August 15, 2022 Dear Branson Community, Greetings from our beautiful campus at 39 Fernhill Avenue. I write to invite you to participate in a project that I have been working on with a group of alumni, faculty, staff, and board members for the past year. As you may remember, we completed an investigation regarding historic sex abuse at Branson in 2019 and subsequently shared the findings with the community. To remind you, our purpose in conducting the investigation was threefold: - To find out what happened
- To hold the school accountable for its past failures
- To ensure that sex abuse at Branson never happened again.
In 2020, one of the survivors from the 1970s approached me with a request to collaborate in creating a path to healing and reconciliation for any members of the Branson community who had been impacted by sexual abuse at Branson, the ensuing investigation, and the release of the report. Last fall, I, along with Branson's board chair Quoc Tran, several Branson administrators, and a group of alumni and staff began to meet monthly with the assistance of our Director of DEI and a second trauma-informed therapist. Together, we created a "Healing Circle" that allowed all of the participants, especially those who had been harmed, to safely process their experiences with the ultimate goal of forgiveness and reconciliation. Working together monthly over the past year, we created a name and description for the group, as well as a purpose statement and goals we hoped to achieve. All of this information is encapsulated in the statement below. |
