The Rev. “Howdy” White was fired by St. George’s Episcopal School in Middleton, Rhode Island in 1974 after a student came forward saying he had been raped by White on several occasions. The firing was not revealed until December of 2015. On Sunday the Providence Journal reported that a foster child of White’s is alleging he was raped by White. White at the time was rector of Grace in the Mountains Episcopal Church in Waynesville, North Carolina. The victim, Forrest Parker, came forward after reading about another victim at the church who had come forward after the December revelation.
“The Smithsonian was fun during the day, but you didn’t want to go back to the hotel room at night because you know what was coming.” That, says Parker, marked the first time White raped him.
Back in Waynesville, White “would lay in the bed with me. I would turn my face away from him and he would …. rub up against me and sleep with me … “
On July 4 that year, White raped him again, when they visited White’s friends to watch fireworks by a lake, Parker says. After that, Parker ran away and reconnected with his youngest brother.
The Providence Journal earlier uncovered a lawsuit against the White and the Diocese of West Virginia. The Journal has now spoken with that victim, and he says he is White’s godson.
And the Journal also has conflicting statements on whether another employer of White, Chatham Hall School for Girls, spoke in 1978 with St. George’s School when it recruited White as chaplain. The man who fired White at St. George’s, then headmaster Anthony Zane, denies that he was contacted by Chatham Hall.
There’s more. Read the whole thing.
Image via Google is a clip from the Times-News of Hendersonville, NC, July 21, 1982 — four years prior to the start of White’s tenure at Grace Church in the Mountains.