SHERIFF BABEU ALLEGED TO HAVE 17 YEAR OLD STUDENT LOVER WHEN HEADMASTER AT DeSisto School...Babeu's sister says..
The ABC15 Investigators traveled across Massachusetts and tracked down reports that have never been released.
The documents show that during Babeu’s tenure the school was not licensed. Other allegations include detailed instances of physical and sexual abuse.
Holli Nielsen was a student of DeSisto while Babeu was Headmaster.
“It's not unreasonable to say we were cult-like,” said Nielsen.
SEVERE PUNISHMENTS
When the rules at the school were broken, student faced serious consequences.
Nielsen told us about strict punishments and how each punishment had a special name.
“Take a verb, add an -ed to the end and that's a DeSisto term,” said Nielsen.
One of the punishments was being “sheeted”.
Nielsen told us about her experience of being forced to strip down and wear nothing but a sheet in front of her peers.
“That’s how I spent my 16th birthday,” said Nielsen. “It was just miserable.”
The state documents obtained by ABC15 also reveal students "strip searched" each other and "routinely took group showers"... "leading to sexual abuse."
Served as headmaster for the now-defunct DeSisto School in Stockbridge, Mass. from 1999 to 2001. When Babeu -- a retired major in the Army National Guard and an ex-police officer -- was in charge, the Massachusetts Office of Child Care Services launched an investigation into repeated claims of physical and sexual abuse from students at the private boarding school, ABC15 is reporting.
More questionable still: Babeu's older sister Lucy told the news station that she confronted her brother after finding a 17-year-old student from the school, which services troubled teens, living with him. She noted: “I said what is this student from Desisto doing here? He says, 'Lucy, he's my boyfriend. I love him.'"
Lucy claims her brother, once considered one of his state's rising Republican stars, was clearly having a relationship with the student, who has not been identified: "I said, 'Paul, get a hold of yourself here,'" said Lucy. "You were his teacher! You were his Executive Director! You can't do this."
At age 17, the student would have been the legal age of consent in Massachusetts.
Babeu, 43, has denied claims that he threatened former lover Jose Orozco with deportation back to Mexico, but has acknowledged that he is gay. "I'm here to say that all these allegations ... are absolutely completely false except for the issues that refer to me as being gay," he is quoted by the Associated Press is saying. "Because that's the truth."
