^{Re-encountering the moral limits of this “progressive education” institution}

Park continues to honor former Headmaster F. Parvin Sharpless, who illegally failed to report child abuse to the authorities and harbored a teacher he knew to be a pedophile for years. The school itself announced his failures in 2019 (below). It leads to the impression that there are decision-makers at the school, donors, or both, who do not consider what Sharpless did to be problematic, even though he covered up and prolonged an unsafe environment for girls. While claiming to be unable to re-name Sharpless’ namesake program due to the possible financial cost, Park raised $29 million and built a new wing.

In 1983, at the age of 12, I was abused by my math teacher, Alfred Siemon. Park did an investigation in 2019, and released a statement confirming the abuse. I am sharing below Park’s public statement regarding the findings of their investigation, and my 2021 email to the school’s “Equity Committee” about their continued honoring of F. Parvin Sharpless, the headmaster who covered up what happened, intimidated all those who knew about it into silence, and kept the abuser on staff.

I was told at the time that Siemon had simultaneously abused another girl, and I knew her. She was one of the few other children at the school then who had a single working mother, and I understood instinctively the role that may have played as he chose us as his targets. Later I learned of others he allegedly abused, but I don’t know about anyone else coming forward. Most child sexual abuse is never reported.

In the post #MeToo era, private schools around Baltimore and the rest of the country released reports about past sexual abuse by staff members, and either negligence or outright collusion on the part of school leadership. It seems that these disclosures became a routine and performative way of washing their hands of the history instead of exploring its meaning and consequences. They were a form of damage-control.

(More on the experience of child sexual abuse and its hand-in-glove relationship with institutional abuse here.)

Despite requests to do so, as of September 2023 Park has not removed his name from the F. Parvin Sharpless Faculty and Curricular Advancement Program, which the school claims “has garnered national attention as a model for professional development. In 30 years, over 1000 grants have supported hundreds of projects and 82% of Park’s faculty. All areas of school life — academic, athletic, artistic, social, and technological — have been studied.” It has funded the work of award-winning authors and Park staff such as Laura Amy Schlitz and Deborah Roffman. This request was made not to erase Sharpless from Park’s history, or to imply that everything he did was bad. It was a reasonable request in light of the public knowledge that he normalized, covered up and prolonged an unsafe environment for girls at the school.

In her recent book Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice, the great trauma pioneer Judith Herman explains that “memorials do matter. They are enduring public proclamations that tell us whom our society honors and respects. Sometimes directly, more often by omission, they also tell us who is to be dishonored and disrespected, who is to be invisible.”

Past donors to the fund have been named on Park’s website, although there would be many more: “A $1 million challenge grant from the Joseph Meyerhoff Trusts established the original endowment. Additional funding was provided through the Nathan L. Cohen Faculty Enhancement Fund. The Campaign for Park in the mid-1990s added $1 million to the endowment, with establishment of the Louis B. Kohn II ’34 Fund for Student Life and Values, and with a gift from the Hecht-Levi Family Foundation. Additional support has come from the Lee Meyerhoff Hendler ’70 Ancillary Support Fund, E. E. Ford Foundation, and the Sheridan Foundation.” Do donors genuinely want to continue to honor an acknowledged enabler of child abuse, even as they likely condemn the actions of the Catholic Church? Does the staff? Who knows. After the statement came out, Park reverted to being a brick wall around this issue.

There is plenty of precedence for action in response to the release of information about abuse at schools, and the corrupt actions of administrators. The Catholic School of Baltimore announced it was going to remove the name of a nun accused in the Maryland Attorney General’s report about Catholic Church abuse from its auditorium, just one week after the report was released. In Notes On a Silencing, Lacy Crawford, survivor of a vicious sexual assault at St. Paul’s boarding school in New Hampshire, described how after their sexual abuse reckoning school administrators made a controversial decision to remove the name of an abuse-enabler from the the school hockey center. “The symbolic removal of Matthews’ legacy bespeaks good intentions…current leadership is willing to tolerate antagonism to force conversation about change.” Precisely.

