Behind the storied walls of America's most elite private schools, whose graduates rank among the crème de la crème of society, lie dark and scandalous secrets, secrets involving rape, sexual abuse, drug use, cheating and bullying.

Student pregnancies where the baby died after being hidden under a bed, masturbation rituals and illicit teacher affairs plagued these schools where famous alumni included the Kennedys, the Bushes, captains of industry like the Rockefellers and literati like Gore Vidal and John Irving.

'Every school has it secrets: either known to all but never spoken of, or known to just a few until a moment of searing revelation,' as told in this collection of past published stories, Vanity Fair's Schools for Scandal: The Inside Dramas at 16 of America's Most Elite Campuses, edited by Graydon Carter and published by Simon & Schuster on August 15.

Skull and Bones

The Skull and Bones secret society is believed to have strange rituals where members have to recount their sexual histories while masturbating inside a coffin

One of Yale University's super-elite secret undergraduate societies, Skull and Bones meets in tombs. and counts some of the world's most powerful people as members. 'Bonesmen' include three U.S. presidents, two Supreme Court justices, scores of Cabinet members, writers, and titans of industry

The origin of the society remains shrouded in mystery but it was formed in 1832 after a Yale student, William Russell, later a Civil War general and Connecticut state representative, returned from studying in Germany and formed a chapter.

According to Greek legend, the goddess of eloquence, Eulogia, rose up to the heavens in 322 B.C when the Greek orator Demosthenes died and she returned and took up residence with the Yale Club in 1832.

All members use the number 322 as a code for something important in their lives and at meetings, sing 'sacred anthems' about her.

'Perhaps the most prevalent rumor about Bones is that initiates must lie naked in a coffin and masturbate while recounting their sexual histories', according to writer, Alexandra Robbins.

The society is one of the most elite at Yale and is so secretive that few know the exact origin. It was formed in 1832 by William Russell who would later become a Civil War general and Connecticut state representative

Famous members of the society include former President George W. Bush and former United States Secretary of State John Kerry

At Sunday night meetings, an event called 'Connubial Bliss requires that a member stand before the painting of a woman and recount his entire sexual history while other members sing.

'The club's deepest secret may be its most obvious: the bonds between Bonesmen often supersede others'.

Elite Yale and Skull and Bones graduates: Former Secretary of State John Kerry, William F. Buckley Jr, Presidents George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, William Howard Taft

Miss Porter's School

The Hartford, Connecticut school is known for being rigorous and for churning out elite graduates. But in 1976 the school had its first scandal when a student secretly gave birth on campus with the baby dying soon after

The private college prep school for girls located an affluent suburb of Hartford, Connecticut became known as 'a finishing school', or 'a term you might associate with wearing Mummy's pearls and knowing how to set a table', writes author Eugenia Peretz.

Sarah Porter, the daughter of a minister, founded the school in 1843 and hoped to make those girls 'good Christians, and good wives and mothers'. The point of being rich was you didn't have to work but you must exhibit your wealth by wearing fancy clothes.

With students from New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and the Mainline outside of Philadelphia, the girls had nicknames such as Bunky, Flossie, Hiho, A-Bee, B-Zee, Tug and Poo.

'Miss Porter's was an island of correctness' and 'for the right kind of Wasp, this convent-like rigor was heaven'.

A perfect Miss Porter's student, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy wrote of her ambition on her yearbook page: 'Not to be a housewife'.

In the sixties Miss Porter's clung to its ancient and racist attitudes about black, Irish and Jewish people. Everyone had to pretend they were Episcopalian.

You couldn't be too fat or too thin, there was no smoking or drinking, no gum chewing, no reading of popular novels, no walking into town without special permission and no talking to anyone in town.

It was an island of correctness with little human contact outside of those gates – until senior Tatum Bass wasn't feeling the love in 2009.

Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy was considered a perfect student at Miss Porter's and wrote in her yearbook that she was known for her wit and that she didn't want to be a housewife

Tatum was so unhappy with the verbal abuse she had suffered by a group of girls, and the headmistress, Kate Windsor, did nothing to stop the harassment. Tatum claimed the emotional distress caused her to cheat on a test for which she got suspended and then expelled.

Miss Porter's informed Tatum's college of choice, Vanderbilt University of the cheating and Tatum was rejected.

Tatum's parents filed a lawsuit against the school alleging that Tatum, an honor student from Beaufort, South Carolina, had been verbally abused for weeks.

As student activities coordinator for the student government, Tatum had suggested the school participate in a multi-school prom.

