Pingry Survivors' News

“Forgiving and being reconciled to our enemies or our loved ones are not about pretending that things are other than they are. It is not about patting one another on the back and turning a blind eye to the wrong. True reconciliation exposes the awfulness, the abuse, the hurt, the truth. It could even sometimes...

April 27, 2017 Dear Pingry Survivors, We, members of the graduating class of 1992, write to express our support for your efforts to seek recognition, healing and justice for the abuse you experienced as Pingry students. We are deeply saddened and angered to know that Pingry teachers perpetuated such horrific acts against children, and that...

“The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~ Anais Nin There is no right or wrong way to tell your story, and the telling of it can never be “perfect” because perfect does not exist. As you read the letter...

Article from NJ.com. It’s a good start – but hardly the final word, and probably not enough to forestall a lawsuit. That’s how the alleged victims of the decades-old sex abuse scandal at Pingry School view the just-released report commissioned by the school in response to threat of a lawsuit. The report turned up at least...

Article from The Charlotte Observer. GASTONIA Ray Dackerman remembers the first night in the Scoutmaster’s tent, a swirl of whispers, darting flashlights, and rustlings in the sleeping bags, of pretending to sleep. Of arriving home the next day, smelling of smoke, closing the door of his bedroom, breaking into sobs. “All I wanted to do...

Article from USA Today. BERNARDS, N.J. — An investigation conducted for a New Jersey school found that there was “a pervasive problem of child sexual abuse” at the private school in the 1970s. A private firm conducted a nearly yearlong investigation into abuse by former staffers at Pingry School in Basking Ridge, N.J. The school...

Article from NJ.com A popular teacher and Boy Scout leader at a prestigious prep school is believed to have abused at least 27 boys over six years in the mid 1970s, according to an inquiry by an investigative firm commissioned by the Pingry School. The investigation also revealed alleged sexual misconduct by two other teachers,...

Dear Pingry Community, Pingry Survivors is an affiliation of adults who were sexually victimized as children at the Pingry School (and its predecessor, the Short Hills Country Day School). In the last six months, the number of victims affiliated with Pingry Survivors has grown to 18. All were sexually abused as children at Pingry between...

Article from NJ.com A Morristown prep school has alerted alumni that at least two former students now say they were molested by Thad Alton, a teacher who was later convicted of sexual assault on young boys. The Peck School hired an outside firm to investigate Alton’s time at the school, in the late 1970s, to...

“I always knew you would be a survivor.” It was a bizarre statement—coming from my abuser, former Pingry Assistant Principal and convicted pedophile Ted Alton, when I called him on the telephone decades after the abuse. At the time I made that call, I was having a really hard time in life – struggling in...