News
Man previously jailed for child sexual abuse faces new charges
Former Kurn Hattin Staff Indicted
A man has been charged with possessing images of child sexual abuse while living in Hinsdale New Hampshire in 2018, three decades after being convicted of molesting boys at a residential school in Westminster, Vermont. Mark W. Davis, 58, was indicted on the new charges January 26, 2021 in Cheshire County Superior Court. The four indictments allege he possessed explicit images of boys, including some as young as 6 to 8.
An investigation detailed allegations of physical, sexual and psychological abuse at Kurn Hattin stretching back to the 1940s, including a 2019 report by the Vermont Department for Children and Families that documented multiple instances of students sexually abusing other students and found Kurn Hattin had failed to report some incidents to the agency promptly. Kurn Hattin gave up its license to operate a residential behavioral-treatment program for children in September, after DCF concluded administrators had not made the necessary changes ... Convicted Sex Offender Living in Springfield Vermont
Molester of 17 Boys At Kurn Hattin Homes - Case Closed! 2021
Mark Davis Charged For Possessing Images of Child Sexual Abuse "Manufactured" At Kurn Hattin
Springfield, Vermont resident, Mark Wadsworth Davis was charged with 4 counts of possessing images of child sexual abuse in April of 2018. Davis was not indicted until January of 2021 in Cheshire County, New Hampshire by prosecuting attorney Keith Clouatre and waived extradition. Davis was granted a motion to suppress evidence in the case by Superior Court Judge, Elizabeth Leonard.
Suppression of evidence means that the available evidence in the case can't be used in court if the evidence was not properly obtained and is typically granted in instances of:
Failure to comply with a defendants Fourth Amendment Rights
Failure to comply with a defendants Fifth Amendment Rights
Failure to follow the chain of custody requirements
The case, involved images of child sexual abuse alleged to be found in Davis’s possession on his computer in New Hampshire. The images of child abuse were found to be “Manufactured” at Kurn Hattin Home for Boys in Westminster, Vermont during the 1980’s according to Cheshire County Sheriff’s Office investigator Lt. Todd Faulkner. Faulkner states that Kurn Hattin was “Not Helpful” in identifying the children in sanitized images of the abuse.
Mark W. Davis was prosecuted in 1990 for molesting at least 17 boys, by his own admission, as documented in his Vermont State Police deposition. Davis was sentenced to two years in Vermont State Prison for lewd and lascivious conduct with male children at Kurn Hattin. The 2021 case against Davis for possessing multiple images of child sexual abuse Manufactured at Kurn Hattin Home for Boys was closed on September 9, 2021. A motion to Destroy the court records regarding the case was also granted by the Cheshire County, New Hampshire Superior Court. ... Evidence of Child Abuse at Kurn Hattin Destroyed
Vermont 'Perversion Files'
Convicted Child Abuser Kurn Hattin Houseparent & Scout Master Mark Davis
Mark W. Davis, 1990. Westminster Troop 43. Sentenced to two years of prison for lewd and lascivious conduct with young boys at Kurn Hattin Homes. There are 14 individuals with connections to Vermont named in the released files. Five more are unnamed records.
The scouting organization began keeping the records, known as their "Ineligible Volunteer File," often called "Perversion Files," in 1919 as a way to prevent those accused or charged with inappropriate acts from being able to serve in the Boy Scouts.
In 2010 a judge ordered some of the records be released and then the Los Angeles Times got hold of 5,000 of them, publishing nearly 2,000 with detailed information. In the files were documents — sometimes court documents or newspaper clippings detailing a Boy Scouts volunteer's arrest or sexual abuse case — that the organization kept.
David J. Maysilles, former Kurn Hattin alumni himself, and also former Vermont Boy Scouts of America Green Mountain Council President and Council Commissioner, was Executive Director of Kurn Hattin Home for Boys at the time that the child sexual abuse perpetrated by former relief houseparent, Mark W. Davis was finally discovered after 3 instances of his presence allowed on the Kurn Hattin campus over a period of 4 years, including after allegedly being forced to resign for assaulting a student.
