Back in 2019 in my post Renouncing Privilege I mentioned in passing that I was the first documented victim of sexual harassment of my prep school, the St. Andrew’s School in Boca Raton, FL. Since this year is the fiftieth anniversary of my graduation from St. Andrew’s, I think it’s a good time to outline what that was all about and perhaps be of help to others who have experienced as much—and worse—at the hands of people who have sexually inflicted themselves on people who were not (or are not) in as good of a position to resist as I was.
The year was late 1971 or early 1972, and I was a junior at St. Andrew’s. At the time I was a boarding student in Dorm III. I’ll put up a picture below to help show the setting of where this took place.
Below the cupola are two screened-in (a necessity in South Florida) balconies for two lounges. On the second floor was the Senior Lounge and on the first the Junior Lounge. Behind each of these lounges was a faculty “hall master” apartment. There are also faculty apartments at each end of the dorm. Behind the Junior Lounge (on the back side of the dorm) was the apartment of Evans “Dutch” Meinecke, the hall master for the dorm hall to the right of the Junior Lounge.
To the immediate right of the Junior Lounge you can see a set of double doors, leading to a hallway that runs to the back side of the dorm. My room is directly behind those doors, next to that hall and across from Meinecke’s apartment. I had direct access to that hall through a door.
That school year was Meinecke’s first at St. Andrew’s. He taught English (I never had him in class) and, like many other teachers and administrator’s at St. Andrew’s, came from “up North.” One of the schools he taught at was the Hopkins School in New Haven, CT, which has since turned up “possible instances of inappropriate behavior.” But this was unknown when he came south—sort of…
My relationship with him as a hall master was good enough. As he stated in a routine report in the fall to my parents:
I have enjoyed having him on my hall where he had been most conscientious and cooperative and in my apartment where we have shared ideas on music and records.
He did more than just about anyone else to heighten my interest in classical music, which has been good since I married a Nationally Certified Teacher of Music. Through all this he was “setting me up.” There were two factors, however, that seriously complicated his quest, or at least made it different from the past.
The first was that a prep school in South Florida was a different experience from those on the other end of the East Coast. The climate is warmer, which means that people aren’t as cooped up inside as they are up North. The positioning of Meinecke’s apartment is a pedophile’s dream come true, but when it’s easier for potential victims to get out that’s more difficult.
The second was that my classmates tended to be more cynical and street-smart than some of those he had encountered earlier (and perhaps later) in his teaching career. The word was on the street that he was gay, leading to monikers such as “Dutch-y-poo.” That put me on notice, although I probably figured that he stuck with consenting adults.
That assumption proved false when one day, while sitting with him in his apartment, he got up, got behind me, put his hands on my shoulders and starting giving me a “back rub.” I knew it was getting serious, that just didn’t happen between guys, let alone faculty and student. I stood up, a move emphasized by the fact that I was considerably taller than he was, informed him that I had other things to do, and left.
He got the message; he never tried anything else like that again, in spite of the proximity of my room. His opportunities for a rebound were further diminished when I became a day student the following year. Unfortunately that wasn’t the end of it for the school in general, as St. Andrew’s shared with its alumni and others last year, in the course of their investigation of more recent allegations:
As part of this process, however, we received an allegation of past sexual misconduct involving a former member of our faculty, Evans “Dutch” Meinecke. Mr. Meinecke taught at Saint Andrew’s from 1971 – 1983. He passed away in 2006.
Upon learning of this information, we reported the past incident in question to the proper authorities and initiated an internal review in accordance with our policies and procedures. We also enlisted the support of William Shepherd, a partner at the law firm of Holland & Knight, to further investigate these allegations and any other claims that might surface during the course of his investigation. The investigation found that Mr. Meinecke sexually abused a student while he was employed by our school. We have shared this same information with the schools at which Mr. Meinecke previously taught.
Getting this email triggered memories of this incident, which I hadn’t thought much about since my days at St. Andrew’s. So I spoke with Mr. Shepherd and we had a very nice conversation where I set forth what I described above. Although I wasn’t the first former student to come forth about “Dutch,” it turned out that my story was chronologically the first they had received to have happened.
And that leads to what is, these days, the obvious question: why didn’t I report it at the time? When the #MeToo movement first erupted, one of the first prominent people to be accused was Harvey Weinstein, whose first response was that it was a different time. Although what he did was inexcusable, it was a different time, a reality underscored by the state of the school itself.
Even with inanimate things, such as a flute or a harp, though they produce sounds, yet unless the notes are quite distinct, how can the tune played on the flute or the harp be recognized? If the bugle sounds a doubtful call, who will prepare for battle? (1 Corinthians 14:7-8 TCNT)
Virtually every war up to World War I used bugle and trumpet calls to signal orders on the battlefield. (Ralph Vaughn Williams was inspired by a bugler’s mistake in composing the Pastoral Symphony.) If the bugler or trumpeter messed up the signal, the troops had no idea what they were supposed to do, or a confused one. In those days the school was sounding a very doubtful call on many things, and they did so in two ways.
The first was that the whole topic of what was sexually acceptable and what wasn’t was very much “up in the air,” an uncertainty fueled by some of the instructors and really the era itself. In a Freudian world which tended to dismiss the concept of non-consensual sex, it was really hard to know how they would react to such an accusation.
The second is more prosaic. St. Andrew’s was a school which started out with a nice physical plant but virtually no endowment. That guaranteed that the early years were “touch and go” financially; one faculty member stated at the time that the school almost closed while I was there. An example of that came from a letter written to my parents at the end of the school year by Frederic M. Burr, Headmaster:
This year again, as in the past, Saint Andrew’s will have to go to the bank and arrange short-term borrowing to keep our cash position sound until the next influx of tuition money, which is not required until August. Most schools must operate in this fashion, since they, like we, spend money every month but only receive salary, so to speak, twice yearly.
It has occurred to us, that many of our parents would be willing to pay a part of or all of the tuition for their children for the coming year in June, rather than to wait until August. For this reason, we are requesting that if you can arrange to pay tuition now without financial strain, we would greatly appreciate you doing so.
That tight situation made the school especially reputation conscious. That could work for or against a student in an adverse situation with the school, depending upon the circumstances and how the student played his or her cards. But it’s safe to say that even in those days the last thing St. Andrew’s wanted was a pedophile issue, and given the preliminary nature of Meinecke’s overture, it wouldn’t take much to simply trash the student.
To be honest, the whole deal with “Dutch” wasn’t the hardest thing I had to deal with during my time at St. Andrew’s, which is the main reason why I didn’t make anything out of it until the school itself jogged my memory. Many people are very emotional about their abuse, and justifiably so, especially when it was a repeat offense. In my case any idea that Meinecke might have had about an ongoing “relationship” was shut down early; it was a rare case when something during my years at St. Andrew’s had such a decisive resolution.
My purpose in putting this out is to encourage people to report this kind of thing, and to further encourage those who have already done so. If there’s one thing that really bothers me about situations like this, it’s that we as a society may be about to see a an attitudinal “flip” on the subject of adult-minor sexuality in general and pedophilia in particular. If that happens, as I noted earlier:
In other words, after all the years of such scandals rocking the Catholic Church, boarding schools, etc., they will no longer be scandals, and the victims who have not “kept up” with the times will be left in the lurch.
Chet Aero Marine 