File photo courtesy of THE EQUINOX Jeffrey T. Maher

CONCORD – Jeffrey T. Maher, a retired Nashua police captain who was named in December 2018 to the newly created position of Independent Compliance Overseer to monitor St. Paul’s School leadership as part of a settlement in the wake of the school’s sex-assault scandal, abruptly tendered his resignation today.

While his initial meetings with St. Paul’s leadership were encouraging, and their conversations “productive and aligned” with the goals set by the school and the Attorney General’s office,” Maher said in his resignation letter, his relationship with the school began to sour “about 16 months ago,” but “events … of the last few weeks “have created an intolerable working environment.”

The allegations Maher raises in his letter “raise very serious concerns” about the future of the settlement agreement and the overseer position, Attorney General Gordon MacDonald said in a statement issued in response to Maher’s resignation, which is effective immediately.

Maher addressed his letter to Kathleen Giles, the rector of St. Paul’s School, and copied MacDonald. Neither Maher nor MacDonald refer to Giles, or any other St. Paul’s administrators, by name.

MacDonald points out that it was St. Paul’s School officials who, as part of the settlement agreement, proposed hiring Maher for the overseer post, referring to him as “a qualified candidate for the position.”

Maher was subsequently selected for the post “based on his exceptional qualifications,” MacDonald wrote in the statement.

MacDonald also thanked Maher “for his hard work and dedication, particularly in the face of what had plainly become an untenable situation.”

Maher, who began working as independent compliance overseer in February 2019, was tasked with assessing and monitoring the school’s compliance with the terms of the settlement agreement, which, MacDonald said, resolved his office’s investigation into the sex-assault allegations without any criminal proceedings.

Prosecutors took that step, MacDonald said, “in order to facilitate the protection of children at St Paul’s School, and to ensure a system of accountability, oversight, transparency, and training at the school.”

According to the agreement, the oversight period would last up to five years. Maher, as overseer, would “be embedded in the (school) campus,” and would file reports on the school’s compliance at least twice a year with the Attorney General’s office.

St. Paul’s, which for years has been embroiled in allegations of sexual assault and misconduct, was most recently in the news in July, when Lacy Crawford, the former St. Paul’s student whose sex-assault allegations spurred the investigation that led to the settlement agreement, released her book, “Notes on a Silencing.”

In the book, according to a Concord Monitor story in July, Crawford tells of being sexually assaulted by two older students after her junior year – and of “St. Paul’s decades-long efforts to cover it up and how investigations into the school many years later failed to give her a sense of justice,” according to the Monitor story.

Maher’s resignation letter, and MacDonald’s statement on

Maher’s resignation, can be found at www.doj.nh.gov/news/2020/20201019-resignation-maher.htm.

The agreement between MacDonald’s office and St. Paul’s School settling the sex-assault case can be found at

www.doj.nh.gov/news/2018/documents/20180913-st-pauls-report.pdf.

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.

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