Bethel — It started for Hilary Mullins during her ninth-grade year at the Hotchkiss School in 1976.

She was from Vermont and she didn’t feel as if she fit in with the preppy crowd at the Salisbury, Conn., prep school. She hadn’t had the academic preparation they had and she didn’t like pink pants or shirts with crocodiles.

She had always been a good student, and so it was embarrassing to her that she flunked the first semester of French — her peers had studied the language before, but she hadn’t — and was put into a monitored study hall to help her bring her grades up.

Then, one evening, Leif Thorne-Thomsen came in to oversee the study hall. She remembers him being warm and friendly with a nice smile, joking with her.

“I thought: Here’s someone I can really connect to. He’s going to give me some support,” said Mullins, who is 56 and now lives in Bethel. “I attached myself to him. It was kind of like imprinting. He was a caring adult.”

The encounter led to a sexual relationship that lasted from that first year through Mullins’ senior year and occasionally during her first two years of college, as documented in an independent investigation recently released by the boarding school. Thorne-Thomsen could not be reached for comment.

The report done by the firm Locke Lord LLP found that 16 students had been subjected to sexual contact, including intercourse and unnecessary gynecological exams, from male faculty. It also documented instances of administrators failing to intervene when they were made aware of the incidents, which happened between 1969 and 1992.

A former school medical director and six former faculty members were identified in the report, including Thorne-Thomsen, who was dismissed by the school in 1992.

Craig Bradley, head of school, and Jean Weinberg Rose, president of the school’s board of trustees, wrote a letter to the school community and alumni when the report was released saying, “To the survivors of abuse, we apologize from the bottom of our hearts. The School did not live up to its commitment to protect you. ... We are deeply and truly sorry for the enduring pain suffered as a result of the behavior.”

Hotchkiss officials said in the letter that they have notified law enforcement and other authorities about the report’s findings, as well as stripped away titles and recognitions bestowed on staffers involved and banned them from campus. They said they also have removed the names of former school heads who failed to act from any prizes, scholarships, endowments and spaces on campus, including their portraits.

In addition, the school officials said they will continue to provide financial assistance to alumni for current or past therapy costs relating to sexual misconduct during their time at the school. The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network is working with Hotchkiss to help the survivors.

An email from a spokeswoman for the school said school leaders would not be commenting further on the report.

Eric MacLeish, a Boston attorney representing Mullins and three other victims, said last week that the school’s actions are not enough.

“You know what’s not in the report?” asked MacLeish, who has represented 140 victims from 30 prep schools who say they were sexually abused while students. “They have not discussed what they are doing about all these headmasters and other people who knew about the abuse and did nothing. There’s a special place in hell for those people who stood by in times of moral crisis and did nothing. They haven’t discussed that. ... They should come out and publicly denounce them.”

He said the school leaders need to do more than send emailed letters of apology. “I don’t see the head of school or the board chair coming out and giving interviews, disassociating themselves from the past leaders who failed so badly. I don’t see them doing that. They just want this to be over. Well, it’s not going to be over. There’s going to be litigation.”

MacLeish said the school’s offer to cover the cost of therapy is positive, “but there’s a lot more they could be doing right now. I mean, these are alumni who are really suffering.”

MacLeish said the school knew in 1979 that Thorne-Thomsen was improperly involved with students.

He referred specifically to a May 1980 letter, which was included in the report, written by A. William Olsen Jr., who was then headmaster, outlining the terms under which Thorne-Thomsen would be allowed to return to campus. Thorne-Thomsen had been placed on paid leave for most of the 1979-80 school year after a student’s father wrote to complain about finding his daughter in a motel room with Thorne-Thomsen the summer after she graduated. The report documents many other complaints and concerns about Thorne-Thomsen that had been raised by that point.

However in his letter, Olsen praises Thorne-Thomsen saying, “you have adopted the ‘ugly ducklings,’ the youngsters who have not fitted comfortably into the Hotchkiss mold” and takes the position that questions raised by others about Thorne-Thomsen’s actions were misguided. “Because you never had anything except the most honorable and most open intentions,” Olsen said in his letter, it “has been difficult for you to believe that others could suspect you of anything else.”

Mullins said Thorne-Thomsen identified her right away as a student who could use some attention.

“He could tell,” Mullins said. “Predators are like heat-seeking missiles. They can tell when a kid is vulnerable in that way, so he knew. I think he knew right away.”

Mullins said Thorne-Thomsen began to invite her over to his home. She liked his style, which was more casual than the preppiness on campus. “He had these trucks that were really cool,” she said. “He taught me to split wood.”

By the second semester of Mullins’ freshman year, Thorne-Thomsen began fondling her and, during the following summer, began to write her inappropriate letters, the report says.

The report says he engaged in sexual intercourse with her in the fall of her sophomore year, and continued to do so through her senior year.

“I was overwhelmed by the intensity of his feelings for me,” Mullins says now. She says she was never in love with him, but “very much under the sway of his philosophy.”

He was known on campus as kind of a rebel, Mullins said, and she and a group of other students would sit with him at his table in the dining hall. Having sex with him, she felt, allowed her a place at his table.

Later, during her senior year, she had a sexual relationship with another teacher, Christopher Carlisle, which also is documented in the report.

She was in love with Carlisle, Mullins said, and continued to be involved with him for about a year after graduation. She was devastated when, as the report says, he died by suicide in 1982.

Mullins said it took her years to understand that what had happened to her in those relationships was abusive and how profoundly it had affected her life.

“It wasn’t until one day in my car — I heard an interview on public radio — that I was exposed to the idea of sexual abuse. I was in my mid-20s at that point,” she said. “A woman was saying that women who had been sexually abused as children were often depressed as adults. I thought, ‘Hey, I wonder if that is why I am so often depressed?’ That is how clueless I was still, even then, to the connection between what had happened to me and how I was faring. But that’s how it was back then. There was no Oprah.”

Besides having depression and anxiety, Mullins said, “It definitely impacted my relationships. I have a long history of (pursuing) people ambivalent about me. ... It’s a pattern that just replicates again and again. I’m single in my 50s.”

She’s also had a hard time settling on a career and has had trouble with what she calls executive function: making decisions and moving forward with her life. She said research shows that trauma can have this effect.

And, she said, she has terrible problems with bosses.

“The idea that someone can tell me what to do is terrifying,” she said. “I was abused by people in authority, so I’ve been afraid of people in authority ever since.”

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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