Studds spotlighted in abuse lawsuit
Prep school alumni detail misconduct
It’s beyond dispute that the late Massachusetts Congressman Gerry Studds was a sexual predator. And now, thanks to a lawsuit filed last week, even more details about his unspeakable behavior around young boys are on the public record.
In 1983, Studds was censured by the House of Representatives in a 420-3 vote after he plied a 17-year-old male Congressional page with vodka and then sodomized him. In some states, it would have been statutory rape. In Massachusetts, Studds was easily reelected six times.
Studds felt no shame. As the X-rated details of his sordid conduct were read into the record on the floor of the House, he turned his back on his colleagues.
Before his election to Congress in 1972, Studds was a teacher, a “master,” at St. Paul’s School in Concord, N.H. Talk about elite — it’s the alma mater of both John Forbes Kerry and Robert Mueller (Class of ’61).
Last week, two alumni filed a 22-page lawsuit in New Hampshire against the prep school, claiming it was “a haven for sexual predators.”
One of whom was identified as future U.S. Rep. Gerry Studds (DMass.).
The allegations against the gay icon, who died in 2006 at the age of 69, are made by Keith “Biff” Mithoefer, who attended the school from 1966 to ’70, when it was all-male.
Studds blew into Concord in 1967 and quickly took a shine to Biff, taking him out to a restaurant in town.
On the way back to school, Studds suddenly pulled his car over on a “deserted road” and offered the teen a cigarette, which Biff accepted because he “wanted to appear ‘cool.’ ”
Paragraph 78: “Studds engaged Mithoefer in a conversation about politics and civil rights. Studds then placed his hands on Mithoefer’s crotch ... ”
According to the complaint, “Mithoefer felt betrayed, terrified and trapped and asked to go home.”
These are new details, but a year ago, SPS hired a Boston law firm, Castner & Edwards, to produce a very graphic 93-page report on a half-century of sexual abuse at St. Paul’s. Some of the faculty pervs were identified, others were not.
I read the report and figured out that Studds was either “Faculty 20” or “Faculty 23.” Now it appears that Studds was “20” — the teacher the earlier report says “ended up driving the car to a farm field where he ‘molested’ the alumnus in the ‘front seat of the car.’ ”
Apparently Studds’ twisted proclivities were well known on campus. An alumnus told me later how Studds abruptly disappeared from the school in the middle of a term, under circumstances that were never explained to the student body.
In the SPS report last year, the student, who was not Mithoefer, said he “feared” living in the same dorm where Studds was the assistant master and “I told my mother I would rather withdraw from (SPS) than live in that house.”
But wait, there’s more. According to the law firm, the alum “recalled Faculty 20 holding dorm meetings in the nude with ‘all of the boys’ also nude in his on-campus apartment.”
Isn’t that special? After his exit from SPS, Studds moved back to Massachusetts to run for Congress, unsuccessfully the first time in 1970. When the lawsuit was filed last week, I emailed Archibald Cox Jr., the chairman of the SPS board of trustees. I asked him if he wanted to finally “out” Faculty 20 as the future Democrat statesman. I also asked Cox if he could reveal whether Studds left the school after being caught in flagrante delicto, as my source believed, with yet another underage male student.
The school responded: “Mr. Cox believes the Casner & Edwards reports speak for themselves as they are.”
Indeed they do. But the lawsuit speaks even more loudly.