The following is the statement that Park released on 05/17/19 about its investigation into past sexual abuse at the school (essay continues below):

An Important Message from the Head of School and President of the Board of Trustees   Dear Park School Community, In October, we wrote to you to share some deeply distressing news we had learned regarding the conduct of a Park School teacher from the past. In the 1980s, a Middle School teacher (who has been deceased for a number of years) had inappropriate physical contact with a Middle School student and engaged in the purposeful, targeted, persistent emotional manipulation of the student. This conduct was wrong, and the resulting harm was and is very real. Our preliminary review of school records indicated that a concern had been brought to the school administration at the time, and we committed ourselves to investigating the matter fully, to taking steps to address past failings, and to continuing our essential work to ensure the safety and well-being of every member of our community. In our October message, we shared that we had enlisted T&M Protection Resources, a highly-regarded professional firm with significant experience investigating misconduct, to investigate the reported incident and any other concerns that might be shared. We sought to provide a safe, discreet, and independent resource for any member of the community who may have been subjected to, or may have knowledge of, misconduct by a Park School employee. We disseminated our message to nearly 7,000 members of the community for whom we had contact information, encouraging them to speak to our investigators directly. We made a commitment that, once T&M conducted further investigation and brought their findings to the school, we would communicate back to the community. For that purpose, we write to you today. To honor our commitment to protect the identities of those who participated in the process, we are sharing only limited descriptions of credible accounts of misconduct reported. The Park School takes seriously its obligation to act on the information that we acquired over the course of the investigation, and on any information we may receive in the future, including contacting the appropriate authorities. The Investigation and Findings During its investigation, T&M interviewed 17 members of the community, some on more than one occasion, either in person or by telephone. The individuals included Park alumni, current and former Park faculty, staff, and administrators, parents of a former student, and former members of the Park Board of Trustees. In addition, T&M reviewed numerous documents including school personnel files, student files, emails, and yearbooks. Based on its examination of the evidence and applying a preponderance of the evidence standard, T&M found that former Middle School teacher, Alfred H. Siemon, II, now deceased, engaged in inappropriate physical touching, touching of a sexual nature, and boundary crossing behavior with the former Middle School student who initially raised the concern. His actions included emotionally manipulative, grooming, and predatory behaviors. Based on additional, similar reports and on a close examination of school records, investigators also found that Siemon had engaged in a general pattern of behavior directed at female Middle School students that included inappropriate physical touching and boundary crossing. Moreover, T&M confirmed that Park administrators were aware of the inappropriate conduct by Siemon beginning in the early 1980s. At the time, senior administrators implemented steps to limit Siemon’s access to the student, and to address the pattern of inappropriate behavior. Our investigators concluded that Head of School Parvin Sharpless and Middle School Principal Ken Seward failed to take sufficient action. That failure contributed to the long-term emotional effects suffered by our former Middle School student, now an adult woman. We are profoundly sorry for the suffering that she and other former students have endured. Over the course of the investigation, T&M also received two firsthand accounts by former Park students of sexual misconduct by two other former Park employees. One instance occurred in the early 1980s; and the second account spanned several months in the late 1950s. The school has reported the accounts to the State of Maryland Child Protective Services office. No current employees were the subject of any reports over the course of the investigation. Reviewing Historical Records Concurrent with T&M’s investigation, the school conducted a review of its internal records. In these records, there are two documented episodes of employee sexual misconduct; both were reported to the Park School administration long after the two involved students had left Park. The first of the two reports of misconduct is a matter of public record and has been the subject of accounts in the media; therefore, we are identifying former Upper School teacher Stanley Virgil “Butch” Ashman here by name. He was dismissed from Park School employment in 1997 when allegations were made of sexual misconduct that occurred in the mid-1970s. In 2006, he was arrested and charged with child abuse. The second report involved a former Park student who had endured sexual abuse by a Park employee in 1974. Head of School David Jackson, who received the report in 2006, referred the former student to legal counsel at that time, and reported the account to the Maryland Department of Social Services. Reflecting On Our History and Moving Forward We offer our sincere apology to any individual who has been affected by the misconduct of a Park employee. Further, we understand that there may be circumstances that prevented individuals from reaching out to either T&M or the school over the course of the investigation and/or this account of the investigation may serve as an impetus for additional reporting. We are maintaining open communication channels with T&M in order to provide the best opportunity for ongoing disclosure: (646) 445-7695 or ParkSchoolofBaltimore@tmprotection.com. As we shared with you in October, The Park School has actively developed and regularly reviews policies and practices to ensure the safety and well-being of all members of our community. This work, that has spanned decades, is never finished and is a responsibility that we take seriously. Our school’s top priorities are keeping our children safe and ensuring their well-being. As mandated reporters, we report any suspicion of child abuse or neglect to the relevant authorities. Our administrative team, faculty, and staff work diligently and with a great sense of purpose in the development and implementation of our policies, practices, and programming. All students and employees are entitled to a safe, supportive learning and working environment. Park School maintains a Harassment and Abuse Policy that we regularly review, refine, and communicate. Our faculty participates in scheduled training and education on the topics of harassment, misconduct, and mandatory reporting. The school health team comprises three school counselors, our human sexuality educator, and school nurse — each of whom has training and experience in prevention, support, and intervention practices related to sexual misconduct. We provide both formal and informal programming for all of our students — across all divisions of the school — on affirmative consent, human sexuality, healthy relationships, and communication. We value our parent involvement and provide topical parent education and facilitate workshops on developmental risk taking, limit setting, and family communication through our Park Connects and Parents’ Association programming. In the cases of misconduct that have been illuminated in this report, we sought to investigate the issues thoroughly; to share the findings with our community; to take all necessary actions to address past failings; and to let those incidents inform our current and future work to ensure the safety and well-being of every member of our community. We are grateful for the honesty and forthrightness of our community members through this period of investigation and reflection, and we will continue to honor the trust and confidence that is placed in us by our students, parents, and graduates. Please share with us any questions, concerns, or comments you may have. Sincerely,   Dan Paradis Head of School   Betsy Berner President of the Board of Trustees     Contact Information:     Head of School Dan Paradis 410.339.4151 dparadis@parkschool.net The Park School of Baltimore 2425 Old Court Road Baltimore, MD 21208   T&M Protection Resources 646.445.7695 ParkSchoolofBaltimore@tmprotection.com