Both Kurn Hattin Homes and the Vermont State Police called Davis's assault, which broke a boys arm, an "Unfounded Allegation." The victim, who alleges he was threatened with death and dismemberment, the "little pieces" of his body to be thrown into the swamp on the hill behind Kurn Hattin if he told anyone, did not report the broken arm until 2 weeks later. That boy, now a man, who still bears the scars and pain of his childhood assault at Kurn Hattin, and with a precious son of his own now, who is approximately the age that he was then at Kurn Hattin, states that the assault and death threat are neither unfounded, nor alleged. ... Boy Scout Master Predator at Kurn Hattin
F--CK Machine
"Forced Sex With Kurn Hattin Worker"
Between the ages of 12 and 14, she recalls forced sex with the Kurn Hattin worker so many times the experiences run together. She was assaulted in the pool chemical room, on the bus, in the boiler room — wherever he could corner her, she said. “When we went to the Red Sox game, he made you give him a blow job on the bus,” she recalls. In her mind, the assaults are all “one big old blob.”
What infuriates her is that she recalls the director, David Maysilles, and others asked her about the abuse and then “just ignored it.” Maysilles, recently deceased, came from a generation that didn’t talk about sex, she said.
She says she doesn’t want anyone else to get hurt. “We can’t prevent what happened to the rest of us, but we can make sure going forward nothing happens to them,” she said. “It’s gotta stop,” she said. Smith compared the abuse at Kurn Hattin to the cycle of normalized abuse families carry forward for generations. “It took me to my mid-30s to learn that making love was just that. That I wasn’t just a f— machine.” ... Teenage F--kmachine
Sisyphean Odyssey
"Intentional Cruel Abuse"
Carter recalls the anger and dismissiveness of the people “who were paid to take care of you.” The employees were local people who had few choices in life other than to work at Kurn Hattin, where they could get three meals a day, a free place to stay and get a paycheck. “They were not qualified in any way,” he says. “Willful blindness doesn’t absolve you of the wrongness of what’s happening around you,” he said. “People didn’t do what they were supposed to do.”
The boys were also required to keep the Kurn Hattin farm going and keep the landscaping up on the campus. If there was no snow on the ground, they rolled and pushed and skidded boulders to a pile at one end of the property. In some cases, the rocks weighed more than several boys put together. “We wrenched our backs, we crushed our hands.”
Carter describes the rock pile as a Sisyphean odyssey. “It was an everyday slog of dirt, strain and sweat and mindless routine and never-ending stress, all under the guise of punishment for something you had been unjustly accused if you knew at all what you had been unjustly accused of.” “We were needy for their approval,” he says. “We wanted to move the biggest rocks.” “This was not a character-building routine”; it was not healthy in any way or by any definition. It was, he said, exactly as the abusive houseparents intended it: cruel abuse. ... Work Will Set You Free
Hostess Fruit Pie Rape
"The Kurn Hattin employee tried anal sex with him ..."
Child survivors say Kurn Hattin continues to deny any culpability. Three victims say they, or their siblings, confronted administrators in the 1990s about having been molested by adults and peers at the school. The administration refused to take the allegations seriously and rebuffed the former students, they say.
One alum, with the pseudonym Carter, says a boy who was the victim of a Kurn Hattin administrator in the 1950s went on to become a houseparent. That man, in turn, molested at least three boys in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Carter said, including another victim, John Doe, who also asked not to be identified.
John Doe said he was raped by the houseparent at least 50 times — in a school bus, cars and in the cottages where the boys lived — over four to five years. The molestation started when the boy was 7 years old and continued until he was 12, he said in an interview. Because of the trauma, John Doe suffers from severe memory loss, but he remembers being abused in locations all over the campus, and specifically that the man would give him Hostess pies “then start messing around with me.” The Kurn Hattin employee tried anal sex with him a number of times and made him perform a blow job as he was driving while they were traveling to Massachusetts ... Pie Plying Buggery of Boys
‘Culture of abuse’ alleged at Kurn Hattin over 80 years
"Willful blindness solves nothing and serves only to reinforce their complicity.”
