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CB Schools and High Schools Review of The Vail-Deane School
The Vail-Deane School

The Vail-Deane School review: What was behind the verbal & psychological abuse of select students at the vail-deane school? 16

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12:44 pm EDT
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I just wanted to put this out there with the hope that maybe someone can answer it. The Vail-Deane School was located in Elizabeth, NJ, near The Pingry School. Pingry has been in the news lately, after being investigated, because there was a ring of child abusers who worked there, and the findings were that those abuse claims were credible. There were cowardly faculty members at Pingry who realized some bad things were happening there but kept silent.

Vail-Deane and Pingry shared several faculty members. Some would work at both or transfer from one to the other. At Vail-Deane there was also a practice of marginalizing certain students, usually the astute ones who weren't easily influenced or led. The amount of verbal and psychological abuse these kids were forced to endure was excessive and also ridiculous. They were made to feel as though something was wrong with them if they questioned anything or tried to complain about certain faculty members, including ones with substance abuse issues.

I am just wondering if something hideous was going on at Vail-Deane, too, and if the reason the savvier kids were being targeted by staff was to hush whatever that was up...After all, what kind of adults need to target children for abuse every day, unless maybe they are hiding something?

16 comments
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silversax
, US
Nov 14, 2023 3:24 pm EST

The way I heard it, TWO female teachers in that wretched school went after young boys sexually. Where there's two there's probably more. Birds of a feather flock together. Those who worked there should be looked into by law enforcement.

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Lalabetta
, US
Sep 24, 2023 7:36 am EDT
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I remember the day when the Vail-Deane school bus driver tried to force my mother's car off the road. My mother worked near the school but couldn't drive me there and back becasue of the hours she worked, and the driver, a big baby, didn't like that. He thought she should drive me as a "favor" to him, if you can believe this, to "save time" on his route. The man was good for nothing but driving a bus and couldn't even pull that off like a decent person, no, he wanted to have the parents "serve" him, not the other way round. So one day I saw my mom driving around, said, "There's my mother," and the [censored] tried to ram into her car - with the busload of students inside his van! THIS are the kind of human trash that worked at the Vail-Deane School! Quite a few of the monsters working there should have been dragged out of that place in handcuffs, and where were the adults who should have stopped these wretched scumbags?

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TheFrenchForeignLegion
, US
Apr 25, 2023 5:59 pm EDT
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I have heard of one instance of abuse at that school and know of another that makes me suspicious. The music teacher was having an affair with a boy. It was a well known situation, discussed among the students and the teachers, yet nobody did anything, nobody called the authorities or the police - nothing. She's got away with it. She's dead now. Another teacher is still alive and that one kept shaking her tatas in students' faces. This was not done by accident. It was deliberate. It takes a lot of effort to bounce your boobs around like that. Other teachers made comments about her so the adults were aware of it and again, did nothing. Like I said, she's still alive, and there should be some justice when you consider some ugly psycho was trying to be seductive looking to children. What ELSE was she doing to them? Or trying to do? Where was DYFS, the NJ Division of Youth and Family Services, while all of this was going on? Child protective services should have stepped in. The police should have been called. Heads at the school should have been rolling. Is it really too late to have an investigation and find out?

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Yokohama
, US
Sep 05, 2022 1:37 pm EDT
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Those Gibsons lied like rugs. They got in trouble with the headmaster after the big mouthed teacher from Corsicana Texas spilled the beans to the kids that they were "living in sin." This was in the 70s. The headmaster told them to get married or get another job. They returned to the school in September claiming they were married when they weren't. They even lied about that, about their own marital status. They didn't marry for another full year but kept insisting they were already married. A teacher told me about it later, how they were lying to the headmaster. There is proof of the date they actually got married to be found on the Internet. This, in addition to their idiotic drug abuse done while he was driving students around in a school bus, is just plain SICK. He should have been arrested.

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bayotte
, US
Apr 05, 2022 12:20 pm EDT
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I have something to add about the drug abusing bus driver and his girlfriend-wife-whatever she was. That woman accused me of having "hyperactivity disorder." I was brought to SEVERAL specialists over it by my parents and ALL of them said I DID NOT HAVE ANY SUCH DISORDER! I later found out she bandied the term "hyperactivity" around re: lots of kids, not just me. It seemed to be that woman's preferred insult to kids. That woman CONSTANTLY made snide remarks to me, a child, accusing me of being "hyper." WHY? These days people are a lot more aware than they were back then of when an adult with access to children is constantly trying to undermine them there is often a very dark purpose for using such a technique, if you read me. I am not saying that is what actually happened here, but I am WONDERING about it. Why call a healthy child "hyperactive" when the child wasn't? Why constantly repeat such an accusation in the child's face? And who lets an unqualified teacher "diagnose" children in the first place?

