Deal May Put Abuse Scandal to Rest
Posted Courtesy of The Post and Courier (http://www.charleston.net)
Published on 07/15/04
BY TONY BARTELME
Of The Post and Courier Staff
The final chapter of the sexual abuse scandal at Porter-Gaud School, which rocked the community and led to stronger protections for victims, may be written soon.
It has been nearly seven years since a former Porter-Gaud student went public with his story. In the 1970s, one of the school's teachers, Eddie Fischer, molested him and others; the school had been warned repeatedly and had done nothing to stop Fischer. Instead, school officials helped him get jobs at other schools where more children were harmed.
Now, 31 of Fischer's victims and their parents have reached a tentative agreement with the private school and its insurance company to settle a tangle of lawsuits for nearly $10 million.
The agreement has not been approved by a court, but lawyers for both sides said they are optimistic the deal will hold. "Everyone worked hard on both sides to come up with an acceptable compromise," said Rutledge Young, Porter-Gaud's lawyer.
"It has been a long road," added Gregg Meyers, a lawyer for the victims.
The roots of the litigation date to 1997, when Guerry Glover came forward to tell police that, while he was at Porter-Gaud in the late 1970s, Fischer abused him. Glover told authorities Fischer showed him a bag full of Polaroid photos of other molested boys.
Glover's story led to Fischer's arrest Oct. 7, 1997, and prompted 12 other victims to press criminal charges, some of whom had been molested as far back as the late 1950s. The arrest also stopped one James Island teenager from suffering further abuse; Fisher had been molesting him that summer.
Fischer, who was 70 when he was arrested, eventually was sentenced to 20 years. He died in prison two years ago.
However, the legal battles since Fischer's arrest have centered on Porter-Gaud, not Fischer.
"Fischer was the tiger," Meyers said, "but (the lawsuits) were always about the people who let him out of the cage."
RIPPLE EFFECT
The Eddie Fischer scandal had a major impact on Porter-Gaud and the community at large. Most affected were the victims and their families. Fischer acknowledged molesting at least 43 boys in four decades as a teacher in Charles-ton's private and public schools.
Some victims came from well-known families and silently carried their secret as they took prominent positions in the community. Others spiraled into depression and addiction as they tried to deal with the abuse.
"I think people underestimate how hard it is for victims to come forward," Meyers said. "If you are a victim, you want to stand up for yourself, but doing so requires you to discuss one of the most private things in your life. That's why people don't talk about it for 30 years or take it to their graves."
Led by Glover and a former James Island High School student, Shaw Simpson, a group of students and parents decided to take on Porter-Gaud, alleging in lawsuits that the school knew, or should have known, what Fischer was doing to children.
A few months later, Porter-Gaud's longtime administrator, James Bishop Alexander, killed himself. In a note found by police, Alexander cited the litigation as the reason for his decision to take his life. As the lawsuits worked their way through the courts, Alexander's role in the scandal began to emerge.
The victims' lawyers learned that in 1982, a boy told his parents that Fischer had molested him. The parents immediately went to Alexander to make sure Fischer was stopped. Alexander and then-headmaster Berkeley Grimball allowed Fischer to resign quietly. Alexander then helped Fischer get a job at another Charleston prep school where he molested more boys.
Later, Alexander wrote a positive reference to the Charleston County School District when Fischer applied for a job at James Island High.
In dramatic courtroom testimony, one former Porter-Gaud student testified that Alexander had once seen him naked in Fischer's bed after Fischer plied him with sleeping pills, alcohol and marijuana. When he confronted Alexander at school, Alexander reportedly dissuaded the student from making any complaint.
Another student testified that Alexander himself molested him as a teenager.
Throughout the litigation, the school maintained it wasn't responsible for Fischer's campaign of abuse.
But a jury disagreed in 2000, hitting the school with a $105 million verdict, the largest ever involving a sexual abuse case and a school.
"One of the reasons all this got started was that (sexual abuse) was regarded as not important or not sufficiently important," Meyers said. "So, my highest aspiration for this whole series of cases was that it would cause a complete change in how schools react when they know or discover they have a teacher who has a sexual interest in students, male or female, heterosexual or homosexual."
The jury's verdict, he said, sent "a clear and emphatic message."
MORE LAWSUITS
The school and its insurer, The Church Insurance Co., eventually settled 10 cases for $22 million.
But the litigation then multiplied and morphed into what sometimes resembled three-dimensional calculus.
Some parents and victims sued the insurance company and Porter-Gaud again, alleging that its lawyers hadn't acted properly in settlement negotiations.
Porter-Gaud turned around and sued the insurance company and its parent organization, the Episcopal church's pension fund, for $25 million, saying that it should have settled the victims' cases instead of going to trial. The school also said it had more insurance coverage than the insurer claimed. Last year, they settled that case, agreeing that "there was more coverage," Young said, declining to be more specific.
Meanwhile, more of Fischer's victims came forward. Ten lawsuits were filed and eventually settled in 2002 for an undisclosed sum. Later, a third group of parents and victims filed lawsuits.
Another trial was tentatively scheduled to take place this fall in connection with the third round of litigation, but both sides now have hammered out what they described as "a global agreement" to resolve the 31 remaining cases.
Young and Meyers declined to discuss many of the agreement's terms and said the entire deal was subject to "important contingencies." But Young said he expected any outstanding issues to be resolved within two to three months. Meyers said as part of the agreement, the names of the victims will remain confidential.
As far as the monetary settlement is concerned, "the other side has agreed to a lump sum," Meyers said, adding that it was "a hair under" $10 million.
Because the litigation involved so many people and different kinds of claims, both sides agreed to have an independent lawyer decide who would get what share of the overall settlement.
Porter-Gaud school officials referred questions about the settlement to Young, who said, "I would expect that the victims and the school are glad to come to this resolution and get everything behind them."
Marvin Infinger, another attorney for the school, added that "if this (settlement) goes through, it will work to the benefit of the plaintiffs, the institution and the community at large."
The tentative settlement may end the legal battles over Fischer and Porter-Gaud's handling of sexual abuse complaints.
Lawyers for both sides agreed that if new victims step forward, they will have a difficult time filing lawsuits because of the state's statute of limitations laws.
LESSONS LEARNED
The scandal had ripple effects that went beyond Porter-Gaud.
Among other things, Porter-Gaud made a public apology and set up a special fund to pay for sexual abuse counseling at the Medical University of South Carolina.
The litigation has been "a huge focus for the school" for the past seven years, Young said. "They've obviously learned lessons. It's a different place now and probably a better place as a result of the programs they've implemented."
In addition, Glover's decision to speak publicly about his experience inspired victims unrelated to Porter-Gaud to press charges against at least two other sexual offenders, prosecutors have said.
The case also prompted lawmakers to strengthen laws to make it easier to press charges against child-care providers and schools that ignore abuse. Community leaders formed a task force to help schools and other institutions better handle victims' complaints.
The cases energized a new group, From Darkness to Light, nationally recognized for its work on behalf of sexual abuse victims.
And when Good Housekeeping Magazine featured the case, Glover was summoned to meet with Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to discuss how schools deal with the issue of child sexual abuse.
"I've talked with school superintendents in other parts of the country," Meyers said, and the Porter-Gaud case remains "in the back of their minds" and "caused them to say, 'Let's make sure that doesn't happen here.' "
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