A secret society of girls calling themselves the Oprichniki, named after a 16th century Russian torture squad, began calling her 'retarded'. They yelled 'f*** you' at her in front of hundreds of people and taunted her in text messages and on Facebook – all with no intervention by the school.

Miss Porter's disabled Tatum's school email address, Internet access and then expelled her.

Windsor defended her position as headmistress saying, 'We actually create these rites of passage where girls get anxious'. The positive side is that it teaches girls to be prepared'.

It wasn't the first time Miss Porter's was caught up in scandal.

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy and Mimi Alford, who claims to have carried on a secret affair with JFK, both graduated from the prep school

In 1976, one seemingly overweight girl from the Midwest, came to Miss Porter's three months pregnant, with the school none the wiser.

In mid-November, she skipped dinner, went to her dorm and gave birth to a baby boy in the bathroom.

She cleaned up, wrapped the baby in a blanket, stashed him under her bed and returned to study hall.

Suddenly bleeding, she was taken to the infirmary where she confessed what happened. By the time they reached the baby he had suffocated.

The school was shocked. They had no clue the girl was pregnant.

'You feel like you've borne witness to a murder that you could have helped prevent', classmate Avery Rimer recalled.

Elite graduates: Jacqueline Kennedy, Gloria Vanderbilt, Lilly Pulitzer, Barbara Hutton, actress Gene Tierney and ladies with the last names of Rockefeller, Auchincloss, Bouvier, Bush (Dorothy Walker Bush) and Forbes - as well as Mimi Alford who carried on a secret affair with JFK.

Phillips Exeter Academy

Chairman of the drama department at New Hampshire's Phillips Exeter Academy, Lane Bateman responded to knocking at his door one night in July 1992. There stood a local policemen who carried a search warrant and said, 'Let's have a look at your film collection'.

A 'confidential informant' had revealed that Bateman owned a world-class porn collection that featured boys as young as seven.

Bateman insisted he never shipped porn across a state line but they found 'enough videotapes to fill eight footlockers, a 100-foot rope with a hot-water bottle tied to one end and boxer shorts tied to the other end, a case of Albolene makeup remover (Bateman's favorite lubricant), video cameras and editing decks'.

Tapes hidden in a compartment under the bed were labeled 'Ballin' Boys Duo', 'Young Mouthful', and 'Now, Boys'.

A child porn scandal rocked Phillips Exeter Academy in 1992, when the chairman of the drama department was accused of harboring tapes of young boys in the school

From Exeter's point of view, it would have been more convenient if he had killed himself', writes the story's author Jesse Kornbluth.

The following morning Bateman was fired and ordered out of his apartment within two weeks and barred from school property.

This New Hampshire powerhouse had an unblemished reputation up until now.

A media orgy followed a New York Times story that declared the raid found videotapes showing 10 former Exeter boys nude or involved in sex acts, a charge that was untrue but Bateman was convicted in the press and by parents shocked that a pedophile gained access to the exclusive group of students.

Lane Bateman, the chairman of the drama department,kept a large pornography collection featuring boys as young as seven

While Bateman was convicted in Federal District Court in Concord, New Hampshire in the fall of 1992, it was on one count of possessing and two counts of transporting child porn, and one count of forfeiture.

Exeter was having a nervous breakdown with lingering questions – Was Batemen an obsessive sex offender and star of a secret production: Master Bateman and the Boys?

Or was this a charge by a young informant with a grudge?

'Why did he keep that time bomb of kiddie porn ticking under his bed'? writes Kornbluth.

Few of Bateman's students even knew he was gay. He never came out of the closet at school.

'He lived in a dorm for 10 years and there were kids walking in and out of his room late at night in their underwear. If he ever had a chance to do something with a kid, Exeter was it. But that's not Lane', according to a close friend.

'He's heavy into fantasy. These sex movies are the legacy of the closet', a close friend stated.

The confidential informant was Michael Caven, 16 years old at the time that Bateman was 38 and head of the drama department at North Shore High in Glen Head, Long Island when Caven claimed Bateman had seduced him with marijuana and wine – 'having put poppers under my nose, putting Vaseline on his penis and sticking it in me'.

Writers John Irving and Gore Vidal are both graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy

Bateman vehemently denied the allegations.

Caven, also called Michael Pappas, had been verbally and emotionally abused at home and once fled to Bateman's house and claimed he crawled into bed with 'his favorite teacher'..

In a different prosecutor's office, questions might have been raised about Caven's history of drug and alcohol use.

