EXETER Ex-PEA staffer pleads guilty to sex assault Peekel receives suspended sentence

BRENTWOOD — Friday was a rather ironic day for Lawrence Jenkens. While his former Phillips Exeter Academy classmates celebrated the first day of their 40th reunion at the prestigious boarding school, Jenkens sat in courtroom 5 at Rockingham Superior Court, confronting the man who sexually assaulted him at the prep school when he was 14-years-old.

Former admissions officer Arthur Peekel, 75, of Palatine, Illinois, pleaded guilty to one count of sexual assault Friday and was given a one-year suspended prison sentence, as well as a $1,200 fine for assaulting Jenkens in November 1973. He will be required to register as a sex offender and partake in counseling.

Rockingham County Attorney Patricia Conway told the court Jenkens spent two nights as a prospective student on the Phillips Exeter campus in 1973, where the second night he stayed in Peekel’s home. Conway said two cots were pushed up against Peekel’s bed, where Jenkens pretended to be asleep while Peekel assaulted him that night.

“The victim was terrified,” Conway said. Jenkens called his mother the next day, telling her of the incident.

They would later meet with now-deceased principal Richard Day to tell him of the assault. After his time at Phillips Exeter, Peekel went on to be named Illinois Teacher of the Year for 1991 to 1992.

Police were able to prosecute the decades-old case because once Peekel moved out of New Hampshire, he froze the statute of limitations on the assault.

Jenkens was accompanied to court by his wife, brother and former Phillips Exeter classmates. He spoke directly to the judge while making his victim impact statement, making no eye contact with Peekel who sat to his right.

“I was scared to death that night,” Jenkens told the court. “In my experience, children who were abused were murdered. I assumed that night that I was going to die. The next morning when I wasn’t dead, I still had the impact at the age of 14 facing the possibility of my own mortality. It was extremely frightening.”

Jenkens spoke of how he still decided to attend Phillips Exeter Academy, graduating in 1977. He said he left school with “not a sense of my potential as a young man but instead with the sense of grave doubt about my abilities, and very little sense of self worth.”

“I also found it extremely difficult to have any sort of intimate relationship with another human being,” he said. “It wasn’t until after 10 years that I allowed another person to touch me. I still am not someone who hugs someone else very easily. There is still a physical aversion to touch in even that inept, friendly way.”

Jenkens said in December of last year he received an anonymous letter that was sent to his office, where he works for the University of North Carolina system. The letter included profanities, accusing Jenkens of making up the assault. The letter also said Peekel was “10 times” the man Jenkens would ever be.

“The letter described in many ways the way I had come to view myself through the lens of what happened to me so many years earlier,” Jenkens said.

Jenkens said he wanted to use his statement as a message to other sexual assault survivors, that closure is an important piece of the journey. It was also a call to Phillips Exeter Academy itself, where “passing the trash needs to stop.”

“I want Phillips Exeter Academy to understand that abusing children is a grievous thing and it isn’t right to ignore it,” he said. “I think that passing the trash needs to stop. I think that Exeter’s legacy to me is one of fear, anxiety and self-loathing. I want to see an openness and support system for victims of this kind of crime.”

Jenkens said he had been overwhelmed by the support of friends, family and strangers since he went public with his assault last year.

After the hearing, Jenkens told reporters others had reached out to him claiming they were also abused by Peekel.

“One of them was before me, one was after, and one was a long time after,” Jenkens said. “All of the evidence suggests that pedophiles abuse children more than once.”

Jenkens said he would not be partaking in his class reunion activities this weekend, as it was too raw, and he felt, not right for him.