Sex abuse suit against IMS could cost many millions

LAKEVILLE — The Indian Mountain School (IMS) is facing a lawsuit, based on events that happened 30 years ago, that could end with a judgment in the millions of dollars, according to  attorney Antonio Ponvert.

Ponvert, an attorney with the firm of Koskoff Koskoff &  Bieder in Bridgeport,  has filed the suit in U.S. District Court in New Haven on behalf of IMS alumnus W. Brewster Brownville. 

Ponvert successfully sued The Hotchkiss School in 2013 on behalf of Cara Munn, a graduate of the school who had suffered a particularly vicious and crippling case of Lyme disease after being bitten by a tick while on a school trip to China. The court awarded Munn $41.7 million in damages. Hotchkiss is in the process of appealing the verdict.

Also in 2013 Ponvert sued the YMCA camp in Cornwall  and Goshen on behalf of a camper named Ariana Sierzputowski, who got Lyme disease from a tick bite she got at the camp. That case has not yet gone to trial. The attorney is seeking, again, $41.7 million in damages for his client in that case (he had asked for $10 million for Munn; the jury quadrupled the award). 

 When asked in an interview on Oct. 10 what damages he will seek in the Indian Mountain School suit, Ponvert said that, “Based on the judgment in the Hotchkiss case, it’s conceivable that this judgment could be much higher.”

Hotchkiss has an endowment that is estimated at more than $430 million. IMS has an endowment of about $8 million. 

Ponvert said that the size of the endowment does not limit the size of the damages. 

“I don’t know what their insurance status is,” he said. 

It is also unclear whether the award would be based on the school’s insurance now or on what it was in the 1980s, when his client alleges that he was extensively and serially sexually abused by numerous members of the school’s faculty and staff.

Above and beyond the endowment and the insurance policy, Ponvert noted that, “The school has a very wealthy and well-connected alumni network and board of trustees and others who are interested in keeping this school operating.”

He said that, “It’s not the intention of this suit to shut the school down or force it to sell off land.” 

He added that he hadn’t yet checked to see how many acres the school owns.

For grades five to nine

Indian Mountain is a private day and boarding school on 600 acres in Lakeville. Portions of the land were purchased in 1916 and the school opened as an all-boys school in 1922. By 1947, shortly after the end of World War II, the school went co-ed. 

Originally it offered education for grades five to nine; the nearby Town Hill School took students from grades kindergarten to four. In 2003, the two schools merged and Town Hill became the lower-school campus for Indian Mountain. Boarding is available for students from grades six to nine. 

According to the school’s website, “The total enrollment for PreK-9 is 277 with 65 at the Lower Campus and 212 at the Upper Campus. There are 81 boarders on the Upper Campus. Most of our students come from the Tri-state area but we also have students from 10 states and nine countries.”

Headmaster Mark Devey has announced he will leave at the end of this school year after nine years; a search is being conducted now for a new headmaster. 

The president of the Board of Trustees is Maria Horn, a Salisbury resident. The board is primarily made up of area residents now, as it has been through the school’s history.

When asked about the suit and the charges against the school late last week, she responded by email that it was parents weekend, a time when “parents (from around the world, the nation, and the local region) are invited to sit in on their children’s classes, followed by an evening event which is one of the few opportunities I have to spend time with the parents of our boarding students. 

“ I spent the day surrounded by joyous and healthy kids showing off what they have learned from their dedicated teachers for the benefit of their proud parents.  All day long, and throughout the evening, I spoke with parents about why they chose IMS, and heard story after story about its warm, welcoming and safe familial environment, where the emotional, intellectual and physical well-being of their children is paramount. I take my responsibility toward these families very seriously, and it was a wonderful day.

“In addition to my role on the IMS board, I am an IMS parent and have safely entrusted my three children to the care of this school and the many people who work on its behalf every day.  Thanks to the dedication of all of those people, particularly the teachers and administrators who run the school, I have never had a moment’s doubt about the safety of my children or their peers.  

“For all of us involved with Indian Mountain School, these allegations are such a shock. The school we know and love today is so focused on the well-being of each student. That’s our core mission. As a personal and professional matter outside of IMS, I have worked on behalf of victims of emotional and physical abuse, and it saddens me deeply to think that any child who attended IMS during a previous era may have been violated in any way.”

Horn is also chair of the board of directors of Women’s Support Services in Sharon.

Suit claims years of abuse 

The lawsuit being filed by Ponvert charges both that his client was routinely and repeatedly sexually abused and also that the rampant abuse of students was known about and condoned by the faculty, headmaster and board members. 

Brewster Brownville attended Indian Mountain from 1983 to 1987, entering at the age of 12. Brownville has almost no presence on the Internet (and his attorney has said he wants to keep as many details of his client’s identity as private as possible).

According to the lawsuit, Brownville is 43 years old and lives in Massachusetts. 

The suit indicates that Brownville would have 30 years from “the date the plaintiff attained the age of majority” to file the suit (although the statute of limitations on criminal charges ran out five years after the alleged abuse occurred).

Ponvert said that the time frame is not the reason his client has chosen to speak up at last. 

