A state investigation into sexual assaults against students at St. Paul’s School has resulted in charges against a former instructor who allegedly conspired to hide a relationship with a female student, the New Hampshire attorney general’s office said.
David O. Pook, 47, was arrested Wednesday on two counts of witness tampering and two counts of conspiring to commit perjury, stemming from a grand jury investigation into decades of sexual assaults by staffers on students at the prestigious private school.
Pook helped to develop the national Common Core standards that are part of the Massachusetts statewide curriculum. He also was paid $47,500 by the Boston Public Schools for consulting work between 2012 and 2014, according to his LinkedIn profile and Boston records. He underwent a CORI background check as part of that contract process, said Boston public schools spokesman Richard Weir in an e-mail.
New Hampshire Attorney General Gordon J. MacDonald has been overseeing the criminal inquiry, which was launched last year after private investigations conducted by the elite prep school identified 13 staffers who had engaged in sexual misconduct over several decades.
In a statement announcing Pook’s arrest, MacDonald’s office said the original focus of the investigation was whether school administrators had violated state law for not notifying authorities about the sexual misconduct, but the probe was not limited to just that area of inquiry if evidence led them in a new direction.
Pook’s “arrest was one such crime,’’ MacDonald’s office said in the statement. “The investigation focused on Mr. Pook’s relationship with a female student at St. Paul’s School while he was a teacher at the school.’’
Messages left with Pook’s attorney were not immediately returned Wednesday afternoon.
According to investigators, both Pook and the student denied ever having physical contact with each other, when in fact they had been physically intimate since they met at the Concord, N.H., school, including an encounter that took place in Boston in 2009.
Pook taught at St. Paul’s for eight years, leaving “under questionable circumstances’’ in 2008, prosecutors said in the statement.
“As part of the investigation, the female and Mr. Pook were called before a grand jury,’’ prosecutors wrote.
“Based on testimony and other evidence gathered, arrest warrants were issued charging Mr. Pook with witness tampering and conspiracy to commit perjury.’’
In an affidavit requesting a search warrant, an investigator said that records produced by St. Paul’s School had noted “several troubling’’ incidents involving Pook’s “boundary crossing’’ with students.
Records indicated, for example, that Pook, when he was head of house in a girls’ dorm, had been told to avoid going into girls’ rooms when they were getting ready for bed or were in their pajamas.
“Pook responded by expressing ‘concern about being able to visit girls at all hours of the night if he is to do his job of being a watchful, good head of house,’ ’’ the affidavit said.
Pook was also reprimanded for “using crude language in class, pulling a chair out from under a student, and sticking his finger, which he had licked, into a student’s ear,’’ the affidavit said.
He was also reported by a student for threatening to stick his tongue in her ear, and was warned by officials about taking long bike rides alone with a female student, the affidavit revealed.
But when officials from Derryfield School in Manchester, N.H., called St. Paul’s as part of their background check, St. Paul’s officials said Pook was on a personal leave and never disclosed they had fired him for inappropriate behavior, according to court records.
St. Paul’s “separated from Mr. Pook after he violated school rules governing boundaries between faculty and students. The school found no evidence of a sexual relationship between Mr. Pook and a student,’’ St. Paul’s said Wednesday in a statement. “The school leadership at the time should never have given Mr. Pook a recommendation, and the fact that it did not inform Derryfield of Mr. Pook’s boundary issues was a failure for which we apologize,’’ said Michael Hirschfeld, the current rector of the school, in the statement.
“We are cooperating fully with the attorney general. Protecting student well-being is our highest priority, and we have zero tolerance for faculty who endanger students,’’ Mr. Hirschfeld added.
“We have strong boundary policies in place. We train faculty in those policies, and we enforce them. Today, we would never provide a recommendation or reference for any faculty member who violates these policies.’’
In a statement Wednesday, Derryfield officials said Pook had been suspended from that school. The officials promised to cooperate with MacDonald’s investigation and said the criminal charges did not involve Pook’s years at their school.
“The charges do not involve students of Derryfield School,’’ the statement reads. “We will continue to provide a caring and supportive environment for our students, alumni, parents, faculty, and staff.’’
Pook, who lives in Warner, N.H., is to be arraigned March 15 in Merrimack Superior Court in Concord, N.H.
Some of the records in the case — including the name of the former female student — are sealed for the next three months by court order, prosecutors said. But some police affidavits were released by the court Wednesday.
St. Paul’s was one of the region’s prep schools that investigated allegations of misconduct after a 2016 Boston Globe Spotlight Team story that reported on abuse allegations by more than 200 victims at 67 private schools in New England.
St. Paul’s gained national notoriety earlier, as a result of the 2015 trial of a senior accused of raping a 15-year-old classmate as part of a game of sexual conquest. The senior, Owen Labrie, was acquitted of rape but found guilty of misdemeanor sexual assault and other crimes.
Danny McDonald of the Globe staff contributed to this report. John R. Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe. com. Follow him on Twitter @JREbosglobe.
