No, I am not minimizing it. Far from it. But I do know that Hyde minimizes it. They do not call the police. They don't even call the parents usually. They think grilling the victimized student in school meetings and seminars addresses the same needs as should be addressed in psychological counseling and which, if anything, only traumatizes the kid even more. It is an appalling blindness to human needs let alone legal responsibilities, and one that continues as a matter of course. Always has, as long as they have been in operation.
This is serious stuff here! Are you sure there are not any laws governing private boarding schools? It is hard to believe that in this day and age things like this can happen without any consequences. Hey, does Hyde preach about consequences? Isn't that what 2-4 is about? How about Hyde? What kind of consequences do they have?
From what I know personally and what I have read here on the threads it appears that from time to time a family gets pushed to their limits and they sue the school. The school's insurance company then settles out of court and the lawsuit doesn't go anywhere. Since it isn't on the records, the school can pretend it never happened, at least as far as the next crop of students and their parents is concerned. And such "crops" come and go, and time passes, and people's personal experiences of the school never span a very large period of time so it is easy to think of such egregious incidents, if one's time overlapped with one, as unfortunate but unusual.
But it appears they are not so unusual, they've been happening for over 30 years. And not once, at least that I am aware of, has the school bothered to apologize to the transgressees and the community at large and attempt to make amends, let alone ACKNOWLEDGE the wrongfulness of these acts and take steps to ensure that they do not happen again. The school's attitude implicitely condones sexual predators, hence makes the suffering of their victims that much worse and that much more of a mindfuck.
Yes, it's absolutely criminal that Hyde has been able to get away with these abuses for decades. There is quite a collection of incriminating stories about abuses and unprofessional behavior at Hyde over the years.
While it's tragic that so much of this has been buried over the decades, clearly the tide is turning. What is fundamentally different is that now, for the first time, Hyde is being exposed far and wide as a result of the internet. Until now, Hyde has been able to control the flow of information and has always puts its own one-sided spin on any bad publicity.
Now, however, Hyde is NOT in control. This is unprecedented, and I suspect the rapid dissemination of negative publicity about Hyde through the internet has Hyde administrators running scared. They know that the proverbial cat is out of the bag and there's virtually nothing they can do about it. Hyde people are probably monitoring this and other sites and are worried sick. They know that more and more people (parents, educational consultants, etc.) who are interested in Hyde are Googling the school and coming across this website and other criticisms posted on the internet. The visibility of this particular website is growing and growing (just check the Google rankings).
And the latest news is that one of the people posting on this web site, Gary, is inviting people who have opinions about Hyde (positive or negative) to contact him for interviews. It sounds like Gary is planning to write this up and spread it around. Never has Hyde been exposed like this.
Hyde finally is getting a taste of its own medicine. For decades Joe Gauld and his gang have been dishing it out with impunity. Never, I suspect, did they imagine that Hyde's victims would be able to inflict so much damage. Hyde has always assumed that it was impervious to criticism. This is poetic justice.
I LUV IT, but... do you really think they are "running scared" and "worried sick" about the negative publicity? I think the mindset inherent in the depraved indifference and one-size-fits-all mentality pretty much inoculates them against any criticism or notions of responsibility... But also, yes, the internet's effect IS amazing. I never in a million years would have imaged reading other students' experiences that echoed my own.
The reason Hyde may be worried sick is that this publicity is probably affecting enrollments. Hyde has lots of competition, more than ever before. I have heard Hyde officials talk about their concern about enrollments, both in public and private. The financial implications are huge. Hyde simply can't afford bad publicity, so this internet publicity is probably having an impact.
There is no question that some people are reading these postings and, as a result, are deciding to not apply to Hyde. That has NEVER happened before; parents who were considering Hyde before the internet never would have had access to this information. All they had access to was Hyde's own materials and educational consultants' recommendations (and the occasional parent). The tide has turned.
No shit? You talk to Hyde officials in private. Do they have any idea you are spitting up the kool-aide?
It wasn't that kind of private discussion (that is, not in an office or other private setting). I was standing right near two senior Hyde administrators at a public event when they were talking about admissions, the percentage of families that signed up that spring to return in the fall, etc. They were hardly whispering; it was quite easy to overhear their conversation, although I doubt they wanted me or anyone else to hear their frank discussion about the "yield" and admissions trends.
I've also also heard Macolm Gauld talk quite openly about all of the competition that Hyde faces and his concern about Hyde's ambiguous and often confused image in the "market." Malcolm didn't directly acknowledge all of the negative publicity that's circulating about Hyde; however, given the nature of his comments it's hard for me to imagine that Hyde administrators aren't very nervous about this relatively recent development (this web site, etc.). I have a feeling that this web site and other very negative publicity have caught them by surprise and they're not sure what to do about it. Hyde's not used to being unable to exercise complete control, so this is probably very troubling to them.
