#Elan quickcal trial

One former schoolmate even testified in a pre-trial hearing that Skakel told him, “I am going to get away with murder, I am a Kennedy.”īut as Skakel tells it, the other students and faculty had tortured him to get him to confess. While at the school, Skakel allegedly confessed to murdering Moxley. Skakel, a Kennedy relative, was suspected of killing his neighbor Martha Moxley in 1975 when they were both 15 - just a couple of years before Skakel was sent to the Élan School.

#Elan quickcal trial

Though Élan’s harsh tactics were not a secret, the school got an unwanted boost of publicity when one of its former students was put on trial for murder in 2002. YouTube/ The Cult In A Boarding School A typical example of public humiliation for a student at the Élan School. It took a murder trial and an online campaign to finally close the school’s doors for good.

Some wars are worth fighting.”ĭespite the allegations, parents continued to pay upwards of $50,000 to send their children to the Élan School for years. Responding to reports of trauma at Élan, a school lawyer said: “People who fought in wars have nightmares, too. But over 30 years later, allegations surfaced that he’d actually been beaten to death in The Ring after he had complained of a headache.īut school administrators long dismissed accusations from students. died at the school in 1982, his family was told that the cause was a brain aneurysm. If students broke any of these rules, they were often screamed at by their classmates for about an hour in a punishment called a “General Meeting,” forced to wear humiliating signs or costumes, or even coerced into fighting other students in “The Ring” - a makeshift circle of their peers.Īccording to some accounts, these forced boxing matches resulted in at least one student’s death. Students were reportedly forbidden from taking a shower longer than three minutes, being in the bathroom for too long, writing without permission, looking out the window, or simply rubbing staff members the wrong way. Matt Hoffman, who attended the school from 1974 to 1976, called it a “sadistic, brutal, violent, soul-eating hellhole.” He and others recall tactics that included restraints, humiliation, and corporal punishment. “There are others who will swear that Joe Ricci was the devil.” “There are people who will swear on a stack of Bibles that saved their lives,” said Ed Staffin, who graduated from Élan in 1978. They generally fall into two camps: those who saw their education as abuse and those who saw it as a necessary reform. Facebook An undated photo showing a group of Élan School students.įor decades, students in grades eight through twelve passed through the Élan School.