PATH believes that the Exeter community will be strengthened by the Academy’s acknowledgment of the harm that has occurred to sexual misconduct victims, by reconciliation with alumni whose lives have been inextricably altered by their experience, while restoring and reseeding trust in our community through ensuring it is one that is increasingly responsive, learning, and growing.
We believe that Exeter has the opportunity and responsibility to lead the way in creating pathways for healing, consistent with its charter to instill the highest morality in its students, in this case by setting the example of taking accountability and doing its best to remedy the harm caused.
PATH pursues this mission by encouraging and working with Exeter’s leaders to:
- Develop policies and procedures to appropriately handle issues of sexual abuse in ways that acknowledge and respond with trauma awareness should it occur. This includes a co-creating a restorative alternative to traditional mediation to reseed trust and goodness by prioritizing the one harmed in a trauma informed process, a healing oriented focus, and repairs that align with harm and also encouraging a community that is increasingly responsive, learning, and growing.
- Directly provide healing support through our fund to those who have been affected that is easily accessible and will not re-victimize those who have already experienced harm.
- Ensure ongoing responsiveness, understanding and awareness at the highest level through at least one trauma informed survivor advocate being added to the board of trustees.
- Provide a comprehensive, independent investigation of all reported instances of past misconduct fully and objectively. This should include adult to student harm as well as student to student instances.
- Acknowledge the sexual misconduct, abuse, and mishandling of sexual misconduct that has occurred at Exeter.
- Report on these investigations in a manner that is both transparent and respectful of the victims’ choices, to the entire school community.
- Hold accountable those who perpetrated, tolerated, or covered up instances of sexual harm with the understanding that not doing so further feeds into an unhealthy culture that perpetuates the problem.
- Cultivate a culture at Exeter that promotes appropriate respectful sexual education, responsibility, and awareness.
- Develop policies and procedures at Exeter to prevent sexual abuse and promote education and awareness around consent and the limitations inherent from social conditioning within hierarchies of power.