Few safeguards, little oversight protect students in elite private schools like Sonoma Academy

For nearly two decades, child sexual abuse and misconduct went unaddressed at Sonoma Academy, a prestigious Santa Rosa private school with virtually no official regulatory structure beyond the school’s board of trustees to enforce student safety.

During that time, the board reportedly received little or no notification about complaints made to the head of school and other administrators involving sexual harassment and abuse of female students by three different staff members.

The limited oversight and sparse documentation at Sonoma Academy stands in contrast to a framework of policies and procedures mandated at public schools — or any school that receives federal funding — by Title IX, the federal law aimed at protecting students against discrimination and sexual harassment.

But unlike those schools, which are required to have transparent policies against sexual harassment, Sonoma Academy appeared not to have a “promulgated” staff code of conduct until 2014, according to investigators hired by the school.

The revelations of institutional failure at Sonoma Academy are the latest in a growing list of scandals at private, public and parochial schools. They include sexual misconduct by faculty, staff and students spanning 40 years at Thacher School in Ojai Valley in Southern California; a report of violent ritual hazing at Mater Dei High School in Santa Ana that left a football player with brain injury; and reports of child sexual abuse at Hanna Boys Center in Sonoma that implicate both the center’s former executive director and a former clinical director.

Though such scandals can occur at both private and public schools, there is the potential for more accountability and oversight at public institutions, said Dan Beck, a Santa Rosa attorney with experience representing survivors of child sex abuse.

“It just brings a public awareness, and the more the public is aware the more, possibly, voices of the survivors will be heard,” said Beck, who represented sexual abuse survivors in claims against Hanna Boys Center.

To be sure, Beck said, there are “good people” at both private and public schools who would speak out about misconduct, but in many cases those voices are silenced by powerful interests. He pointed out that many times at private schools, parochial schools or religious affiliated organizations like Hanna Boys Center, there are people “who care” deeply about such complaints and the harm involved for students.

But too often they are ignored when they try to bring misconduct to light, he said.

“That is so clear for a multitude of reasons, primarily that deal with money, contributions and prestige, etc.,” Beck said, adding that “the more public awareness there is, the more chances there are that deference will be made to the good voices.”

Last week, the latest accounting of the sex abuse and misconduct at Sonoma Academy was made public when the school released the results of an investigation by New York law firm Debevoise and Plimpton, which was launched after The Press Democrat reported in June on allegations of inappropriate behavior by a former teacher at the school.

The law firm’s investigators found Marco Morrone, who taught humanities and martial arts at the school, had behaved in a sexually charged way toward female students, including harassment and grooming, that affected at least 34 students over his 18-year tenure.

Morrone, according to the report, had sex with at least one of those girls after she graduated. He was fired by the current head of school, Tucker Foehl, in the fall of 2020, following an earlier investigation spurred by a group of women who went public with their accounts of his misconduct in the Press Democrat investigation.

The Debevoise report also disclosed abuse by two other former staff members: Shannon Rake, the assistant girls soccer coach at Sonoma Academy in 2002 and 2003, and Adrian Belic, an Oscar-nominated filmmaker who taught a single course in 2004. In the report, Rake was accused of sexually abusing one student, and Belic was accused of sexually abusing two.

The report detailed multiple instances in which administrators should have further investigated reports concerning staff behavior, or should have offered support to students known to be victims of sexual abuse or harassment.

In none of those cases, investigators found, did top administrators relay reports to law enforcement, as required under California law, or inform the Sonoma Academy board.

In the aftermath of the revelations, the Santa Rosa Police Department confirmed it is investigating alleged child sex abuse at Sonoma Academy. The former head of school issued an apology, and the longtime assistant head of school resigned.

A Sonoma Academy graduate also has launched the first lawsuit tied to the findings, alleging sexual abuse and harassment by staff and the failure of school administrators to stop it.

Title IX

A key difference between the way public and private schools are expected to address sexual abuse is spelled out in a federal civil rights law known as Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

The law prohibits discrimination and harassment based on race, sex and gender at any education program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. It does not apply to private schools that do not receive federal money.

Title IX requires federally funded programs to have protective policies in place, including guidelines for filing a formal complaint that are easily accessible to students and staff, as well as Title IX officers who receive and process the complaints.

Alex Cunny, an Irvine-based attorney with extensive experience litigating sexual abuse cases, said that a Title IX investigation’s effectiveness can still depend largely on staff training and school leaders’ willingness to follow the law.

“Some do a better job than others,” Cunny said. “Public schools have far, far more mandated structure. Whether or not it’s followed is a much different question.”

Cunny’s firm, Manly, Stewart & Finaldi, specializes in sexual abuse cases and has been involved in high-profile ligation, including the $500 million settlement against USA Gymnastics and convicted former Olympic women’s gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, and a $852 million settlement tied to University of Southern California gynecologist George Tyndall, the largest-ever payout involving sex abuse in higher education.

The federal government has on rare occasions penalized schools for failing to uphold the requirements of Title IX. In 2018, Chicago Public Schools lost a $4 million grant after the U.S. Department of Education found that the district “failed to promptly and equitably respond to complaints of sexual harassment, including sexual assault.”

Colleges and universities that receive public funds are also subject to Title IX, but none has ever been penalized by the Department of Education for failing to fulfill its requirements.

