Bullshit Investigations: St. Mary’s and ASIJ admin fail

[Update–thank you for sharing this article far and wide on the web–we are nearing 50,000 visitors!  Talk about this.  Put it on the agenda.  End the institutional enabling of sexual abuse of kids from your alma mater!]

Last blog post, due to Headmaster Kagei’s empty and useless “update” on the investigation into sexual abuses at St. Mary’s International School, we wrote how we suspected this was a whole lot of PR-exercises to buy more time to secure next year’s tuitions and promote memory loss among the school community.  We didn’t even bother wasting memory space on our free blog to save the update letter / clutter.  But, who knew how right we would be: a much more significant letter has surfaced!  The school wants the community to believe in its investigation–that justice and help will come to victims who come forward.  Let’s see just what kind of “contract” they put in front of one victim to sign!

At ASIJ, that school’s admin had been shamed into launching an investigation earlier than St. Mary’s, but failed to hit its own report release date of “Fall 2014” and has no information going forward.  Half a year later, the 13 sexual abuse survivors who have bravely come forward are issuing their own update.

Let’s fill you in.

St. Mary’s: What Happens When Admin Get A Victim Behind Closed Doors

Loss of self-agency, abuse, lies, taking advantage.  I’m not even referring to when Brother Lawrence first sodomized his victim.  I’m referring to what happened when the TOP admin at St. Mary’s got the victim, now a man, in the room.

http://www.theinquiry.ca/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Lambert-First-draft-of-Agreement-Lambert-Ducharme-Tadashi-Chigira-with-blog-attached.pdf

The above letter was procured by the irreplaceable Sylvia.  In it, the school tries to arrange an “agreement” with the victim to waive all his rights to any future civil or criminal action, or any publication in the media regarding the admitted sexual abuse against him by the school’s admin.  Sylvia does a thorough critical analysis of this agreement in this room absent any lawyers.  In her Canadian-ness, she wonders if in Japan, it’s even possible to make another person renounce their right to seek justice?  Well, we asked a judge in Yokohama.  Here is what he had to say:

“The constitution and the penal code take precedent over any agreement to waive the rights of an individual to seek justice or redress in criminal or civil court.  Such an agreement would be dismissed as a defence.”

Sylvia also notes from her contact with the victim, that the lawyer for St. Mary’s (or for anybody) wasn’t in the room.  He must’ve known it was bullshit.

So, this is how the school treated an abused former student who came forward.  Next?

Sylvia also documents these observations:

1. The victim is Jewish;
2. The victim’s father was an Australian diplomat;
3. The child was sodomised by Brother Lawrence Lambert fic in the SMIS chapel;
4. The boy was 11-years-old;
5. The boy was in the chapel eating what was for him a Kosher treat, rollmops – essentially pickled herring;
6. The child was warned that if he told anyone the same thing would be done to his little brother, also a student at the school;
8. The maid  saw the blood on the little boy’s underwear;
9. Brother John Paradis knew. That’s Brother John Paradis/Jean-Emile Paradis / Brother Paul Paradis headmaster at SMIS.

The first point is important to me, because at my most cynical, I can imagine that this evil man, Brother Lawrence, used ANY excuse to assuage his psychopathy.  He must have believed that if he raped a Jewish or non-Christian boy on this day (who knows who else he damaged on other days), Jesus would forgive him for at least causing damage to a non-believer.

Jewish and non-Christian parents, for that matter, all parents, don’t wait for any rapist-logic to single out your child!

Shall we additionally nitpick that in that “agreement” the school itself said it would block Brother Lawrence from any elementary, middle or high school child, but then promptly transferred him to the school corporation’s Shizuoka campus? What was the “logic” there?  That Japanese children don’t matter?

They did it once, they can do it again.

ASIJ Admin: Trying to Keep the Door Closed

13 women, who survived sexual abuse as little girls, at the hands of former ASIJ staff Jack Moyers, over decades, have come forward in the past year to fully participate in the investigation that the ASIJ admin had been publicly petitioned into launching last year.  For those of us who may not grasp what it means to talk to the lawyers of the institution who belittled your cries for help, for the sake of progress:

“We participated in the Ropes & Gray interviews, revealed and relived our abuse before complete strangers, and shared our personal and painful stories. We did this because we, too, want the report to be as thorough and complete as possible.”

– ASIJsurvivors.org

The survivors have always maintained that the ASIJ admin, over the (once again) decades, knew of this abuse and still chose to look away.  One can only assume this was in order to keep the reputation of the school and the abusive teacher, in tact.  The survivors hired their own counsel, O’Donnell Clark & Crew (of Portland Oregon), who were finally able to prove to Ropes & Gray and the school, with concrete evidence, these facts (among many more):

• ASIJ learned of Moyer’s inappropriate behavior with young female students by at least 1968 and yet denied any knowledge of such for decades, extending as recently as its March 17, 2014 community announcement.
• In the years that followed, ASIJ leaders – including but not limited to former Headmasters William Ricketson, Ray Downs, Peter Cooper, and Tim Carr, as well as former Principals Jack Collins, James Juergensen, and Robert Winer – received more than four dozen reports of Moyer’s ongoing sexual misconduct and abuse of ASIJ students.
• Moyer confessed in writing to sexually abusing ASIJ students and specifically identified seven of us by name among the ranks of his victims.
• ASIJ leaders concealed Moyer’s sexual abuse for more than forty years, and even after repeated warnings, did not take steps to remove Moyer or safeguard ASIJ students.

These are RECENT names, folks!  At St. Mary’s, Brother Lawrence was preying on the student body until 2013; ASIJ had sexual abuse enablers right up until last year!!

In light of this damning evidence, it’s no mystery why ASIJ has quietly missed its report deadline.  It’s pretty clear what they would have to write.  That’s no excuse, of course!  After all, what did they think was the point of an investigation?  To find the truth.  But, the ASIJ admin, like the St. Mary’s admin, can’t handle the truth.  In fact, they are doing their best to back out of this long and narrow dead end: the ASIJ’s admin have  responded that the survivors’ demands for “transparency” and “compensation” are causing (too) “significant…demands” on the school, thus being the ‘real’ cause of delay of the report.  Really.  You know what causes “significant demands” on a person?  Being raped.  Being sexually abused.  As a child.  And then remembering that shit.  Asking for transparency and compensation–it’s pretty standard!  What did they expect?

However, the survivors aren’t accepting the school’s rolling over and playing dead.

The survivors at ASIJ are demanding a report date of no later than July 1, 2015.  Once again, the alumna at ASIJ are setting an incredible precedent in organizing and setting a road map for the boys at St. Mary’s.  Visit their website, launched recently.  And sign their newest, almost 1,500 signature petition (incredible community organizing!!)  blog continues at the bottom:

Not one of the admin from either of these schools will get to continue their careers with a clean conscience until they learn to solve real problems.  All this idyllic imagery of the schools at their sports, intramurals, choirs, and fundraisers–you know what?  That could have been real, if the people in charge, at the time of the crimes, took out the trash and saved the souls of the students and of the school.  The admin now want current parents and students to believe that those were past issues, mistakes made by past admin!  But how different are they really, in soul and mettle, if they too refuse to solve difficult problems?  Until they prove they are different, these admin a-holes are showing that they would do exactly the same: sacrifice students to monsters for the sake of the school.  St. Mary’s and ASIJ, as we now know, have never deserved nor ever had spotless reputations–so why be delusional about carrying on as usual?

Btw, St. Mary’s “Top 10 reasons to go to St. Mary’s“?  They don’t include protection from sexual predators.

The dangers of wilful blindness: