A music teacher's lessons at a strict, no-nonsense rehabilitation school in the woods of upstate New York would seem like a place of respite, expression and discovery for teenagers amidst all the rules.
But a criminal complaint unsealed Thursday describes the teacher as a domineering, abusive tyrant who raped and forced sexual acts on teenage students during one-on-one trips from school to out-of-state. It is described as having done something like this.
The indictment follows a years-long lawsuit that has portrayed Family Foundation School, a small boarding school in rural Delaware County, as akin to a violent prison with no supervision.
Teacher Paul Geer, 56, was arrested Wednesday night in Hancock, New York. He lives a short distance from the site of the school, which closed in 2014. He was charged with six crimes related to bringing three different children across state lines. engaging in illegal sexual activity;
Geer pleaded not guilty Thursday at an arraignment before a federal judge in Syracuse, New York, but was denied release pending a detention hearing scheduled for Monday.
For former students at the school, his arrest vindicated a years-long online campaign and legal battle involving the place and the man in particular.
Liz Voycik, 41, named “Victim 2” in the indictment, said she was 16 when Mr. Geer drove her to Pennsylvania before a school trip and forced her to perform oral sex on him in his van. It is said that it was. Decades later, she went to court and saw Mr. Gere in her shackles during a hearing.
“It was really powerful to hear things that were important to me being counted,” she said later. “He won't shed any more tears from me. It's time for me to live my life.”
Gere was in his 20s and living with his parents, when an elderly couple approached him at a choir recital he was hosting, and on the spot he was offered a job at Family School (commonly known as Family School). I made an offer. They were Tony and Betty Argyros, who founded the school in the 1980s.
For Geer, it was the beginning of a career that spanned more than 20 years at the school. The school billed itself as a last resort for distraught parents frustrated by their children's drug and alcohol abuse or behavioral problems. His former students say he asked them personal questions about their sex lives and selected children to stay with him after classes were held in a red barn by a pond.
According to the indictment, Geer subjected students to “repeated sexual abuse,” forced them to eat moldy food, forced them to carry heavy rocks around campus, and forced them to endure long periods of communication outages. He is said to have been a bully.
On three separate occasions outlined in the indictment, Geer drove two male and one female students, ages 14 to 17, out of state and forced them to perform sexual acts.
Mike Milia, 45, of Brooklyn, is identified in the indictment as “Victim 1.” According to the indictment, Geer took the boy on a fishing trip to Maine in 1994 when he was 14 years old and sexually abused him.
On the way back to Hancock, Gere “told her not to tell anyone about what had just happened,” according to a lawsuit Milia filed in 2019. This lawsuit is currently pending.
Mr. Geer was questioned in a deposition that year about taking the minor to Maine.
“In hindsight, I shouldn't have done that,” he said, but denied sexual abuse.
“I think I misbehaved in many ways,” Geer said in the affidavit, referring to his time working at the school. “I was definitely very aggressive.”
The couple who founded the school later retired, and their son Emmanuel Argyros (also known as Michael) took over day-to-day operations before the school closed. In depositions in 2018 and 2021, the younger Mr. Argyros denied hearing any reports of abuse while he was at the school.
In 2018, The New York Times published an article describing a series of suicides and fatal overdoses by former students. Since then, many more former students have come forward and described horrific conditions at the school.
Liz Iannelli, a former student, reflected on her time at the school and described the abuse she suffered there in her 2023 book, “I See You, Survivor.'' She said she had been wrapped in a blanket from her neck to her ankles, duct-taped shut, and left on the floor of an empty room, stumbling toward a bowl of tuna to eat. I remembered.
She was one of the former students who quickly arranged a trip to Syracuse for the court hearing Thursday.
Milia sat nearby, watching the man who took her to Maine 30 years ago.
“This man threatened my life when I was 14 years old,” Miria said after the hearing. “When he walked through that door, for the first time I felt like he couldn't hurt me anymore. I wasn't scared anymore.”