A private school in western New York revealed Friday that 10 teachers had improper relationships with students over five decades.
Nichols School in Buffalo said the findings resulted from an investigation it began in May after a former student reported a yearslong sexual relationship with a teacher in the early 1990s that began when she was 17.
A second former student also recently wrote to administrators, saying she reported concerns about the first woman’s relationship three times while in school but was ignored.
Nichols School in Buffalo, NY has been rocked with misconduct allegations. An investigation found that 10 teachers had improper relationships with students from the 1960s to the 2000s
None of the teachers accused – four of whom are named – still teach at the school. ‘Virtually all of the perpetrators … used the school’s hallmark, i.e., a school where teachers become “mentors for life,” as a license to inappropriately fraternize, or to pursue inappropriate relationships, with students, and seemed unconcerned that school administrators would intervene or question them about appropriate professional boundaries’ the report reads
‘By openly and fully acknowledging what occurred, we seek to provide these victims with validation for their courage to speak,’ Board of Trustees Chairman Jeff Meyer and Head of School Bill Clough wrote in releasing an 85-page report by the Washington, D.C., law firm Crowell & Moring.
None of the accused still teaches, the school said. The four teachers identified in the report, per WKBW, Arthur Budington, E. Webster Dann, Julie Jones and Donna Armistead.
Budington, who taught physics at the school and is retired, admitted to having two sexual relationships with female students, both of whom were 17 at the time. He was in his 40s.
At least one such relationship – with Elizabeth Mohr, who gave her account to the Buffalo News – was described as consensual, but inappropriate, by both parties.
‘We’re talking about an immature teenage girl having a crush and an affair with her 48-year-old teacher, an educator who is supposed to set a good example for his students at a school that says it places character on a very high level. Ask yourself, if you had a daughter, would you want her in a class run by a teacher like that?’ Mohr told the Buffalo News.
‘I was a divorced teacher, very shy with women, who fell in love with a beautiful young student. Liza was the most brilliant, amazing person I have ever known, and I will always love her,’ Budington told the Buffalo News. ‘I have never been a predator.’
‘We expect the report will drive all of us to revisit and recommit to our school’s core values,’ a letter from the school reads
Dann, who died in 2017, has been accused of sexually abusing male students as young as 12 years old from the 1970s until 2001.
Both Jones and Armistead have denied allegations that they had sexual relationships with students.
The report describes a prior lack of understanding of predatory ‘grooming’ behaviors and said staff ignored red flags, like the unusual amount of time some teachers were known to spend with students in and out of school.
Rampant rumors went uninvestigated, the report said, and faculty who did raise concerns experienced or feared retaliation by senior administrators. No one inquired about the well-being of the students involved, it said.
‘Virtually all of the perpetrators … used the school’s hallmark, i.e., a school where teachers become “mentors for life,” as a license to inappropriately fraternize, or to pursue inappropriate relationships, with students, and seemed unconcerned that school administrators would intervene or question them about appropriate professional boundaries,’ the report said.
‘The Report concludes that, apart from those individuals and circumstances referenced in the Report, no member of the faculty or administration had actual knowledge, or acknowledged awareness of, misconduct by faculty with students, and chose to stay silent, at the expense of the well-being of individual students,’ the report reads. Pictured is an aerial view of the school
The law firm said it interviewed 76 people who responded to open requests by Nichols for information about misconduct.
Investigators said the 10 cases they found dating from the 1960s to mid-2000s probably do not represent all instances of inappropriate behavior.
Not all victims were willing to talk, they said, and memories had dimmed over time.
The report identified three past administrators they said should have taken action.
‘Despite the failures recounted in the Crowell Report, the investigators found that lapses over the years were not “systemic.”
‘The Report concludes that, apart from those individuals and circumstances referenced in the Report, no member of the faculty or administration had actual knowledge, or acknowledged awareness of, misconduct by faculty with students, and chose to stay silent, at the expense of the well-being of individual students,’ the school said in a statement.
‘We believe that discussions the Crowell Report prompts will make the Nichols community stronger. We expect the report will drive all of us to revisit and recommit to our school’s core values. We are confident that strong leadership, with outside professional guidance and adherence to newly articulated national best practices, will make Nichols a better school from all points of view.’