Vindicating Paul Suerken

Vespas on Corfu. Suerken’s undoing. I was feeling guilty because I hadn’t done enough for Suerk. As I was updating, I saw this comment on an earlier post here. Steve June 18, 2020 at 3:24 PM If you'd like to reach me sometime, you can contact me at [stevenblank]@yahoo.com I was Paul's close friend for many years, and I think I can address certain things that you've brought up. I absolutely loved (and love) Paul, and I know he felt the same way. The story is a little bit more complicated than I'd like it to be, but perhaps the truth lies somewhere in between , as the old expression goes. In any event, you have my email address.   The boldface is mine. Steve’s right. The truth is always more complicated than the politically correct want it to be. Yes, Suerken was gay. That didn’t make him a pedophile or a predator. I am in a better position to know that than most. He had a boyfriend at Mercersburg, another thirtyish esthete, who taught Greek to high school jocks. He didn’...

The Mercersburg Academy Library. Where they’re supposed to care about the truth. The opening, the laundry list of weak claims, and the odd disclaimer added by the “outside firm” that conducted the so-called investigation, which amounted to conviction, sentencing, and public humiliation by phone poll, no legal or other representation of the accused involved. [I will add that I had occasion to speak by phone with Paul Suerken in the early 1990s, at which time he was suffering from severe brain trauma caused by a motor vehicle accident. If this was the time where he was put “on leave,” I can attest he was in no condition to defend himself from accusers protected by the standard blue dot over their faces.]

Me, an old guy who remembered how it really was. Bootless as it turns out. They cut up pretty rough with me. The headmistress(!) didn’t like my allegations. Grottlesex schools were awash with tales of decades-long, even traditions, of homosexual abuse. I knew Mercersburg wasn’t like that. The belated charges against Suerken seemed like a deliberate piling on, a way to be the vanguard of correcting the disease called prep.school. I said so. They were quick to sicc a lawyer on me, warning me of how many ways a school with a $100 million endowment could ruin my life. All I wanted was her admission that she was an accomplice in an unjust witch hunt. So I called the attorney. She was, like the headmistress, female and unyielding. I concede I had only one objective. I knew they could ruin me. I have no money to fight and no allies to fall back on.  Which I got. I don’t lose arguments with lawyers. I jollied her into admitting that Mercersburg had no evidence against Suerken that would st...

Mercersburg 1969. Howard was the Dean. Kept a close eye on Levin and me. We were troublemakers. Suerken was the Good Guy floor master, couple flights down. But not Levin’s or mine. After Savage got fired for drugs,  I  was the floor master.  And homosexuality was NOT a thing at Mercersburg. Old days. Live and let live. So let’s talk about all this, shall we? The charges against Suerken are somewhere between 30 and 50 years old. The testimony that “convicted” him was obtained during telephone(!) conversations in which the accusers were assured of permanent, total anonymity. The most extreme charges were surfaced in 2017, seven years after Suerken’s death, whose passing in 2010 was noted with profound grief in a blog here: For Paul Suerken Only one of the listed charges, a “sexual assault,” would have been actionable at the time it supposedly occurred, but it was never reported, documented, or investigated at the time. Now it has no more weight than malicious gossip of...