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Ex-students file suit on school

BOSTON (AP) — Two former Massachusetts boarding school students who say they were sexually abused by employees in the 1960s and 1970s have filed a lawsuit accusing the institution of trying to sweep misconduct by its staffers under the rug.

The lawsuit was filed last week against the Fessenden School in Newton, which has settled more than a dozen claims brought by people who say they were sexually abused as children there between the 1960s and the 1990s.

John Sweeney says in the complaint that then-Assistant Headmaster Arthur Clarridge drugged and raped him in his dorm room when he was 11 years old. William Greaves II says he was sexually abused by the school psychologist, his dorm master and his art teacher starting when he was 8 years old.

Sweeney said Monday that he wants Fessenden to “come out with the truth” about the scope of abuse at the school. He choked backed tears as he described telling the headmaster at the time what had happened to him and being told he was making it up.

“This is what recovery looks like,” Sweeney told reporters at the law office of his lawyer, Carmen Durso.

In 2011, then-Headmaster David Stettler sent a letter to students, parents and alumni detailing claims of sexual abuse brought by former students and encouraging others to come forward. Fessenden said in a statement Monday that it brought the issue to light years ago “in an effort to allow any who were abused to seek closure.”

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