New charges against IMS could have lasting impact

LAKEVILLE — A new sex abuse lawsuit has been filed against the Indian Mountain School that could have significant longterm consequences for the Lakeville independent school.

Indian Mountain (or IMS as it is known) opened in 1922 and is a boarding and day school for boys and girls from pre-kindergarten to ninth grade. Boarding is available to students from grades six to nine.

Mark Devey was head of the school from 2006 until 2015. He announced he was leaving the school in 2014, shortly before the first of what has been a steady stream of sex abuse lawsuits was filed by Bridgeport attorney Antonio Ponvert III of Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder. 

The suits all refer to incidents that are believed to have occurred between 1973 and 1985.

Jody Soja is the new head of school. 

None of the school administrators or board members from that period is still actively involved with the school. 

Nonetheless, this newest lawsuit involves the school’s current trustees and staff. 

 The fourth lawsuit

This newest lawsuit was filed on April 6, 2018. It is the fourth suit in recent years, all filed by Ponvert on behalf of young men who claim to have been serially sexually abused by an English teacher at the school named Christopher Simonds. 

Although the school became co-ed in 1947, just after the end of World War II, no lawsuits have been filed by women claiming they were abused.

One of the lawsuits also accuses then-Headmaster Peter Carleton of sexual abuse of students. Carleton was headmaster from 1977 to 1987. He died in 1996 at the age of 60 of liver cancer.

About a dozen lawsuits had previously been filed, in the 1990s, by students accusing Simonds of sexual abuse and misconduct. At that point, however, the statute of limitations had run out on the cases and Simonds was not charged as a criminal.

Simonds, now in his 70s, is believed to reside in Hillsdale, N.Y.

 Insurance paid settlements

The four suits since 2014 have not been filed against Simonds or Carleton, although their actions are central to the legal complaints.

The suits have been filed against Indian Mountain School itself. In the first three suits, the school was accused of being negligent in its duty of caring for the children whose welfare had been entrusted to them. 

Those three suits were settled out of court for an undisclosed amount of money.

The funds are paid by the school’s insurer. There is a pool of money available each year to pay for incidents in years past. 

Because each of the lawsuits claims that the abuse continued over several years, the money that was paid to the accusers was taken from the fund pool for each of the years included in the suit.

The three previous lawsuits were filed by Ponvert on behalf of men who had not yet reached the statute of limitations on this type of suit. 

The accusers only had five years to make criminal charges against the men they said abused them.

But they had 30 years from their age of majority (18) to file complaints against the school.

The three suits that were settled in the past four years by IMS involved men who had not yet reached the 30-year mark (or the age of 48).

 Extending the timeframe

This newest suit is being filed on behalf of Ramsay Gourd, who was 12 years old when he entered Indian Mountain School in 1977 and 15 years old when he left in 1980. The 30-year statute of limitations has run out for him.

What Ponvert is doing with this case builds upon the previous three suits he filed against the school. 

Even though the statute of limitations has run out for Gourd, Ponvert has included two charges in this complaint that were not included before and that the attorney believes will extend the statute of limitations. 

This latest suit accuses the school of continuing to say up to the present day that the plaintiffs’ accusations are mere “allegations.” According to this suit, the school knew the abuse had occurred even as it was denying anything had happened.

Ponvert hopes to show that Indian Mountain, in the course of the last three lawsuits, “denied things in legal pleadings that they know to be true and have been proven time and again in multiple cases.”

In an interview last week with The Lakeville Journal, he said that, “If the court finds, as I believe it should, that there is a factual dispute about whether the school concealed information, then that issue goes to the jury. 

“If that happens, then my case to the jury is that Chris Simonds is a pedophile; the school knew and failed to warn and protect; and the school was so determined to prevent people from getting justice that it lied, hid things from the police and denied things that are true, from 1985 to now.”