Growing up on the family farm in North Walpole, New Hampshire, Carolyn Blake Bradshaw lived on candy, scavenged apples and sandwiches from teachers. She remembers the constant, gnawing hunger. Her mother put her into foster care, and by the time she reached the age of 10 ... Generations of Intergenerational Trauma
Vermont boarding school surrenders license
'Sexual Misconduct Involving Children'
WESTMINSTER, Vt. — A Vermont boarding school has surrendered its license to operate as a residential treatment program following an investigation into claims of sexual misconduct involving children. Kurn Hattin, which schools children between the ages of 5 and 15
Kurn Hattin is listed by the Department for Children and Families as failing to report child abuse claims in the 24-hour time frame required by law. Kurn Hattin was "repeatedly unable" to take a corrective plan of action provided by DCF. ... Kurn Hattin License Pulled
Abuse victims seek apology from Kurn Hattin
'We are waiting for Kurn Hattin to do the right thing.'
WESTMINSTER — A group of seven men who were sexually assaulted during the 1980s while at Kurn Hattin Homes for Children want to have their stories heard — and they want an apology.
They want the school, through words and actions, to say 'We are sorry. We brought you here to make your lives better and it turned out the opposite
In 1990, Davis, then 27, was sentenced to two years in jail on eight counts of lewd and lascivious behavior with students at Kurn Hattin. Davis pleaded no contest to the charges. In exchange for the plea, prosecutors declined to press further charges related to sexual abuse. According to court documents, Davis was implicated in the abuse of up to 17 students during his four years at Kurn Hattin.
Attorney Gary Karnedy, of Primmer Piper Eggleston Cramer in Burlington, Vermont, speaking for Kurn Hattin, told the Reformer Sunday the school has no other comment. ... When Will Kurn Hattin 'Own' its Inherent Responsibility to the Survivors?
Two-Time Kurn Hattin Worker Faces Lewd And Lacivious Behavior Charges
Admitted to molesting children in 1986 and 1988 and then again in 1989
Windham District Court Judge Robert Grussing III Tuesday sentenced Mark W. Davis to two years imprisonment ... on eight counts of lewd and lascivious conduct with students at New England Kurn Hattin Homes in Westminster, Vermont.
Vermont State Police Sgt. Miles Heffernan said Mark Davis, would face charges alleging improper touching of seven Kurn Hattin students, all boys between the ages of 9 and 11 years old. Heffernan said an investigation into Davis' activities began after Robert Morse, director of Kurn Hattin Home for Boys, informed police he had been told that children were being molested.
Prior to sentencing, Judge Grussing heard from the mother of one of Davis' victims, who told the court her family would never forget what Davis had done to her son. Kurn Hattin is a residential school for children of families in crisis, and the mother said Davis had victimized children who were already in an extremely difficult situation and made it worse. Davis estimated he had inappropriately touched four students in 1986, when he worked at Kurn Hattin as a houseparent, and approximately another 13 students in 1988-89. .... Why Was Mark Davis Allowed Access to Children?
Inside The 'Perversion Files' Mark W. Davis
Los Angeles Times
Kurn Hattin Staff Mark Davis Resignation: [My last day of] work will be Dec. 21st at 9 P.M. It has taken a lot of thought to come to this decision, but even after all our discussions my decision is final. Thank you for making me feel like the valued employee you know I am. Respectfully Yours, Mark W. Davis
It was also learned that Mark W. Davis was employed with the Kurn Hattin School for approximately four years, but resigned in December 1988 ... where follwing an "unfounded" investigation where he was alleged to use excessive force on a student.
Kurn Hattin Homes houseparent Mark Davis victim, Bill Gorsky's impact statement regarding the Vermont State Police and Kurn Hattin's assertions of an "unfounded" assault allegation perpetrated by Davis. Gorsky, who left Kurn Hattin in 1986, reveals that Davis threatened to kill him if he reported the assault and to cut his body up in 'little pieces' and dispose of the remains of his body in "Dead Man's Swamp," up on the hill in the woods behind Dickey Cottage at Kurn Hattin. The Defendant then was later re-employed at the school in July of 1988 until he resigned on 12/21/88. From that point on the Defendant stayed there with his wife, Nancy, who was still employed as a house parent as Davis continued to molest children nightly.