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Jitterbug25
, US
Jan 15, 2022 5:38 am EST
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I have a question about the drug abusing bus driver and his nasty girlfriend, later wife, that worked at that accursed school. Their name was Gibson. They treated me terribly. After I left the school a Vail-Deane teacher who was friends with my mother told us that the reason the Gibsons were so impossible was probably because they were active, unrepentant, habitual drug abusers. Both were in their 30s at the time, not kids, but a grown man and grown woman and both were violating the law in their use of illegal substances - then he was DRIVING CHILDREN on a bus. Over the years, every time I meet up with a former Vail-Deane teacher, and I've met up with three of them, I asked about the Gibsons, and the former teachers ALWAYS say, "Oh them, they were on drugs! Everyone knew it!" So apparently the entire faculty of that place knew they were on drugs - and that the man was driving kids on a bus! Didn't anyone stop to think that there could have been an accident and it might have resulted in dead kids? It's outrageous beyond belief! Why weren't they fired on the spot ad stopped if everyone knew? I want to know what was going on there that all those other adults knew drug abusers were driving a bus and did nothing whatsoever to put a stop to them! Why was EVERYBODY covering up for those two insufferable born losers?

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Bayott
, US
Apr 05, 2022 9:28 am EDT
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I have something to add about the drug abusing bus driver and his girlfriend-wife-whatever she was. That woman accused me of having "hyperactivity disorder." I was brought to SEVERAL specialists over it by my parents and ALL of them said I DID NOT HAVE ANY SUCH DISORDER! I later found out she bandied the term "hyperactivity" around re: lots of kids, not just me. However that woman CONSTANTLY made snide remarks to me, a child, accusing me of being "hyper." WHY? These days people are a lot more aware than they were back then of when an adult with access to children is constantly trying to undermine them there is often a very dark purpose for using such a technique. It's a way of trying to break the child down so that a bad adult might more easily have their way with them. I am not saying that is what actually happened here, but I am WONDERING about it. Why call a healthy child "hyperactive" when the child wasn't? Why constantly repeat such an accusation in the child's face? What was going on in that pathetic excuse of a school? WHY DIDN'T ANYONE TAKE A CLOSER LOOK AT THE PLACE? I have a feeling the verbal abuse spoken of here was just the tip of a very dark, bad, sick iceberg. Where there's smoke there's FIRE. Why weren't they investigated?

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Cheryl Duffey
, US
Nov 10, 2021 10:49 pm EST

I was briefly a teacher at Vail-Deane for 2 years before its permanent closure. I did not see any physical or sexual abuse of students but there was blatant racism and bigotry. Some teachers were very dismissive of minority students. It was also a terrible place to work. I was bullied and mistreated by my co workers to the point that I regret working there. There were so many tragedies and strange occurrence s in those two years that I thought the school was cursed. My experience with the school was traumatic.

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SnazzySuffragette
, US
Oct 01, 2021 9:16 pm EDT
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I attended Vail-Deane at a time when the headmaster looked like the war criminal Hermann Goering . He zeroed in on certain kids and their parents and was intrusive to the point you had to wonder just what was going on with the jerk. It was well known that he always had his hand out in the hopes that a parent would "grease the wheel." To make matters worse, he was also a well-known drunkard. If anybody belonged in Fair Oaks Hospital, he did. As a matter of fact, I also remember another drunken teacher and two faculty pot heads on the staff of that place and all of them should have been doing time in Fair Oaks Hospital.

There was a level of creepiness hanging over Vail-Deane that I never experienced anywhere else. It was from more than just the headmaster. Several of the female teachers were mannish in a disturbing way. There was malicious gossip at the school. There were teachers who actively bullied children, in some cases relentlessly, zeroing in on a child to use as a scapegoat. There were students who were so cruel they could have benefited from psychiatric evaluations. All of them, faculty and students, were allowed to run amok. There were even teachers who encouraged the bullying.

