The Hyde School in Bath
I was going to talk about my third encounter with MacLean Hospital so I’ll start with that.
Part of my seminary education involved doing a year of Field Ed. (I think it was called.) Most people did this work in a parish other than their own, but I was reluctant to leave my home parish in Belmont, so I prevailed upon the powers that were at Episcopal Divinity School ( EDS) and got to do my field ed at MacClean. I also did a summer placement at the psych ward at Deaconess Hospital in Boston, but that’s another story.
My Field Ed work involved visiting patients and sitting in on Rounds. Rounds were pretty much a wash for me because the professionals mostly talked in clinical terms that I didn’t understand. I remember being mostly silent.
I do remember being in Rounds one day when a very outstanding patient went by with two of the top docs. This guy was outstanding because of his size, his belligerence, and because he never wore a shirt and had about a dozen gold necklaces. One of the nurses looked out the window and said, There goes the A Team. Nice that she put the guy with the chains on the A team; I expect it was because he was an a/schizoid and b/sometimes violent. I never visited him; he was often in restraints but even so…
I had two favorite patients. I never knew the diagnosis of one girl; I expect she also had schizophrenia. Her presenting symptom was that she was fixated on a radio preacher that she had been forbidden to listen to. Her father was a theology professor at Weston, the Roman Catholic seminary with which EDS shared faculty and classes. She could really not talk about anything except this radio preacher; she remembered by heart the last sermon she’d heard and would quote parts of his remarks. One day I burst out, You need an exorcism!” She said, excitedly, Yes I do, Can you give me one.? I said I would have to ask my bishop’s permission and doubted he would give it.
The next time I met with the Field Ed supervisor he said, apropos this girl, You know her father is a theology professor? I said I did. He said, How do you think he took to the idea that you told his daughter she needed an exorcism? No more of that kind of thing, please.
My other favorite girl was in the eating disorders house. She was so sick that lots of her hair had fallen out and so had some of her teeth as well. But she was very upbeat and funny. One day she exuberantly told me that one of her housemates had run away and that she had, somehow, gone off campus with a nurse and the girl’s mother to find her. She had run away to a nearby ice cream shop, and that’s where they found her. My patient said that she’d been instrumental in getting the girl to agree to come home, but it took so long that all the ice cream had melted! I took it as a welcome sign that she regretted the lost ice cream. The last time I met with her she told me that when she got well and grew up she wanted to become a nurse.
I always marveled at the indomitable strength of these patients: their desire to be healed, their ability to imagine a future outside the ivy-covered prison that was MacLean.
This morning an article appeared in the Portland Press Herald about the Hyde School in Bath, near where we live in summer and where a friend of mine and one of my nieces both attended.
Former students allege abuse and neglect at Hyde School in Bath
pressherald.com/2025/07/13/former-students-recount-abuse-and-neglect-at-hyde-school-in-bath
July 13, 2025
They talked of being sent to the remote woods in below-freezing weather with little gear as punishment for their attitude, of being forced to shovel snow or build a road instead of going to class, to “confess” their sexual abuse, be confronted in group therapy sessions and told to report other students’ misbehavior.
Eight former students of the Hyde School recounted those experiences and more to the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram in interviews conducted over the past five months. They said they went through varying levels of physical, emotional or sexual abuse at the school’s campuses in Maine and Connecticut. They spoke of a culture of shame and blame and argued Hyde’s tactics had lasting negative effects on their mental health and the trajectory of their lives.
Hyde was first established as a private boarding school nearly 60 years ago and markets itself as a college-preparatory, character-building program. Its mission, according to the school website, is to “develop character to discover unique potential.”
Most of those interviewed by the Press Herald have been working with attorneys to bring a civil complaint.
Jessica Fuller, a former student, filed a federal lawsuit Friday against the school and several of its leaders in U.S. District Court in Maine alleging they violated human trafficking, forced labor and negligence laws, while making millions of dollars in revenue.
The Hyde School Difference’
Hyde School was founded in 1966 by Joseph Gauld, a 1951 Bowdoin graduate who worked as a teacher and administrator at a boarding school in New Hampshire and at Berwick Academy in Maine before realizing he was “envisioning change beyond what the system could or would absorb,” according to his 1993 book, “Character First: The Hyde School Difference.”
He purchased the estate of a Bath Iron Works founding family and Hyde was born. The 145-acre wooded campus off High Street is centered around a 1913 brick Georgian mansion.
Concerned about an overemphasis on academic achievement and giftedness in other boarding schools, Gauld said he wanted his institution to concentrate instead on the character and unique potential of each student, with a core focus on parental involvement.
Gauld publicly wrote about his unorthodox methods, and in a 1973 column published in the Maine Sunday Telegram titled, “Slap May Be Just What a Child Needs,” he recounts hitting a prospective student three times and chasing her around campus during an interview.
A 1976 Time magazine story says Gauld “occasionally slaps and routinely humiliates the kids” and describes punishments like trench-digging and public paddling. Time reported that he liked to say: “The rod is only wrong in the wrong hands.”
In a Times Record article responding to the Time story, Gauld called it “cynical” and said it didn’t capture the full picture of the school, where he said for every act of discipline, there are several acts of affection.
One of the school’s core principles, the Gualds wrote, called Brother’s Keeper, dictates that if one student witnesses another break a rule and doesn’t turn them in, they’ll receive the same punishment.
Students from the Bath campus recall having to chant a motto that hung on a plaque outside the dean’s office: “The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.”
The lawsuit alleges that Hyde enticed parents and students under the premise of innovative education, and advertised itself as “fundamentally different from other boarding schools and therapeutic programs” but that that marketing downplayed the practices at the school.
“This lawsuit seeks justice for the hundreds of students who were trafficked, abused, and exploited by the Gauld family’s systematic child labor scheme operating under the false promise of character development and innovative education,” the complaint reads.
My friend who was sent there had, years ago, told me of the horrors she had been subjected to at the Hyde School. When I sent the article to her this morning she said it was all true. She wrote:
Interestingly, the ABC (A Better Chance) program, which (still) places historically underserved students in day and boarding schools and which placed many African American and Latino kids at Hyde in my era, ultimately stopped sending any students there. . . . Thanks for sending the article. It definitely brought it all back. I hope your niece wasn’t as traumatized by Hyde as I was.
Between this morning’s news and the Unshrunk book, I’m unsettled by the institutionalized error and abuse that some of our most vulnerable neighbors endure.