'There's an Exeter tradition of swift justice and the Star Chamber', writer Gore Vidal, class of 1943, told the author, referring to the English court of law that ensured enforcement against socially and politically prominent people.

'There are no rules here until you break one – and then you're on the morning train to Boston'.

His life in ruins from a highly questionable charge, Bateman 'became a living symbol of the fear that makes so many people equate homosexuality with pedophilia'.

He was sentenced to five years in prison without parole in 1993 and died in 2013.

Elite graduates: Daniel Webster, Jay Rockefeller, John Irving and writer Gore Vidal

Marlborough School

The exclusive all-girls Marlborough School in Los Angeles was criticized in March 2014 when a sexually predatory teacher was unmasked

The all-girls, elite private school in the tony section of Los Angeles has been educating girls from California's most prominent families for 126 years. But the school's crisis began in March 2014 when a sexually predatory teacher was unmasked.

The secret was exposed when Mikaela Gilbert-Lurie, a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania at the time, posted a personal essay on a website declaring a flirtation with an unnamed English teacher at an unnamed high school.

She wrote that the teacher confessed his attraction and touched her knee. She complained to school administrators who only required counseling for the teacher.

Scant on details, the essay went viral among graduates of Marlborough on South Rossmore Avenue and eight girls contacted Mikaela via Facebook with their own sordid experiences.

The teacher, Dr. Joseph Koetters, now 49, had a pattern: he validated their insights, pitted them against one another, complained about his wife and kids and created private meetings where he could put his hand on a knee.

He oozed charisma despite being a 'doughy blonde'.

Parents reactions were: 'Big whoop. These are 16- and 17- year old girls. They're flirtatious and dramatic'.

A special investigative committee formed by the board of trustees was assigned to check it out and resolve it. Then everything went wrong.

Teacher Joseph Koetters pleaded guilty to having sex with two students and getting girl pregnant

The committee discovered a 'pattern of misconduct by Joe Koetters' and laid the blame on Barbra Wagner, head of the school.

Koetters first move on Mikaela was the hand on the knee. He told her 'that inscrutable something else lingers in the air'.

'Maybe it was the short skirt of her uniform that drove him so crazy', writes author Eugenia Perez.

Mikaela blew him off, but later said they could be friends. She claimed she needed to concentrate on studies.

But Koetters, now a threat, started kicking her out of class and making provocative comments.

Her mother, a writer, her father, a prominent entertainment lawyer who represented Sandra Bullock, insisted they send those emails to the head of the upper school.

Among the most impressive graduates at Marlborough School are Julie and Tricia Nixon and comedian Melissa Rivers (right)

Wagner had neglected to mention that in 2005, other complaints were made and she brought them up to president of the board John Emerson, who had been Bill Clinton's campaign manager in 1992.

The board stripped Koetters of his department chairmanship and he had to undergo sexual harassment sensitivity training as well as keep away from Mikaela. But he didn't. He would go into her new English classroom and stare at her.

He stayed at Marlborough through 2013 and left for Polytechnic, a prep school in Pasadena.

Wagner resigned because someone's head had to roll but it was really the fault of the Board and Board Chair, claims a past board chair.

The committee sailed over the most scandalous story of Koetters and another Marlborough girl in the early 2000s, Chelsea Burkett. The touching of the knee evolved into a full-blown sexual affair with the minor and she became pregnant.

These prep school secrets are all revealed in the book 'Vanity Fair's Schools For Scandal' out August 15

'He made me feel like the smartest, funniest, most beautiful person walking the planet', Burkett said.

Koetters told her, 'f*** society, f*** social norms'.

'I went from being a cool, confident woman to being a kid. I was like, "F***. I'm so in over my head. I've dug the deepest grave".'

She miscarried two and a half months into the pregnancy.

Burkett contacted Mikaela and they went to see the head of Polytechnic. Koetters resigned that day.

The school failed to protect the girls and allowed a 'severely perverted and dangerous man, to preserve his career and reputation'.

Wreckage at Marlborough impacted fund-raising efforts.

Koetters was arrested in February 2015 and sentenced to one year in county jail.

Elite graduates: Sasha Spielberg, Betsy Bloomingdale, Richard Nixon's daughters Tricia and Julie, and Melissa Rivers.

Transylvania University

in Lexington, Kentucky, one of the oldest private universities in the country and alma mater of two U.S. vice presidents, two Supreme Court justices, fifty senators, governors and actor Ned Beatty, produced its own scandal after years of being one of the largest producers of U.S. statesmen.

