Boarding schools for children ages 11 and below under scrutiny amid abuse cases

Adrian Hooper Jnr’s parents hoped to secure a bright future for their son when they sent him away to boarding school at age 11. It was the early 1960s, and the Fessenden School in Massachusetts had an impeccable reputation, having educated Roosevelts and Kennedys.

Hooper spent the next three years begging to come home for reasons he didn’t disclose until much later: He and at least 16 other former students say they were sexually abused by teachers when they were middle schoolers in the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s.

At Indian Mountain School in Connecticut, lawyers estimate 50 to 100 middle schoolers were violated by staff members at the prestigious boarding school in the 1970s and ‘80s.

Sexual abuse scandals have erupted in recent years at a number of elite boarding schools, including St George’s in Rhode Island and Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire. But what sets Fessenden and Indian Mountain apart is the age of the students. These “junior boarding schools” accept children before ninth grade, some as young as 10 and 11.

Victims and their advocates say the abuse cases underscore how vulnerable younger children are at boarding schools, where they are often far from home, away from their parents, for the first time in their lives. Several say boarding programmes for students so young should be reconsidered.

At that age, Hooper said in a recent interview:“I was still trying to figure out what was right and what was wrong.” He said that in the often stern environment at the school, kids who felt alone and away from their families were drawn to “any teacher that showed any kind of niceness or affection or caring”.