School’s transparency and outreach criticized

What a difference a school makes.

When Deerfield Academy, an elite New England prep school, was approached several years ago by a former student who claimed he was sexually abused by a faculty member in the 1980s, the institution hired an outside law firm to investigate and eventually released the findings publicly.

The school not only determined that the student’s claims were true but posted on its website that two other credible cases involving another faculty member no longer alive had been uncovered.

And in its online letter to the Deerfield community, the school invited former and current students to come forward if they were aware of other cases.

Nothing as open as that has happened at Kamehameha Schools, which is defending itself in a negligence lawsuit filed by about 30 former students who say they were sexually abused decades ago by a psychiatrist who treated students.

Kamehameha has known since at least 1991 — the plaintiffs say even longer — that Dr. Robert Browne, a psychiatric consultant to the school from the late 1950s to the early 1980s, was the target of sex abuse allegations by former students. In 1991, Browne fatally shot himself shortly after being confronted by one of those ex-students.

In court documents filed in July as part of the pending litigation, Kamehameha said it believes Browne routinely abused the plaintiffs during therapy sessions at St. Francis Medical Center, but that he concealed the alleged abuse from Kamehameha.

Browne’s estate has denied wrongdoing.

Kamehameha was established at the behest of Princess Bernice Pauahi Bishop to educate Hawaiian children.

Several of the 34 plaintiffs in the 2016 lawsuit told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that they thought they were the only victims until the lawsuit happened, partly because the school never reached out to them or conducted an investigation to determine the extent of the alleged abuse.

It also did not take the extra step that Deerfield did, soliciting information publicly from the larger school community.

“There’s no transparency at all at Kamehameha,” said Alika Bajo, one of the plaintiffs. “If Bernice Pauahi were alive today, she would be disgusted with what’s going on at that school. She would be saying, ‘What are you doing to my children?’”

Kamehameha declined to discuss matters related to the litigation, citing a gag order that the plaintiffs contend does not apply to the case.

But in a general statement the school said: “We consider the care and protection of our children to be our most important responsibility, and we continually work to enhance the ways in which we carry out that kuleana.”

Kamehameha noted several examples, including refocusing student health and safety efforts through a central office; requiring awareness and safety training for all campus and administrative workers; and improving the rigor of background checks for employees, volunteers and vendors.

Jetta Bernier, executive director of MassKids, a Boston-based child advocacy organization, said Kamehameha fell short in its response to the Browne allegations, particularly in not seeking information openly to determine the extent of the problem.

“They’re not asking the question,” Bernier told the Star-Advertiser. “They don’t want to know the answer.”

She cited Deerfield as a good example of the growing number of private schools acknowledging past problems of sex abuse, being transparent about addressing the problem and adopting policies to prevent recurrences.

Because of public pressure and media scrutiny, “we’re going to see more and more schools doing the right thing,” Bernier said.

When Deerfield leaders posted two 2013 letters on the school’s website to respond to the abuse allegations, it acknowledged that times have changed from decades ago in understanding sexual misconduct. But the focus needs to remain on the students, the school said.

“It is clear that these incidents caused deep, real and lasting pain,” Deerfield leaders wrote. “We can never make that go away. However, by openly addressing this issue now, we hope to give victims validation, to keep the door open for those who might still want to come forward or seek counseling, and to reassure our entire community of our commitment to the standards we espouse.”