed towards me, one hand on the handlebars and the other gesturing madly as if his balance was soon to be lost.
“The Pear” is the grandson of a prominent New York billionaire who handed down his private investment company to his son, Silas’s father. His mother is the stepdaughter of the former chairman of another prominent Midtown Manhattan private investment firm. His parents shared a 2001 New York Magazine list with the Nora Ephron and the Spielberg’s for their elegant and lavish Hamptons home. Silas’s inherited wealth was an intoxicant. It begot his poor conduct, sans consequence. His response to my reaching out was as timely as it was nonchalant. “Yup.” In the texts that followed, there was no acknowledgement of my strife or regret on his end. I had tried to impose guilt or remorse in Silas, maybe coax an apology out of him. But I didn’t, and I doubt these feelings will ever catch up to him. He could go his whole life believing the world revolves around him and never be proven wrong.
When people learn that I was enrolled in St. Paul’s for eighteen months, I am asked if what had happened to Chessy Prout could still happen today. Whether, in my estimation, the school has made positive progress since the trial of Owen Labrie that put the school in the national spotlight. In the spring of 2014, as part of a long standing tradition at the school called the “senior salute”, senior Owen Labrie allegedly lured and raped a freshman, Chessy Prout, in the new science building at the school. He was eventually found not guilty of all assault charges but charged with having intercourse with a girl under the age of consent, as well as a felony charge for using a computer to solicit sex from a minor. I stifle a snicker when asked the question earnestly. During my stay, the school was recovering from the turmoil surrounding the Labrie case and every time a student was expelled overnight under unknown circumstances, rumors would spread about them “statching” someone, common shorthand at the school referring to statutory rape. Additionally, St. Paul’s, along with St. George’s, Choate, and Phillips Exeter Academy released reports detailing assault and abuse over multiple decades (as well as the subsequent head turning by those in charge). As these reports were released, each became conversational fodder amongst students, their lawyerly formats becoming familiar reading material. It was normalized that prestigious New England prep schools had checkered pasts, colored by older students and professors alike taking advantage of those in positions of servitude or submission. Years of students feeling as if they were in a stranglehold, at the mercy of those in positions of power. Whether it is a campus bigwig jock or a prolific, tenure professor, with age, status or money, comes an intoxicating rush of power to the head.
My most damning piece of evidence for the school’s lack of progress returns to Instagram, as well as Chessy Prout’s book I Have The Right To. In her empowering novel about the fight against Labrie and St. Paul’s, she implicates Owen Macintyre by name, a freshman in Nash when Labrie was a senior in the same dorm. She accuses Macintyre of being Labrie’s head accomplice, peer pressuring Chessy into meeting Labrie on the night in question. As a result of the incriminating account of events that transpired, Macintyre removed his name from his social media, deleting his posts as to start anew. On one of the first new photos on the account, one comment says, jokingly, “What should we call you going forward?” As was the case throughout the trial, the St. Paul’s community rallied around the accused. The vast network of parents and alumni at the school raised one hundred thousand dollars for Owen Labrie’s defense team for the trial, according to the Boston Globe. The most shocking comment on Macintyre’s anonymous Instagram says “Come back!” The comment, under a photo displaying Macintyre with two friends on the Concord campus, is authored by Suzanne Ellinwood, the school’s Dean of Students. According to the St. Paul’s website, Ellinwood is “committed to making sure that every student feels welcome, seen and supported.” Yet, in this case, she uses her personal Instagram to publish well wishes to an alleged accomplice in the largest scandal in the school’s history. The school is certainly committed to those ingrained in the fabric of its immutable culture.
Sometimes I daydream that one day, Silas will be sitting in his home theatre and a Twizzler will fall to the ground. Suddenly, he will feel a rush of contrition as he remembers that night in the stairwell. He will think about his incredible privilege, the power he had over me that night in the stairwell and the immeasurable power he has felt his whole life. But I’m not holding my breath.