Baltimore Sun Coverage of the report here

As a follow-up to the investigation I sent the following email to the entire Park School equity team on February 9, 2021:

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I was told briefly that donors might object to a name change and the school could not afford to re-fund the program. Head of School Dan Paradis indicated he would get back to me, but no one from Park has ever been in touch with me about this again. After the above email I sent another one, making the same request, to the entire leadership team. Silence. The continued memorializing of Sharpless by Park provides important data points about the current moral nature of the school – about whom, as Herman says, it “honors and respects.”

In the year or two after the abuse (7th or 8th grade) we had a series of well-done sex ed classes with Deborah Roffman, a teacher who would later become a popular sexual education author, and whom the school still lists as staff. I doubt she knew my story at the time. We talked about sexual abuse of children by adults in that class, and other students shared their experiences. I was acutely aware that I had a recent and even present story to tell, that my abuser was still working there, and that if I opened my mouth I would be banished from the community and from that inquisitive and interesting world. I remember thinking that Parvin Sharpless and Middle School Principal Ken Seward knew I was in the class and would be learning about this, and they still didn’t care that it had happened to me right there. It greatly enhanced the sense that I, individually, carried a time bomb of knowledge and shame that would kill my reality if I uttered it. There was something different about me that made the grown-ups at Park teach other students about sexual abuse, but be unconcerned about mine.

The bone-deep necessity of keeping hidden, and wariness of the back-stabbing intentions of people in authority stay with me to this day, and have done me deep harm. Through their actions and their purposeful negligence, Sharpless and Seward put me into a state of unnatural hypervigilance for years as I co-existed in close proximity with my abuser. They taught me to distrust institutions and not to ask for help when I need it. They knew that I saw Siemon every day, knew that they had intimidated me and my family into silence, and knew that if I talked in sex ed class about being abused by a generally beloved math teacher I would be mocked and reviled by my peers and their families. They were confident of my tortured silence. That was needlessly cruel, a direct violation of their caretaking responsibilities.

Ken Seward, Middle School Principal while I was at Park, moved on to work as Head of School at The Roeper School in Michigan in 1998 and was followed there by Stanley Virgil “Butch” Ashman, a Park teacher who was later criminally convicted for the severe and prolonged sexual abuse of one of his Baltimore students (he is also named in the statement above). What is important to note is that Park already knew of the allegations against Mr. Ashman before he moved to Roeper – they are the reason he left in 1997. Seward included a close-up photo of Siemon in a large-screen slideshow he presented to my class soon before we graduated, saying “remember this guy?” Chuckle, chuckle…I missed the rest of the joke due to shock and a roaring sound in my ears. There are too many indications that the exploitation of girls and boys has meant very little to the private-school intelligentsia of our society, until victim/survivors made it matter.

Private schools are hiding behind the scope of the horrors of Catholic Church abuse, hoping no one will notice them. But that is not how survivor memory works. I would like to hear from more people in the school community who weren’t children at the time – and they are still around, some still teaching. How did they experience the social norms that allowed this type of abuse-enabling to go on? Wouldn’t this have been an important societal conversation to have after the truth was finally out? I recently reached out to some of my female teachers at Park who are still there and did not hear back; I didn’t really expect to. The outspoken survivor seeking to sustain themselves on a diet of public support is going to be very slender.

Herman states that “In the the triangle of victim, perpetrator and bystanders, impunity means in effect that the bystanders take the side of the perpetrator, and the weight of law and society condemns the victim to isolation.” That is what Sharpless did throughout the 80’s, and what Park is doing now, by continuing to honor him. Only a change in social power dynamics alters that behavior – which is why Park did the investigation and report in 2018/19, when so many private schools were being outed for sexual abuse, on the heels of #MeToo and the Kavanaugh hearings. Now that moment has past, as has their zeal for any conversations about institutional harm to children.

