Arthur Peekel Pleads Guilty In Court Case

Former Exeter Admissions Officer Arthur Peekel pled guilty to a charge of sexual assault in the Rockingham County Court last Friday, after victim Lawrence Jenkens ’77 came forward with allegations of abuse dating back to the 70s.

“We need to make the consequences for sexual assault more serious—it is the only way to deter potential perpetrators.”

In 1973, when Jenkens was 14, he spent two nights on the Exeter Campus as a prospective student. He spent the second night with Peekel and was sexually harassed by the former admissions officer. Jenkens said he “spoke up about this incident immediately after it happened and again in the early 1990s when [he] wrote about it to Principal Emerita O’Donnell.”  However, the administration allowed Peekel to finish the school year before being dismissed and quietly relocating, with no consequences. After these events occurred, he was named Illinois Teacher of the Year twice in a row.

At court last week, with the support of his wife, brother and classmates, Jenkens recounted his experience to the judge. To him, Peekel’s confession came as a surprise—“Hearing him say he was guilty was something I never expected would happen. In that sense it was a vindication,” Jenkens said. Though the process was difficult for Jenkens to go through, he was pleased “to have a chance to speak.”

After making his story public, Jenkens heard stories from other men who had been molested by Peekel as early as 1965. He also expressed doubt about the sincerity of Peekel’s remorse, saying, “I’m not sure he truly believes he is guilty because pedophiles often don’t believe they’ve done anything wrong.”

Even though he had not officially enrolled at Exeter until after the event occurred, Jenkens still decided to attend the school for all four years. However, the self doubt and anger he felt because of Peekel’s crime against him marred his time at Exeter. “The question I struggle with most often is why I attended Exeter after this episode,” he said. “I think the answer is that I needed to prove to everyone that ‘it’ didn’t matter, that this one event had no lasting impact on me. In retrospect, it was probably not such a good idea to enroll at PEA, but I did.”

However, since Peekel pled guilty, Jenkens has been able to more clearly appreciate all that he got out of Exeter. “I think what I gained from an Exeter education was invaluable,” he said. “The resolution of this case allows me to see my experience at Exeter in a more balanced way.”

However, Jenkens still maintains that the school needs to take initiative to better assist its victims and to prosecute offenders in a just way. Previously, when he attempted to confide in school administrators, no action was taken, and he had “no idea then that there was any possibility of a prosecution.”

Jenkens is confident that the school is currently moving in the right direction, after Principal MacFarlane reached out to him and offered to meet with the family. “I wrote about my experience on Facebook [after the prosecution of Rick Schubart]—PEA initiated the legal case by reporting my case to Exeter Police Department,” he said.

The current problem, according to Jenkens, lies not in Exeter, but in the general culture regarding sexual assault across the country. “We need to make the consequences for sexual assault more serious—it is the only way to deter potential perpetrators,” Jenkens said. “In the past there was very little in the way of consequences for abusers who could move on to new jobs and new potential victims.”

For Jenkens, the trial presented an opportunity for him to come to terms with the incident that no one had responded to years before. “Peekel’s guilty plea was for me both a vindication and closure—closure that I’m not sure I was aware I didn’t have,” he said.