Revelations at Sonoma Academy

Sonoma Academy, as an independent private school that appears to receive no federal funding, isn’t subject to Title IX requirements. Instead, officials laid out their own policies to prevent sex discrimination, abuse and harassment in a staff code of conduct.

But Debevoise and Plimpton investigators said they weren’t able to find evidence that the school had instated its code of conduct until 2014 — a full 13 years after the school’s founding.

Sonoma Academy leaders most recently updated the code of conduct in 2020, after the initial investigation that led to Morrone’s firing. It now prohibits some of the specific activities students said he had engaged in, including having students babysit and initiating close, inappropriate physical contact in school settings. (One female graduate told The Press Democrat and school investigators Morrone pressed his thigh against hers and kept it there while editing her work.)

Morrone has declined repeated requests for an interview and has not answered written questions from The Press Democrat. He did not talk to Debevoise and Plimpton investigators for their report.

Sonoma Academy’s new code of conduct is accessible on the school’s website, as is the contact information for Foehl and Tory Nosler, the chair of the school’s board of trustees, to whom students and parents are directed to make complaints or raise concerns.

Foehl and Nosler have declined to answer questions from The Press Democrat since June when the newspaper published its investigation into Morrone and school inaction in the face of years of student complaints about his behavior.

The school in June deployed a new reporting platform called LiveSafe, which allows people to make reports anonymously.

In the case of Sonoma Academy, abuse survivors have been championing greater accountability and a more robust complaint process.

These processes are spelled out in the new code of conduct. But survivors are seeking additional assurances and clarity around how complaints are to be handled and consequences for not handling them properly.

“We have to see an improvement. Otherwise our work is not finished,” said Clio Wilde, a 2011 graduate. She is one of the seven graduates who came forward this summer to share their accounts of Morrone’s harassment and misconduct. The group is now engaged in a restorative justice process with Sonoma Academy, aimed at resolving issues of transparency, change and compensation for victims without resorting to litigation.

“We need to know moving forward the school is going to be a safer place for the underage students that are going to school there,” Wilde said. “Because we know it was not when we were students in Sonoma Academy.”

Reputation at stake

Another difference between public and private schools is that private schoolteachers are not required to be credentialed through the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, though they can be.

Morrone held a credential from when he worked at a public school in Marin County, and according to the most recent information from the California Department of Education, renewed his credential earlier this year. It remains active.

“The credentialing process is not necessarily going to weed out abusers in the classroom,” Cunny said. “We've had plenty … of cases where credentialed teachers were prolific sexual abusers and were so in public settings. But it’s another layer of protection.”

Cunny pointed out that public and private schools also differ in the transparency of their finances, where public schools have more oversight and are subject to greater public disclosure of those finances. A school that relies solely on private funding is less transparent about its finances and how they impact internal decisions, he said.

“If they’re protecting their coffers … and they get some complaint, I think that goes into the calculus of some of the reporting or nonreporting,” he said.

Obligation to report

Whether at private or public schools, staff and faculty must report instances of child abuse. The obligation to report abuse is not tied to any safety protocols, procedures or best practices. It’s the state law, said Chris Castillo, executive director of Verity, Sonoma County’s rape crisis and trauma center.

“When you get one report, it needs to be investigated, it needs to be reported,” Castillo said. “It really doesn’t matter if you’re a public school or a private school. Everyone has a mandate to report — it’s a legal mandate.”

Castillo said it’s not up to school officials, whether principals, teachers or counselors, to decide whether something did or did not occur. “There are professionals who investigate and interview and find out,” she said.

Investigators hired by Sonoma Academy said those professionals — law enforcement authorities — and most board members were never informed of the mounting abuse and misconduct complaints.

“The (Sonoma Academy) Board of Trustees did not have an awareness of the breadth of the allegations against Morrone,” investigators wrote in their report. “Durgin shared with some Board members one of the 2007 incidents, but she did not provide the context of the prior complaints regarding Morrone’s boundary crossing … reports to the Board regarding Morrone were generally confined to his difficulty with his colleagues, which the Board considered to be outside of its purview.”

For victims of both public and private school failures, litigation is often among the most powerful tools to hold schools accountable.

It’s not always an option for some victims, whether due to the expense or demands on their time. Experts say the process of suing a school can also be lengthy and re-traumatizing for victims, who often have to recount their stories and may have to testify if a case reaches trial.

But, according to Cunny, there’s also a greater chance for transparency when school officials have to answer questions under oath. He questions the ability of school-hired law firms to uncover all of the information victims should know as they advocate for compensation.

“People are cynical about the civil process, and say it’s all about money,” Cunny said. “It’s not. It’s about getting healing, and knowing that you’re getting somebody under oath to tell you what they know. I think there’s a lot of power in that.”

In the case of Sonoma Academy, Morrone, Dwight, Durgin and the school itself are now facing their first lawsuit after the Debevoise report was released. An unidentified graduate represented by San Diego-based lawyer Alex Schack is suing for unspecified financial damages related to her experience at the school.

Two more graduates had joined the lawsuit by Saturday.

You can reach Staff Writers Martin Espinoza at 707-521-5213 or martin.espinoza@pressdemocrat.com and Kaylee Tornay at 707-521-5250 or kaylee.tornay@pressdemocrat.com.