Writer Victoria Smith explained in a recent interview: “A lot of conversations about child protections, child safeguarding, the sex trade, pornography, can easily be shut down by this image that you’re prudish, that you’re this frigid older woman type…there is this long-standing prude figure that is actually really useful to people who want women and children not to have boundaries.” This is the brush I believe Sharpless used to paint over the Park mother who reported my abuse to him. It is an enduring stereotype. He dipped that same brush in another color and painted me as a 12-year-old vixen. Petty power and sexism put the brush in his hand, and he used it to spread ugliness, bias and danger over his little dominion, just as individual bishops did in the Catholic arena. Sharpless would have sneered at the bishops for academic, cultural and religious reasons, but they shared bedrock beliefs about the rights of men to exploit the vulnerable, and how to protect those men.

Maybe the Catholic scandals behind which private schools have been hiding will cause a discussion beyond institution-controlled reports, farther into the side effects that being a cloistered, closed and self-serving entity can foster in regards to all kinds of unhealthy beliefs and behavior. Those are qualities that religious institutions and private schools share, and may be attractive to predators and to the secretive behavior that enables abuse.

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The F. Parvin Sharpless Faculty and Curricular Advancement Program retains its name, but not for lack of finances to re-name it and if necessary find new funding. Park is an engine of conspicuous consumption casting about for something on which to leverage its fundraising potential, as it sits on the edge of a city mired in need. In its Annual Report, Park listed “total voluntary support” for 2022-23 at just under $2 million, and unrestricted gifts at about $1.7 million. This puts their accumulation for the Promise of Park Campaign at more than $29 million. As of March 2023 their website boasted:

This is the most ambitious campaign in Park’s history. We set out to accomplish several goals: 1) Build a new Science and Engineering Wing, 2) Raise $10 million for the endowment, 3) Begin modernizing existing spaces and systems, and 4) Create a Lower School Multipurpose Room. We have already raised over $27.5 million, $9.9 million of which is designated toward the endowment. We are now focused on raising money to begin additional campus improvements.

“The Promise of Park,” ParkSchool.net, retrieved March 25, 2023

The school raised almost $200 thousand in the one-day Giving Tuesday of 2022, while Baltimore City granted $375 thousand for a youth arrest diversion program for all of fiscal year 2023, cut into eight grants to community organizations. Park’s entire student population is around 800, Baltimore City had approximately 25,000 young people aged 14 to 17 in 2021 (presumably the target age group for a youth arrest diversion program). Park regularly sends out pictures of eight teachers using the new 12,500 foot Science and Engineering Wing, while in nearby Baltimore County schools many classes are held in hallways and trailers. For those who work with the young people of the Baltimore area, maybe even for Park’s “equity” staff, it’s all rather unfathomable.

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There are meaningful name-changes that Park could have made to the F. Parvin Sharpless FACA program over the last four years, but never will. Our area has produced anti-abuse heroes. They could have named it after the Park parent (again, not my own), who bravely reported the abuse to an indifferent and demeaning Sharpless. Or Delegate C.T. Wilson, a CSA survivor who has successfully fought for our rights after years of open humiliation and derision from some of his colleagues in the Maryland General Assembly. These people were treated like irritating moles that push up the dirt in your back yard, and which you eliminate with a pesticide.

If they wanted a crowd-pleaser (institutional self-interest being the point of naming anything after anyone), they could have chosen State Senator Shelly Hettleman, a former Park parent and Trustee, their local representative, and a very involved advocate for abused women and children. There were plenty of good choices, but no will or interest on the part of the school.

One of the fundamentals of an abuse-tolerant culture is tacit acceptance of deep discrepancies between stated values and reality. Maybe part of this request is an effort to find out what’s at the heart of a place in which my own family placed its trust and tuition money. Even as I was being abused and my grandmother was dying Park called on my grandfather to engage in a major fundraising activity for them, and he did. Now, four years after the statement in which they implicated Sharpless, and two years after I brought the issue to the attention of their “equity” team, not much has changed. By honoring F. Parvin Sharpless, Park is still following the directly destructive and morally corrupt path of so many schools and religious institutions: that of protecting men’s reputations over the well being of their young victims. A school that was concerned with education over status would use the renaming of the program as a teachable moment for students – not only about abuse, but also about living out one’s values, even when it is inconvenient.

Children will sense and experience the wide differences between what Park says and does as cognitive dissonance – hopefully not to the extent that I have experienced it over the past 40 years, but they will know. In order to resolve that unpleasant feeling they will excuse and normalize moral hypocrisy. Maybe that is a lesson that the school is implicitly meant to teach them.

A Park Facebook post about the F. Parvin Sharpless FACA Program, after their report implicating Sharpless came out