House parents at the nation’s richest private school showed at least one student a video designed to convert them from homosexuality, attorneys for the scandal-plagued school now admit in court documents, according to a new report.
The revelation comes one year after school officials blasted the “outrageous” allegation contained in one of two lawsuits filed by former students against the $12 billion Milton Hershey School in Hershey, Pa. Attorneys for the cost-free, co-ed school of 2,000 students from kindergarten through high school established in 1909 now acknowledge in court documents that one student was shown a video aimed at changing a person’s sexual orientation, Philly.com reports.
But school officials claim they’re unsure whether the tape was shown to Adam Dobson, a former student now suing the school in federal court after claiming he was forced to watch a 60-minute gay conversion tape to change his sexual orientation.
“We would pray together to have God help me from being gay,” Dobson told his attorneys, adding that he was told by his house parents of “terrible things” that happened to other homosexuals.
Dobson, who was expelled from the school in 2013 after undergoing treatment for depression, told school officials he was considering taking his own life, according to his lawsuit alleging he was expelled for having suicidal thoughts.
Dobson has told his attorneys he was forced to watch a video by pastor Sy Rogers, who bills himself on his website as a “leading voice regarding sexuality, cultural themes and God’s character.”
Rogers, according to Philly.com, had been an official with Exodus International, an organization aiming to transform homosexuals that dissolved in 2013. A disclaimer on the video, “One of the Boys,” indicated that minors should not watch the tape, although Dobson claims he was a freshman in high school around 2010 when he was mandated to watch the film, which compared homosexuality to prostitution and adultery. Rogers is currently based in New Zealand, according to his website.
The house parents — surrogates who are school employees and care for the students’ roughly 175 homes on the sprawling campus — who showed the video to the unidentified students have been identified in discovery documents as Deanna and Andrew Slamans.
Deanna Slamans, a graduate of the school, left the Hershey School last month, according to her LinkedIn account, but had served as its curriculum supervisor for social emotional learning. Andrew Slamans, meanwhile, identified himself as the director of the school’s home life division on his LinkedIn account. Neither could be reached for comment, Philly.com reports.
When attorneys for Dobson and Abbie Bartels — a 14-year-old girl who committed suicide in 2013 after being told she couldn’t return for her eighth-grade graduation — sued last July, Hershey School spokeswoman Lisa Scullin blasted the video accusation in a statement to Philly.com as an “outrageous allegation” and a practice that the administration would never permit or condone.
But in a statement released Friday, Scullin said the school does not “promote or endorse” gay conversion therapy while claiming a “full picture” in the Dobson case will become evident once witnesses testify.
“Unequivocally, the school does not promote or endorse any program that could be remotely characterized as gay conversion therapy,” the statement read. “Any suggestion otherwise is a gross mischaracterization of our values and the environment on our campus.”
Jack Dresher, a fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, said there’s no scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed by conversion therapy.
“These are techniques that have no proven value but they can shame and humiliate a child by distorting the meaning of being gay and creating the false impression that the child is defective,” he told Philly.com. “There is nothing professional about this.”
In a statement to The Post on Thursday, school officials said the allegations regarding the purported video are “categorically and unequivocally” untrue.
“No such video is a part of any MHS curriculum or programming, and neither the School nor its lawyers have ever said anything to the contrary,” Scullin wrote in an email. “This former student has filed suit in federal court, and MHS will share the facts of the case at the appropriate time. The case contends this individual was discriminated against based upon his mental health. He was not and the circumstances of his enrollment at the School will be made clear in the proper forum – the court where he has initiated the case. It is unfortunate that a reporter’s bias led him to make assumptions based on one sentence in a months-old discovery interrogatory leaked to him to create an inflammatory distraction.”