Then there was a certain specific teacher. While I had left the not exactly "hallowed" halls of Vail-Deane by the time that particular piece of work started having an affair with a male student, I heard about it. That mess was well known by the entire school and nothing whatsoever was done to put a stop to it. Of course it's not an "affair" when a teacher goes after a student sexually. It's child molestation. If the Me Too Movement had been active at the time, or child advocates had heard about this, all hell would have broken loose, but no. The teacher got away with it. Was she the only one, or were there more there just like her working there? I've heard that when a school is pedophile-friendly, word gets out among those types.

I can't answer the main question of this thread which was what was behind all of this, but I can confirm that the way some students were treated in the school was downright abusive and even criminal. The New Jersey Division of Youth and Family Services, NJ's child protective services group, should have gone in there and closed the place down, if not arranged for the arrest of some of the faculty members. Children certainly don't deserve to be taught by substance abusers and predators as led by a jerk with his hand out.

That school was creepy.

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Shana99651
, US
May 03, 2021 1:42 pm EDT
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Part of the problem with a place like Vail Deane is that the school no longer exists. Those who went there seem to paint the place in a nostalgic and overly rosy glow, as a result. The fact remains though that if there were teachers acting in a sexually inappropriate manner, well, SOMETHING was behind that. Former students, you need to have some courage and SPEAK UP!

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Fernanda7777
, US
Dec 12, 2020 12:29 pm EST
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So much has come to light about forms of abuse at private schools. I think the person who asked about the teacher with the inappropriate body language deserves a medal. That's a red flag if ever there was one.

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Robin sanfilippo
, US
Oct 27, 2020 2:02 pm EDT

Robin sanfilippo, 1979 graduate of the vail deane school, i have nothing but fond and wonderful memories of vail deane, the teachers and staff were absolutely wonderful, i was devastated when i heard of the school closing and all of the rumors that were told afterward, i do not believe any of them

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JustAskingToAsk
, US
Oct 06, 2020 11:05 am EDT
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I'm not sure if what I'm about to say here has any relevance or not. I don't want to mention names but in light of the way the Pingry School was found to have child molesters on the faculty I do want to just put this out there. One lower grades female teacher who was at Vail-Deane and ended up later working for other private schools was very, very strange. She was always shaking her upper torso - and the protuberances she had up there - in people's faces, including in children's faces. She talked like she was trying to sound like Marilyn Monroe in a seduction scene from a bad movie. If I had to put a soundtrack to her jiggling and wiggling it would be boom-boom-va-va-voom. This was in the 1970s and I hear she stayed at the school almost until it closed. I can't say for sure what all of her gyrations were all about. Did she just have an odd way of walking and talking or was she deliberately trying to be seductive? Was it was the latter? Someone should have looked into whatever was going on with her. If she was trying to be seductive around little kids, to what purpose? Again, I have no proof of anything but it's hard not to wonder when you consider some of the stories that have come out about other private school teachers.

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XanaduXahu
, US
Feb 23, 2021 9:07 am EST
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I went there and I think I know exactly who you are referring to, yes. Oh, yes. I also thought the woman was ultra-strange. I was too young to get it though, that she was strange in a way that was completely sexually seductive in front of kids at a school. High, too, that woman. What I really have to ask now after finding all this online here is why weren't the adults at the school more alarmed by her behavior? Kids maybe didn't fully get it okay sure but the other teachers and the administration members should have gotten it and done something about it. The woman was always acting on the make.. Unless of course she was only the most obvious one. There might have been more adults there who were into things they should not have been and maybe they hid it better. It really makes me think twice of what was going on there. It could have been Pedophile Central.

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FowlerMansion
, US
May 05, 2020 12:43 pm EDT

Vail-Deane wasn't a psychiatric hospital. It was a college prep school!

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Jessica Christine
, US
Apr 25, 2020 11:54 pm EDT

I do not know of or believe that any of Vail-Deane’s former faculty engaged in marginalization or psychological abuse of their students. Teaching & administrative staff were full time employees of Vail-Deane so it’s difficult to imagine that any would also be moonlighting at any Pingry School side-gigs. Many students who attended Vail-Deane were referred by a private psychiatric hospital located in nearby Summit, NJ whose owners plead guilty in federal court to paying illegal kickbacks for referrals, bribing county officials, defrauding insurance companies & false imprisonment of people who did not need to be hospitalized. It is highly likely that Vail-Deane’s closure is linked to the DOJ’s prosecution of the owners of Fair Oaks Hospital & that Tenet’s legal team are behind any attacks on former students in attempt to avoid fulfilling the terms of their out of court settlement to compensate victims.