The State Police investigation comes two weeks after The New York Times published a report detailing physical violence, emotional abuse and transcript fraud at T.M. Landry, a small private school in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, which has been featured on national television, showered with donor dollars and hailed as a model for preparing African-American children for college.
Viral videos of students getting into Harvard, Yale, Wesleyan and other elite institutions attracted the attention of the “Today” show, “Ellen” and other news media and entertainment outlets, but many of those students’ transcripts were filled with courses not taken and grades not earned, while personal essays and recommendations were embellished with hardscrabble stories that bore little resemblance to the students’ real lives.
But the abuse allegations may prove to be the downfall of the school’s founders and chief administrators, Michael and Tracey Landry.
“The Louisiana State Police Bureau of Investigations was contacted by the Breaux Bridge Police Department regarding allegations of physical abuse concerning T.M. Landry College Preparatory,” said Trooper Thomas C. Gossen, a spokesman for the Louisiana State Police. “The investigation is active and ongoing with no further information available at this time.”
Since The Times published its article, more than a dozen people have reported additional incidents of what they called abuse to authorities, according to a law enforcement official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the cases. Those statements include allegations that Michael Landry placed a developmentally disabled boy in a closet, lifted another student by his collar and shoved him to the ground on his knees, and hit elementary school students with a belt.
The local sheriff’s office also released graphic details of a battery charge in 2012 that The Times reported last month. While it was previously known that Michael Landry pleaded guilty in that case to whipping the student, the report detailed additional allegations of choking, slapping and forcing a child to eat rat feces.
The report included a witness statement from a 13-year-old student who said that he, too, had been whipped, choked and lifted off the ground by the neck. The student accused Michael Landry of stepping on his face and kicking him in the stomach.
The Breaux Bridge Police Department also reopened a criminal investigation into whether Michael Landry battered a student named Nyjal Mitchell, who had spoken with The Times.
“These families feel that the current law enforcement response is long overdue,” said Ashlee McFarlane, a lawyer at Gerger Khalil & Hennessy in Houston, who is helping dozens of parents, students and former staff members work with investigators.
The Landrys have denied abusing children but refused to discuss the Mitchell case. They did not respond to requests by email, text and telephone for comment on the State Police investigation and the new allegations of abuse.
After being inundated with calls and reports last week, the local police met with representatives from the St. Martin Parish District Attorney’s Office, the parish sheriff’s office and the State Police to discuss how to proceed. Because the school has had four locations over the past 13 years, the abuse of some of the children may have taken place in different jurisdictions. The law enforcement agencies decided that the State Police should lead the investigations.
McFarlane called the involvement of the State Police encouraging and said the families she worked with “hope to see a thorough yet urgent investigation into their complaints.”
But the halting response of local law enforcement has left some families skeptical that Michael Landry will be held accountable.
Mitchell’s family filed complaints with the Breaux Bridge police in February 2017, alleging multiple instances of choking, dragging and hitting. But a case summary obtained by The Times showed the police believed the incidents occurred outside the city limits, and sent the file to the sheriff’s department in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana’s equivalent of a county. The sheriff’s department interviewed the Mitchell family but did not indicate whether it was moving forward.
“I feel like the local police departments failed us,” said Mitchell’s mother, Mary Mitchell. “What message are we sending if we tell them to speak up if someone is hurting you, and then say, ‘You should’ve said it sooner,’ or ‘Not enough people saw it’?”
Students said Michael Landry coerced them into saying they did not witness what happened to Mitchell. One graduate, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said she and her peers kept Mitchell’s assault a secret because they wanted to get into college.
After The Times’ story, the Breaux Bridge police determined that at least one incident occurred within town limits and reopened the investigation.
In response to a request for comment on the Mitchell case, the St. Martin Parish sheriff’s department said it could share information about only the 2012 incident, and that other cases pertained to “potential criminal litigation” and could not be discussed.
The details of that 2012 case were strikingly similar to the allegations later made by Mitchell.
In that case, Landry was accused of choking, slapping and slamming a 12-year-old boy onto the floor, then putting his foot on the child’s head. He is said to have dragged the student, made him kneel and forced him to eat rat feces. Michael Landry admitted to investigators that he had whipped the boy with his belt.
The investigators took photos of the child’s bruises and welts, and captured text messages from Michael Landry to the parent admitting that he had whipped her child. Landry told investigators that the boy’s mother had given him permission to physically discipline her child, but she said that was a lie. Landry pleaded guilty and served a year of probation, according to court documents.
The 2012 episode was reported to the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, but the sheriff’s report noted that the agency declined to investigate “because the report did not meet the legal and policy definition of child abuse and neglect” and because the student no longer attended T.M. Landry.
In a statement this week, a spokeswoman for the agency, Heidi Rogers Kinchen, said the department was not legally obligated to investigate or respond to the recent abuse allegations at T.M. Landry.
The agency only investigates abuse perpetrated by a “caretaker,” Kinchen said, defined in state law as “any person legally obligated to provide or secure adequate care for a child.” That includes parents, guardians, an employee of a public or private day care center and even a tutor, but Kinchen said in an email that “a nonresidential school, including its owners/operators and teachers, would fall outside that definition.”
The Times story also prompted Daphne Hall to report what she said was abuse of her son, who is developmentally delayed, with the Breaux Bridge police. Two students told Hall that Michael Landry had put her son in a closet.
Her son, now 6, told her last week that Landry also placed him in a trash can. Hall said that while attending kindergarten at T.M. Landry, her son would say, “I belong in the trash.” She said Landry had told her that the boy had gotten into the trash can by himself.
“I can’t believe I actually paid for someone to harass and torture my child,” Hall said.
Bryce Cormier, the father of a former T.M. Landry student, said he filed a police report last year accusing Michael Landry of throwing his son to the ground and forcing him to kneel. He placed his children in a new school but could not get official transcripts from T.M. Landry.
His wife, Tanya Cormier, asked the police to help her get her children’s transcripts, according to the police report. The police told the Landrys that withholding the records was “pointless,” and they eventually produced a “report card-type document,” according to the report.
“In that envelope were grades and courses that he didn’t even take,” Bryce Cormier said. “I took it to the new school and the principal said, ‘I can’t do anything with this.' ”
Cameron Gray, who attended T.M. Landry in the 2016-17 school year, said he witnessed Michael Landry run into the building, grab a classmate by the throat and throw him into a closet. He said Landry berated him for his low ACT scores and dim Ivy League prospects, and encouraged his peers to tease him.
“Mike never put his hands on me, but mentally he did,” Gray said. “The more you get teased, the more you want to get better, and the more you don’t do better, the deeper you fall into sadness.”
His parents pulled him out of the school last summer after his mother discovered him on the balcony of his summer vacation rental, contemplating suicide.
“Mental abuse leaves a different type of scar,” Gray said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.