In December 2004, two students from prominent Lexington families, walked into the Special Collections Library at the 227-year old liberal arts college to view first editions of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species and four double-size folios of John James Audubon's Birds of America.

Librarian Betty Jean Gooch, who had confirmed the viewing, suddenly felt a taser-tingling on her arm and dropped to the floor.

Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky was the scene of a book heist led by four students who were all considered 'children of privilege'

Her hands and feet were bound with zip ties and a wool cap pulled over her eyes.

Two hours later, police, detectives and forensic teams were on the developing case of the 'Transy Book Heist', known as 'a crime that would one day be listed among the F.B.I.'s all-time significant art-theft cases', writes the story's author, John Falk.

Heist mastermind Spencer Reinhard later admitted the students planned to fail

Four students, all 'children of privilege', hatched the plot after smoking a mountain of weed in a car and one recounting that he had heard a librarian say they had sold a set of the Audubon drawings for $12 million.

Plot mastermind student Spencer Reinhard, a talented artist, scoped out the Special Collections for himself and learned 'there was zero security other than an old lady librarian named B.J. and that people entering had to 'sign a f****** book'.

One of the boys called his 'underworld contact' in New York to move it along. With a payout of $500 in good-faith money and a trip to the big city, Spencer, who was leading the pack, decided the next step was to contact Christie's Auction House for an appraisal.

Through billowing clouds of marijuana smoke, they conjured up 'fantasies of post-heist life in the Mediterranean, complete with sleek catamarans and topless women' – and decided to pull the job in the fall.

They told their parents they were heading off on a ski trip and set out for Manhattan and their appointment with the auction house.

Suspicious of their ill-fitting clothes and looking like they were dressed from a thrift store, Christie's passed on pursuing any further business.

Famous alumni from Transylvania University include president of the Confederate states Jefferson Davis (right) and founder of Texas Stephen F. Austin

Back in Kentucky, the F.B.I. and Lexington police had them under surveillance and listened to every word.

A SWAT team broke into their bungalow hideout and a task force team of 20 busted Warren Lipka, Spencer Reinhard, Eric Borsuk and 'Chas' Allen II.

All four were sentenced to identical seven-year terms beginning in 2006.

'We did this robbery as a way to escape', Eric said. 'If we got away with it, we'd be in Europe living this crazy life thinking we were Ocean's 11 types'.

'Before in college, growing up, we were being funneled into this mundane, nickel –and-dime existence. Now we can't go back there. That was the point all along', Warren said.

'We were planning to fail', Spencer stated.

Elite graduates: Stephen F. Austin, Jefferson Davis, Ned Beatty, author Richard Yates

The Dangerous Sports Club

Members of the Oxford University Dangerous Sports Club dressed in tuxedos and top hats are seen jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco

The Dangerous Sports Club of Oxford University was borne out of a 'gathering of brilliant and adventurous souls that came together at Oxford in the late 70s.

'In a burst of imagination, mischief, and style, more or less invented the world of alternative sports,' wrote story author Brett Martin.

The inspiring club figure was David Kirke, who with fellow Oxford Grad Edward Hulton, shared a distaste for anything that reflected professionalism in sport.

'What we hated was the way that formal sports had all these little, important bourgeois instructions saying, 'You've got to get through five-part exams to do this', Kirke said.

The club pioneered hang gliding, bungee jumping, sent a grand piano down the slopes at Saint-Moritz, Switzerland – as well as an ironing board, a baby carriage, a Louis XIV dining set, a full-crew boat – all on skis.

They rode skateboards and carried umbrellas while running with the bulls at Pamplona, Spain, hang-glided off of Mount Kilimanjaro, had bike races down the Matterhorn and raised hell until it had run its course, and interest in dangerous sports was waning as well as money.

Their parties were equally wild and attended by the club's mascot, Eric, 'a life-size mannequin in full-body cast with an impressive hard-on'.

A trebuchet (pictured) used by the Dangerous Sports Club launched Dino Yankov who died from injuries caused by the stunt

The club came together at Oxford in the late seventies and pioneered hang gliding, bungee jumping and once sent a grand piano down the slopes at Saint-Moritz, Switzerland

In 2002, a private alternative and extreme sports club, Oxford Stunt Factory, was up to its predecessors' tricks and had built a medieval catapult some 26 feet tall and made of steel and timber.

The 'big, evil, savage-looking contraption', a trebuchet used in medieval siege warfare, was being used to 'violently hurl willing human beings several stories high and into a net 100 feet away'.

