Syracuse, N.Y. — Horrific details of the treatment some teenagers received at a now-closed boarding school in Upstate New York emerged in a federal indictment unsealed in Syracuse Thursday.
Some students attending Allynwood Academy, formerly known as the Family Foundation School, were subjected to physical, sexual and emotional abuse by a staff member, Paul Geer, federal prosecutors said. The school is in Delaware County, about an hour east of Binghamton.
Geer, 56, was arraigned Thursday in federal court in Syracuse on six charges, including coercion and enticement. He pleaded not guilty.
About a dozen former students have sued the school in state and federal courts, including under the state Child Victims Act, which allowed people who suffered sexual abuse as children to file civil lawsuits regardless of when the abuse occurred.
Geer was deposed two times in civil lawsuits that would ultimately be settled, according to The New York Times. He denied abusing students, but admitted to speaking to them in an inappropriate way about sexual matters.
“I should never have done those things,” he said, according to The Times. “At the time, I wasn’t thinking I was doing something wrong.”
The Argiros family ran the school in Hancock for about 30 years. It was part of the so-called troubled teen industry, marketed to parents as a place that could help children dealing with drug, alcohol or behavioral issues.
The school closed in 2014 amid declining enrollment, with the land sold to the neighboring French Woods Sports and Arts Center, a popular summer sleepaway camp for kids.
Ralph DeSimone, a lawyer who has represented some of the school’s former students, told syracuse.com that it was “gratifying to know that, finally, justice is going to be served.”
“Nothing about that school resembled any type of classroom that people would imagine,” he said. “There’s many instances of what people would say is torture going on at that school.”
A lawyer who has represented the school in various lawsuits did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Geer worked for about 20 years in various roles at the school, including as a music teacher and the choral director, prosecutors said.
He had significant influence over students as a “family leader,” and could determine the kind of “sanctions” — bodily punishment or abuse — faced by students, they said.
Among the punishments doled out to students were food deprivation; isolation to a small, locked room for hours or days; getting wrapped in a blanket, then sealed inside with duct tape; carrying around hundreds of pounds of rocks; and “blackout,” with no verbal communication for weeks or months, prosecutors said.
Geer also repeatedly abused students sexually, with forced oral and anal sex, they said.
Prosecutors singled out in the indictment three examples of Geer’s alleged sexual misdeeds.
In summer 1994, he got a 15-year-old boy to travel to Maine with him. In August 2000, he got a 17-year-old girl to cross with him to nearby Pennsylvania. He got a 16-year-old boy to go with him eight months later to Toronto.
The courtroom was largely silent as Assistant U.S. Attorney Jessica Carbone summarized the charges now facing Geer, a balding man with glasses wearing an orange jumpsuit. A red-haired woman doubled over crying at one point as Carbone described part of the indictment.
Carbone asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Mitchell Katz to keep Geer detained while he awaits trial. Katz will rule on the matter after a hearing at 9 a.m. Monday.
Jon Martin-Crawford, former program participant, the Family Foundation School, Hancock, N.Y., testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, April 24, 2008, before the House Education and Labor Committee hearing on cases of abuse and deceptive marketing by teen residential programs, including boot camps, wilderness camps and therapeutic boarding schools.AP
The school was featured in 2018 in a story that ran on the front page of The Times, which noted the high death rate among alumni.
Some former students have spoken publicly about their experiences at the school.
Jon Martin-Crawford, who attended for two years, testified in 2008 at a U.S. House committee hearing about teen treatment programs. He said he had seen school staff members punch students in the face, and wrapping and then sealing them inside blankets.
“While the programs, as they are, have little positive effect long term, I do believe that kids in my position need some sort of help. I do believe there can be a safe solution, as some staff are genuinely decent and caring people,” Martin-Crawford said. “We need oversight and regulation of these facilities with swift and severe penalties for those who stray from the standards.”
The former student hanged himself seven years later.
FBI investigators ask anyone with information about Geer or the school to contact them at FFStips@fbi.gov.
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Staff writer Jon Moss covers breaking news, crime and public safety. He can be reached at jmoss@syracuse.com or @mossjon7.