If Ponvert is successful, it will essentially restart the clock on the statute of limitations for all the possible abuse cases from 1973 to 1985, when Simonds was employed at the school. 

Ponvert estimates that there are anywhere from dozens to hundreds of victims of abuse who could still choose to come forward and file suits against the school. 

For many of them, the statute of limitations has already run out. 

There are still some who could in theory file suit up to the year 2021. The youngest victim in the last possible year of abuse would have been age 12 in 1985; that person would have turned 18 in 1991, so 30 years from then would be 2021.

When asked if a single class action suit would be filed on behalf of all the possible victims, Ponvert said that each of the cases is slightly different and so a group lawsuit would not be possible. 

As the lawsuits are paid from a legal fund that renews each year, it’s also possible that a new lawsuit could be filed each year into the future. 

 Accused of fraudulent acts

The list of actions that the attorney is calling “fraudulent” includes:

•  the school “allowing Simonds to quietly resign in June 1985 without disclosing to anyone that he was found to have sexually abused a student”

• “making an inaccurate report to DCYS in June 1985 for the purpose of covering up the nature and extent of Simonds’ sexual abuse of boys and its knowledge of and complicity in Simonds’ abuse”

 • “obstructing, by failing and refusing to cooperate with, a 1992 Connecticut State Police investigation into Simonds’ sexual abuse of IMS students.”

More recent actions by the school in the suit include “publicly denying, including in legal pleadings filed as recently as 2016, that the school knew and should have known of the risk of Simonds’ sexual abuse of IMS boys prior to his termination in 1985, when, in fact, the school was on actual notice years before that date.”

Another accusation in the suit says that the school publicly denied “in legal pleadings filed as recently as 2016, that the school failed and refused to protect students from the risk of Simonds’ sexual abuse, when, in fact, the school provided no such protection at any time.”

A third accusation says the school publicly denied, “including in legal pleadings filed as recently as 2016, that the school failed and refused to warn students and their families of the risk of sexual abuse by Simonds, when, in fact, the school provided no such warning at any time.”

In the suit, Ponvert claims that the school “concealed the facts” that the plaintiffs needed, with the intention of delaying the filing of a complaint. 

 Reference to 2014 letter 

The section of the suit referring to the school’s “continuing course of conduct” includes portions of a letter sent in 2014 to Indian Mountain alumni that says, “[w]e reaffirm our pledge to protect the health, safety and well-being of our students past and present;” “we are committed to our alumni from decades ago;” and claims the school would “support any alumni who may have been harmed.”

In the suit, Ponvert claims that, “The defendant continually breached that duty, and continues to breach that duty to the present time.”

 IMS’s response

IMS head Jody Soja said in an email that, “The school recently learned about an allegation of past sexual misconduct and takes very seriously any claim that a person was harmed while in our care. 

“Nearly four years ago, after learning information about possible abuse that occurred in the school’s past, the school’s board of trustees, including our current board president and previous head of school, launched an independent investigation in order to obtain a clear picture of the accusations of unconscionable behavior from that time period. Additionally, the school recently reached out to authorities in order to share information we have learned through this process. 

“As part of our investigation, the school reached out to our extended community in the hopes of hearing from alumni and witnesses with relevant information. Our goal was to better understand what occurred in the school’s history, including the response to allegations from decades ago, so that we can heal and move forward as a community. We continue to work with legal counsel to understand and process the information that has been gathered. We are grateful to those who have shared information with us — either directly or through legal counsel.

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to provide a healthy, positive and safe learning environment, and to respond to issues of past abuse with sensitivity and care. Our core values of honesty, compassion, and respect guide us as we respond to these matters. Today we have many policies, procedures and protocols in place to ensure the safety and well-being of our students, and we continually evaluate these safeguards in order to assess and improve our practices.” 

Maria Horn is chairman of the school’s board of trustees and was head of the board in 2014, when the first suit was filed by Ponvert. She chose not to comment on the charges and the new suit.