Politics
Trial of Music Teacher Accused of Sexual Abuse Stirs Painful Memories
Paul Geer, a former music instructor at a reform school in upstate New York, faced charges of sexual activity with children.
A courtroom can become a sort of time machine.
The criminal trial of Paul Geer, a former music teacher, played out in federal court in Albany, N.Y., last week. But testimony and photographic evidence transported everyone back to the 1990s and early 2000s to a town 125 miles away, Hancock, and to the Family Foundation School’s secluded campus in the woods.
The reform school is long closed and has settled several lawsuits by former students accusing Mr. Geer of sexual abuse over decades. But the trial brought the place back into the public spotlight.
There is a photo of a large basement lined with bunks. The female students slept there, beneath Mr. Geer’s home. There is the barn, where he held practice for his young singers.
Middle-age men and women sat in the witness stand and were asked the same question: “Do you see Paul Geer here today?”
They scanned the room, resting their eyes on the stout, bald, bespectacled man hunched at the defense table. Some knew him when he was in his 20s or 30s. Now he is 57.
They all pointed — him.
They were asked about how he terrorized them, or worse, decades ago, when they were teenagers.
