Ex-boarding school priest charged with abusing boy in 1973

BOSTON – A former Episcopal priest who worked at several elite boarding schools pleaded not guilty Tuesday to sexually assaulting a teenage boy in 1973 in Boston.

Howard “Howdy” White appeared in Suffolk Superior Court after being indicted on five counts of assault and battery. White, 75, of Bedford, Pennsylvania, was freed on personal recognizance. He was ordered not to contact the victim, to have no unsupervised contact with children and to surrender his passport.

The district attorney’s office said the statute of limitations does not bar White’s prosecution because he never was a resident of Massachusetts.

White and his lawyer, David Duncan, did not comment outside court.

Prosecutors said White assaulted the boy when he was 15 or 16 during two overnight trips to Boston when White worked at St. George’s School in Middletown, Rhode Island, and the boy was a student there. The boy reported the abuse to a teacher in 1974, and White allegedly admitted he had sexually assaulted the boy, the district attorney’s office said.

White was fired that year because of inappropriate sexual contact with male students, according to an independent investigator’s report about widespread abuse at St. George’s, which was released in September.

The report found multiple allegations against White at the school, where he was an associate chaplain for four years. It also found allegations that White sexually abused children in places including New Hampshire, where he worked at St. Paul’s School before being hired by St. George’s, and in West Virginia and Waynesville, North Carolina, where he worked for churches.

White also worked at Chatham Hall in Virginia and Asheville Country Day School, which later became Carolina Day School, in North Carolina.

White was removed from the priesthood in October by his home diocese in Pennsylvania.