Enclosed please find information on Mark W. Davis, Eagle Scout, who was recently prosecuted for molesting children at New England Kurn Hattin Homes in Westminster, Vermont. David J. Maysilles, former Council President and Council Commissioner, is Executive Director of N.E. Kurn Hattin Homes and supplied (1) Ineligible Volunteer Record Sheet, (2) 5 published articles on the case, and (3) a sample of his signature. Regards, David R. Myers Scout Executive Green Mountain Council Boy Scouts of America
Thank you for the detailed information sent concerning the above Scouter. His case has been reviewed with our attorney and is now on our permanent Ineligible Volunteer File. Sincerely, Paul Ernst, Director of Registration National Council Boy Scouts of America ... Westminster Vermont Perversion Files
Summary of Sexual Abuse Claims: Boy Scouts of America
NEW ENGLAND KURN HATTIN HOMES - 5 CLAIMS
There are approximately 101,135 sexual abuse claims filed. Of those claims it is estimated that there are approximately 83,807 unique claims if the amended and superseded and multiple claims filed on account of the same survivor are removed. Attached hereto as Exhibit 4 is a chart that shows the sexual abuse claims broken down by the Chartered Organization / Sponsoring Organization implicated in the sexual abuse. Please note that approximately 48,041 claims did not identify a Chartered Organization / Sponsoring Organization. The information summarized in the attached charts was exported by the Boy Scouts’ professionals from the filed sexual abuse claims. ... Boy Scouts Abuse Claims - Mark Wadsworth Davis - Kurn Hattin Homes for Children
Tormented by Deputy Director John Watson
“He was married to the director’s daughter”
Carolyn Bradshaw and three of her siblings ended up at Kurn Hattin. One brother was injured in a sledding accident at the home for boys and never regained his mental capacity. The eldest brother, Christian, was tormented by Deputy Director John Watson, who molested him five to six times in the 1940s, she said.The administrator would take two boys at a time on excursions to a campground or a motel where he would sexually assault them by turn, she said. Watson switched off with a different pair of boys for each trip, according to Bradshaw.
Priscilla Watson dies 6 months after child sexual abuse allegations at Kurn Hattin Homes for Children revealed.
David Maysilles dies 3 weeks after child sexual abuse allegations at Kurn Hattin Homes publicly revealed.
“He was married to the director William Mayo's daughter, Priscilla Mayo Watson,” Bradshaw said. “No one would question what he did. He did what he wanted.” In a taped interview about his experiences, Christian explained how he was abused by the deputy director, who is now deceased. “He said he was one of the deputy director’s favorites,” Bradshaw said. “Some boys he didn’t touch.” In the 1990s, Christian confronted Kurn Hattin with the allegations and threatened a lawsuit. He gave an official at the school an original draft of his writings. She shredded the book, which he’d titled “No Ma, No Pa,” according to Bradshaw. ... Kurn Hattin Director Accused of Raping Little Boys
The Kurn Hattin House Rules
“School policy was for boys to swim naked.”
When they went swimming in nearby Mill Creek or the indoor swimming pool at the girls school in Saxtons River, the boys were not allowed to wear shorts. They were expected to skinny-dip while the adults watched. “Your genitals were available for any other boy to fondle, molest or whatever in that context he felt appropriate at the time,” Carter recalls. “All of that stuff was normal to me. That’s all that I knew. It was everyday behavior there. It was normal there.”
Joe Kemp, a retired Phoenix policeman who was a houseparent at Kurn Hattin from 1972 to 1981, said the school policy was for boys to swim naked. His first week on the job, he said,
“It was pointed out to me there was an actual schedule of rules, and one of them was that the boys would swim in the nude. I took it off the wall and threw it away.” “I thought that was crazy and I didn’t understand it.”
Kemp said. He bought bathing suits for all of the boys and “that ended that practice the first week I was there.” ... No Pants Allowed for the Boys