- Notes on a Silencing is a purposefully named, brutal and brilliant retort to the asinine question of 'Why now?' The story is crafted with the precision of a thriller, with revelations that sent me reeling.'
- Paul’s School, Notes on a Silencing could begin Truth and Reconciliation, or a chance to be delivered, as the school prayers ask: ‘From the cowardice that dare not face new truths, from the lazy contentment with half-truths, and from the arrogance of thinking we know all truths.’”.
- When Notes on a Silencing hit bookstores in the summer of 2020, even amidst a global pandemic, it sent shockwaves through the country. Not only did this intimate investigative memoir usher in a media storm of coverage, but it also prompted the elite St. Paul's School to issue a formal apology to the author, Lacy Crawford, for its handling of her report of sexual assault by two fellow students nearly thirty years.
- 'Notes on a Silencing' is the book that everyone thinking about attending St. Paul's should read. I was there in the 1960s. The book evokes the essence of all that SPS is, should be and might become. It calls for reformation, which we can only pray will happen. 'Notes on a Silencing' is also the book that every mature person should read.
Emma Crawford's Sister Lucy Crawford
Notes On Silencing
Notes On Silencing Goodreads
Notes on a Silencing is a purposefully named, brutal and brilliant retort to the asinine question of 'Why now?' The story is crafted with the precision of a thriller, with revelations that sent me reeling” —Jessica Knoll, New York Times.
Lacy Crawford’s memoir about the assault she experienced during her time as a student at St. Paul’s School, an elite boarding school in Concord, N.H., is a particularly devastating entry in the #MeToo genre. Crawford, who contracted herpes from one of the fellow students who assaulted her and suffered debilitating pain as it went undiagnosed, tried to report the assault in 1991, the year after it occurred. But she was told that she would be expelled from the school if a criminal investigation were to launch and that she would find it difficult to enroll at any other school of similar stature on the East Coast. Crawford dropped her early attempts at justice, and those associated with the school managed to conceal the truth even as other students were victimized. She has found some vindication. In 2017, St. Paul published a report that substantiated abuse claims going back to the 1940s, and the current head of the school, Kathy Giles, does not dispute Crawford’s account. But the reckoning has come late for a woman who has suffered since her teens. This is not a story of justice served but rather a case study in the ways storied and moneyed institutions protect their reputations by grinding down the will of the survivors who challenge them.
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