Survivor Cecilia Morgan '82 Speaks Out

Over three decades ago, Cecilia Morgan ‘82 suffered ongoing sexual abuse at the hands of Richard Shubart, a former history teacher, department head and admissions officer at the Academy. After the school recently rescinded her confidentiality agreement and allowed her to speak openly, Morgan came forward to tell her story. The Exonian interviewed Morgan about her experience.

“Sexual abuse is devastating for a young person. It’s devastating for anyone, but especially for a young person who is forming their self-perception, their ideas, their sexuality, their relationships with the outside world.”

Morgan explained that, from the outset, her time at Exeter was colored by her vulnerability. “I was incredibly shy when I got to Exeter,” she recalled.She described often feeling isolated and alone as a student, and, consequently, spending more and more time with her advisor, Schubart. “We became very close when he was on sabbatical... that was my second semester lower year… He was my confidant.”As time went on, Morgan’s experience at the Academy became increasingly dominated by her relationship with Schubart and his presence in her life. “We spent a lot of time talking and I spent a lot of time listening to him; it was just nice to me as a shy, insecure person to have a really close bond [with Schubart],” she said. Morgan also elaborated on her own personal familial circumstances ­—“I had a very bad relationship with my father”—and how Schubart came to represent a father figure for her.“I had this close relationship with him and then in my senior year it became a sexual relationship.” Her amorous experience at this point was still quite limited, she noted. “I actually had never dated anybody in my life. I only went on one date at Exeter. I was very immature in that way.”As Morgan developed an increased emotional dependency on her abuser, she remembered thinking, “I guess… [the sex] makes me special to him, and that’s even better.”Given Schubart’s position as a father figure and advisor, Ms. Morgan noted just how devastating her abuse was. “The [relationship] with Mr. Schubart... messed me up... It was like if your mother, your father put the moves on you [and] they started having a sexual relationship with you. It screws you up.”Throughout her senior year, Morgan sought ways to escape the harmful relationship with Schubart. Morgan claimed that her twin sister “told her advisor about it and he did nothing.” The faculty member in question has denied any recollection of that conversation.Morgan herself was in a difficult situation as her own advisor was the perpetrator of the abuse. She attempted to receive support from the health department at the time, saying “I went to an on-campus therapist, in fact, I told Mr. Schubart…‘I think I need to go to the therapist’ and he said ‘That’s a great idea, as long as you don’t tell the therapist about what’s going on between us.’” Morgan recounted multiple conversations throughout the year in which she told her therapist about a faculty member abusing her. Finally, in her last meeting with the therapist, Morgan claims that she explicitly stated that Schubart was her abuser. “To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Schubart was never reported,” she said.Her therapist, although no longer affiliated with the Academy, continues to practice in the town of Exeter. He did not return a request for comment.Moreover, Morgan claimed that other faculty on campus understood the situation and stayed silent. “I’ve since found out that what was going on between me and Mr. Schubart was apparently common knowledge and other adults were aware of it... I wish that adults had spoken out.”Morgan described the extreme frustration she felt at the lack of recourses that were available to her to help her in dealing with the abuse. “I was an isolated, lonely person, and this shouldn’t have happened and it did happen and I didn’t know where to go… I really needed the support and the support wasn’t there.”Morgan pointed to Schubart’s accolades and positions at Exeter as signs that he was not reported, or that any report did not negatively affect his career until years later. Schubart went on to become the Head of the History Department, Head of Admissions, Director of the Washington Intern Program, Head of the Exeter Elderhostel Academy, founder of an alumni summer program, a Bates-Russell Distinguished Faculty Professor and a Madison Fellow, and eventually received emeritus status.Schubart was removed from campus after another one of his victims, Beth Solowey ‘77, reported her abuse in 2011. However, he received a national teaching award the following year and was only stripped of his emeritus status in 2015 after Morgan came forward as well. Morgan also expressed frustration at the fact that she had not been informed by the school that the reason for Schubart’s departure was his history of sexual abuse and that she was not the only victim of the former teacher. She stated that if she had been informed that there was another Schubart victim when the other victim reported her story to the school, “It would have saved me a couple years of dealing with all of this, dealing with therapy, dealing with self-doubt…. It would have started the healing process a lot sooner.”Morgan has continued to seek help from therapists in the decades after she graduated in an attempt to heal from these traumatic experiences. She described the insecurity she suffered as a result of feeling so isolated in her abuse, saying “when you think that you’re the only person that this has happened to, then you take the blame on yourself.” Morgan claims that had she known about the existence of another victim, she would have realized much earlier “that it’s not me. I wasn’t to blame. I didn’t cause this to happen… This guy is a serial molester, a serial advantage taker of women.”The scars, both emotional and mental, have followed Morgan for a lifetime. As she explained,“Sexual abuse is devastating for a young person. It’s devastating for anyone, but especially for a young person who is forming their self-perception, their ideas, their sexuality, their relationships with the outside world.”Morgan also claimed that, in 1992, following the arrest of former Exeter instructor Larry Bateman for child pornography, she had come forward and informed the principal at the time, Kendra Stearns O’Donnell, of her abuse by an Exeter instructor. Morgan alleges that, because she chose not to disclose Schubart’s identity as the perpetrator, O’Donnell told her that she could do nothing further.Finally, in 2015, Morgan decided to report Schubart to the Academy administration. However, after the initial response from the school, she expressed dissatisfaction with the speed of the investigation and its response. “Exeter said that it was going to conduct a full investigation and interview people that came forward that had been affected by this...I personally never heard from Exeter or its team of lawyers and investigators.”She described her subsequent feeling of helplessness. “I felt powerless. I felt really powerless.” After working with her attorney Mitchell Garabedian and the school to rescind her former confidentiality agreement, Morgan decided to publicly come forward as a sexual abuse survivor to the Boston Globe in an article published on December 27, 2016.Although Morgan still struggles to look upon the Academy with warmth, she stressed the importance of the impact that students who have reached out to her to express support and solidarity have had. “I would love to feel warm about my alma mater. I would love to and I don’t. I’m beginning to, just through communications with former students, but not with the Academy itself.”At the end of the day, Morgan described the experience of coming forward as incredibly empowering and transformative. “I’ve gone from feeling like a victim all my life...to understanding that this was not my fault and that the impact that it had on me is not just a weakness of my own, but that I had every right to feel devastated by it...I feel as though I have gone from victim to survivor.”