Five daredevils were placed in the trebuchet's sling and successfully flung over what was equal to a house and into a net.

Finally it was the turn of a 19-year old freshman biochemistry student from Bulgaria, Dino Yankov but Yankov's body missed the net by inches and landed with a dull, heavy thud.

The members of the Dangerous Sports Club of Oxford walked the same school grounds as Bill Clinton and Stephen Hawking who also attended the prestigious university

He was rushed to the hospital but declared dead.

The trebuchet builder, David Aitkenhead, and his partner, Richard Wicks, were charged with manslaughter but later acquitted.

Aitkenhead and the head of the new club, David 'Ding' Boston' had served time in the Dangerous Sports Club.

A past DSC club member, Mark Chamberlain, extolled the brilliance of David Kirke and the original club.

'The people who made up the DSC were all real geniuses in their own way. I don't think there will ever be a group of people like the DSC again, and why should there be'?

Elite Oxford graduates: Bill Clinton, Stephen Hawking, Oscar Wilde, C. S. Lewis, Rupert Murdoch

MORE PREP SCHOOL SCANDALS Milton Academy Co-educational preparatory school, Milton Academy in Massachusetts, with famous alums Robert and Ted Kennedy, became embroiled in highly public sex allegations when an alleged victim of sexual abuse broke his silence in March 2017 and confessed that theatre department head, Rey Buono, had sexually stepped over the line with a group of boys while on a summer bike trip through Italy in 1981. Jamie Forbes, now 49, revealed the alleged abuse years later saying he was too frightened to be exposed at the time, but told a close friend who went to Forbes' mother and then the administration. 'The abuse stopped and that's what I cared about', Forbes said. The Milton Academy in Massachusetts made national headlines after theatre department head Rey Buono was accused of sexual abuse 'I didn't have the words. I didn't have the confidence to know what to do'. After Forbes came forward, a dozen other former students who had been abused by Buono followed suit. In 2005, five former Milton Academy students were charged with statutory rape and had to serve two years of probation as well as undergo counseling and complete community service for participating in an oral sex session with a 15-year old sophomore girl in a boys' locker room. Ted and Robert F Kennedy both graduated from the Milton Academy in Massachusetts The two hockey players and three teammates had requested and received oral sex between dining and study hall. Elite graduates: Robert F. Kennedy, Ted Kennedy, T.S. Elliot Deerfield Academy Deerfield Academy had to pay a former student $500,000 who alleged a coach abused him The Western Massachusetts prep had to pay out $500,000 in a 2016 lawsuit brought by a former student who charged now-deceased English teacher Bryce Lambert with sexual abuse while traveling for golf and squash matches. The lawsuit named two former coaches who would take the student to the teacher's car after competition where he would be abused before being driven home. The abuse continued for two years when the plaintiff was age 15 to 17 and occurred more than 100 times while traveling between New York and New England. A law firm investigating the incident for the school found that Lambert's supervisor, Peter Hindle, had also been responsible for sexual misconduct for delivering the boy to his predator. Deerfield settled the lawsuit and only removed Hindle's name from the squash facility and Lambert's name from a fund and writing fellowship. Elite graduates: David H. Koch, poet John Ashbery, Time Warner CEO Jeffrey Bewkes Jeffrey Bewkes and David H. Koch both graduated from the prestigious Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts Choate Rosemary Hall School The elite boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut, was thrown into turmoil in 1984 when one student returning from spring recess weekend in Caracas, Venezuela, was arrested at Kennedy Airport with a $300,000 street value of pure cocaine in his shoulder bag and jacket pockets. But that wasn't the first time the blue-blooded school with famous alums President John F. Kennedy and his brother Joseph P. Kennedy Jr., rocked national headlines. In 2017, Choate Rosemary Hall confirmed at least 12 former teachers were guilty of molesting students In April of this year, the school confirmed that no less than 12 former teachers were guilty of sexually molesting both male and female students since the 1960s. There was also one case of rape of a 17-year old student by a Spanish teacher named Jaime Rivera-Murillo while on a school trip to Costa Rica. Parents of one student complained after their daughter contracted herpes from a teacher in the 1980s. The school did not report any of these actions to the police and allowed teachers to resign after confronting them with the evidence. Administrators willingly wrote letters of recommendation for teachers who were fired. Elite graduates: John F. Kennedy, Ivanka Trump, Glenn Close, Jamie Lee Curtis Former President John F. Kennedy and Ivanka Trump are graduates of Choate Rosemary Hall School Advertisement



