American school exposes sexual predator

PETALING JAYA: An American performing arts lecturer believed to have taught at a few universities in Malaysia has been exposed as a sexual predator by a US school he worked at more than 30 years ago.

According to his LinkedIn profile, the lecturer is now based in Thailand. Attempts to contact him have been unsuccessful.

The lecturer, who taught at the prestigious Milton Academy in Boston, United States from 1973 to 1987, was found to have engaged in sexual misconduct with students during his time there, following a recently concluded investigation commissioned by the academy.

In a letter sent out to the Milton community on Tuesday, school officials said that a nine-month investigation by a New York security firm it hired had yielded the shocking findings that the lecturer had sexually abused at least 12 male students, all minors at the time.

Three other former employees, who were not named in the letter, were also found to have engaged in sexual misconduct.

He was sacked in 1987 after admitting to molesting a student, but the extent of his crimes are only coming to light now following the investigation, which was launched after a 2016 news report on sexual misconduct in US private schools.

The report prompted Milton Academy to conduct a fact-finding mission on whether any transgressions had occurred in the past.

They hired T&M Protection Resources, a private consulting firm, to conduct the investigation that began in May 2016.

The firm discovered that the school's management at the time had allowed the lecturer to continue working despite being aware of his misconduct.

The letter mentioned that then headmaster of Milton Academy Jerome A. Pieh, "had some knowledge" of his misconduct in 1982," but allowed him to continue working there for five more years before he was sacked in 1987.

Since then, he has worked in Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia and is quite well-known in the theatre and performing arts scene.

According to his LinkedIn profile, he has worked as a theatre director, acting coach and performing arts educator for nearly 30 years in South-East Asia.

Milton Academy's board of trustees on Tuesday expressed deep regret for not protecting its students all those years ago, and failing to investigate him at the time.

"On behalf of Milton Academy and its board of trustees, we want to acknowledge and deeply apologise for those failures.

"We also want to set forth the concrete actions the School has taken in response to these findings and emphasise our clear commitment to the safety and wellbeing of our students today," said the current head of school Todd Bland, and board of trustees president Lisa Donohue.

The academy also said that it has contacted immigration authorities about the findings of its investigation as well as the employers he worked for after leaving the school, which are believed to be about 18 schools and theatre organisations.