“There has been a cultural shift in people’s willingness to believe that this kind of thing happened,” the attorney said. 

The intention of the suit is to bring to light past actions that not only had a damaging impact on Brownville’s life but also, potentially, on the lives of hundreds of other young people at the school, he said.

In the lawsuit, Brownville offers graphic and detailed descriptions of abuse that he says he suffered multiple times at the hands of multiple people on the school campus over the course of three years.

He claims that the headmaster at that time, Peter Carleton, forced him to live in the basement of his house on campus and made him come up to his bedroom more than a dozen times to perform sex acts with him.

He claims that Carleton’s wife, Kitty, also made him come into her bed several times. 

He claims that a math teacher forced him to shower at his house on campus, and fondled his genitals. The teacher also exposed himself and masturbated in front of his students in a classroom, according to the suit.

He claims that three members of the school maintenance staff on at least five occasions over four years pinned him down and forced him to perform oral sex on them.

He claims that he was molested and threatened by an English teacher named Christopher Simonds. 

He describes the campus as a nest of pedophilia and charges that the faculty, headmaster and trustees knew about the abuse and did nothing to stop it.

Charges against Simonds

In the 1990s, Indian Mountain was sued by more than one alumnus of the school who claimed that they had been sexually abused and molested by Simonds, who is now in his 60s and is a resident of Hillsdale, N.Y.

By the time the charges were raised against the teacher, the statute of limitations had run out and he was not charged as a criminal.

He was no longer at the school at that time. 

John R. “Rusty” Chandler, a Salisbury resident and former assistant headmaster and then interim headmaster of The Hotchkiss School, was on the Indian Mountain Board of Trustees some of the time that Brownville was enrolled. 

In an interview on Oct. 9, he said absolutely that the board had no knowledge of any misconduct by the headmaster. 

“Certainly the board did not condone any kind of sexual conduct between any faculty members and any students,” he said. 

He pointed to the actions taken when a parent called the school to say that his child had been abused by Simonds. Carleton, the headmaster, alerted the board of trustees, who then began an investigation into the allegations. 

“When we determined that in fact the allegations were valid, Chris Simonds was put under house arrest and dismissed just before the end of the school year in 1985.”

Chandler said that the board was not told of any abuse by the maintenance staff, and he expressed doubt that the three men named in the suit had any contact of any kind with students at the school.

As for the accusations against the other teacher and the headmaster and his wife, Chandler said, “We had no knowledge of any other impropriety and if we had we would have dealt with it, just as we did with Simonds.”

Chandler described the former headmaster as extremely charismatic, but a little odd. 

Carleton came to the school in 1977. By 1987, Chandler said, the trustees were split on whether the headmaster should be replaced. The faculty felt that he needed to go, however, and he was replaced by an interim headmaster.

Carleton died a few years later, in January 1996 at the age of 60, of liver cancer, according to a feature-length obituary of him (with a photo) published by The New York Times. He was living in Dublin, N.H., at the time.

According to the obituary, Carleton had come to Indian Mountain from the Fresh Air Fund in New York City. After leaving IMS he was the moving force behind a camp for disadvantaged adolescents named Camp Mariah after singer Mariah Carey, who helped fund the camp, which is in Fishkill, N.Y.

“Mr. Carleton devoted his professional career to children’s education and the opening of educational opportunities for disadvantaged youth,” according to the obituary. 

Chandler said that students and parents at the school thought highly of Carleton and that the size of the school increased during his 10 years there. 

Of the charge that Carleton forced students to live in his house on campus, Chandler confirmed that there were years when about four students lived in the house because there was a shortage of dormitory space. Chandler noted that his own nephew had lived in the headmaster’s residence at one point, and did not report any problems or sexual misbehavior. 

“If the board had known any of this was going on, they would have acted, as they did in the case of Simonds.”

He wondered how Carleton will be able to defend himself against the charges, as he has been dead for two decades. 

Seeking full compensation

Ponvert said it is not clear yet who will testify on behalf of the school. 

“That will come out in the course of this case,” he said, adding that,“The school is in a bit of a jam” with this suit and claiming that he has many witnesses to the abuse. 

“There are witnesses and victims who can testify about what happened back then. 

“We know what Carleton did, it’s not in dispute,” he said. “There are certainly hundreds of victims, given what we know about the prolific nature of these particular pedophiles, the statements from other lawsuits and the police reports.”

He clarified that the police reports do not accuse Carleton of misbehavior.

His hope with this suit, he said, is that other victims will come forward “and use this lawsuit as a catalyst for taking charge and for healing.”

The suit does not reflect what life is like on the Lakeville campus now, he said, and when asked if he believes that sexual abuse continues on the campus he replied that, “I have no evidence to show or suspect that now.”

As for the future of the school, he said, “It is not our hope or expectation or intent to shut down the school. I’m looking for ways to bring peace and finality and restitution to the children, now adults, who were abused.”

But, he said, “Neither I nor my client is going to be willing to settle for anything less than full compensation.”

The trial date has not been set yet. 

“Ordinarily, it would be tried in a year to a year-and-a-half,” Ponvert said.