291. City of Refuge school

This boarding school is run in connection with a local church where they use a faith based curriculum which will not count as credits at several schools.

An employee was confronted by some of the employees at the church about his relationship with some of the students instead of reporting it to the police. It gave the employee a chance to commit suicide. It is not known how many students this employee were able to molest before he was confronted due to the lack of interview with him.

It is not a school which believes in background checking of their employees. Had they conducted a backgound check on this employee they would have found that he had previous convictions on many charges including possession of marijuana, soliciting the sale of cocaine, probation violation, disorderly conduct and violation of court order.

Of course if they made background checks of the management previous investigations into child abuse would have popped up.

It could not have been fun to be there as a teenager.

Sources:

• Felon was house parent at boarding school (The Charlotte Observer)
• Authorities: Three teenage girls accused Christian school employee who killed himself (The Salisbury Post)
• Sheriff: Man confronted about ‘inappropriate physical contact’ with teens commits suicide (The Charlotte Observer)
• Police: Man confronted about alleged child abuse kills himself (WCNC News)
• Fornits Wiki update – December 4, 2011 (Fighting Institutional Child Abuse Network message board)