Music Instructor Is Charged With Taking Youngsters on Journeys to Abuse Them

The music instructor’s lessons on the strict, no-nonsense reform college within the woods of upstate New York would appear to be a youngster’s respite amid all the foundations, a spot for expression and discovery.

However a felony indictment unsealed Thursday portrayed that instructor as a domineering and abusive tyrant who, throughout one-on-one journeys away from college and out of doors the state, raped his teenage college students or compelled them into sexual exercise.

The indictment follows years of lawsuits which have portrayed the Family Foundation School, a small boarding academy in rural Delaware County, as one thing nearer to an unsupervised, violent jail.

The instructor, Paul Geer, 56, was arrested Wednesday night in Hancock, N.Y., the place he lives a brief distance from the location of the varsity, which closed in 2014. He was charged with six counts associated to bringing three completely different youngsters throughout state traces to interact in illegal sexual exercise.

Mr. Geer pleaded not responsible at an arraignment earlier than a federal Justice of the Peace choose in Syracuse, N.Y., on Thursday, and was denied launch pending a detention listening to set for Monday.

For former college students on the college, his arrest vindicated a few years of on-line campaigns and authorized battles involving that place and, particularly, that man.

Liz Boysick, 41, recognized as “Victim 2” within the indictment, was 16 when Mr. Geer drove her to Pennsylvania forward of a category journey there and compelled her to carry out oral intercourse in his van, she mentioned. Many years later, she was in courtroom to see Mr. Geer in shackles in the course of the listening to.

“It was really powerful hearing what mattered to me counts,” she mentioned afterward. “He will not get one more tear out of me. Now is the time for me to live my life.”

Mr. Geer was in his 20s and dwelling along with his mother and father when an older couple approached him at a choral recital he was main and provided him a job on the Household College, as it’s recognized, on the spot. They had been Tony and Betty Argiros, who based the varsity within the Eighties.

For Mr. Geer, that started a profession of greater than 20 years on the college, which billed itself as a final resort for fogeys pissed off and distraught by their youngsters’s drug or alcohol abuse or behavioral points. Former college students have mentioned he requested private questions on their intercourse lives and singled out youngsters to remain behind with him after class, which was held in a purple barn beside a pond.

The indictment described Mr. Geer as a bully who, along with subjecting college students to “repeated sexual abuse,” compelled them to eat moldy meals, haul heavy a great deal of rocks across the campus and endure communication blackouts for lengthy durations.

On three separate events outlined within the indictment, Mr. Geer drove a scholar — two boys and a woman, ages 14 to 17 — out of state and compelled the coed into sexual exercise.

Mike Milia, 45, of Brooklyn, is recognized as “Victim 1” within the indictment. He was 14 in 1994 when Mr. Geer took him on a fishing journey to Maine and sexually abused him, in line with the indictment.

On the way in which again to Hancock, Mr. Geer “told him not to tell anyone of what had just happened,” in line with a lawsuit filed by Mr. Milia in 2019. That case is pending.

Mr. Geer was questioned about taking a minor to Maine in a deposition that very same yr.

“In hindsight, I shouldn’t have done that,” he mentioned, however he denied any sexual abuse.

“I think I behaved badly in a lot of ways,” Mr. Geer mentioned within the deposition, referring to his time working on the college. “I definitely was very aggressive.”

The couple that based the varsity later retired, and their son, Emmanuel Argiros, who goes by Michael, took over day-to-day operations earlier than it closed. In depositions in 2018 and 2021, the youthful Mr. Argiros denied listening to reviews of abuse whereas on the college.

In 2018, The New York Times published an article describing a collection of suicides and deadly overdoses by former college students. Extra former college students later came forward to explain horrific situations on the college.

Liz Ianelli is a former scholar who recounted her time on the college and described the abuses inflicted on her there in her 2023 ebook, “I See You, Survivor.” She recalled being wrapped from neck to ankle in a blanket that was duct-taped closed, and left on the ground of an empty room, shimmying towards a bowl of tuna for meals.

She was among the many former college students who rapidly organized journey to Syracuse on Thursday for the courtroom listening to.

Sitting close by was Mr. Milia, watching the person who had taken him to Maine 30 years in the past.

“This guy threatened my life when I was 14 years old,” Mr. Milia mentioned after the listening to. “When he walked through that door, it was the first time I felt like he couldn’t hurt me anymore. I am not scared anymore.”