Katie Benner and Erica L. Green

The State Police investigation comes two weeks after The New York Times published a report detailing physical violence, emotional abuse and transcript fraud at T.M. Landry, a small private school in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, which has been featured on national television, showered with donor dollars and hailed as a model for preparing African-American children for college.

Viral videos of students getting into Harvard, Yale, Wesleyan and other elite institutions attracted the attention of the “Today” show, “Ellen” and other news media and entertainment outlets, but many of those students’ transcripts were filled with courses not taken and grades not earned, while personal essays and recommendations were embellished with hardscrabble stories that bore little resemblance to the students’ real lives.

But the abuse allegations may prove to be the downfall of the school’s founders and chief administrators, Michael and Tracey Landry.

“The Louisiana State Police Bureau of Investigations was contacted by the Breaux Bridge Police Department regarding allegations of physical abuse concerning T.M. Landry College Preparatory,” said Trooper Thomas C. Gossen, a spokesman for the Louisiana State Police. “The investigation is active and ongoing with no further information available at this time.”

Since The Times published its article, more than a dozen people have reported additional incidents of what they called abuse to authorities, according to a law enforcement official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the cases. Those statements include allegations that Michael Landry placed a developmentally disabled boy in a closet, lifted another student by his collar and shoved him to the ground on his knees, and hit elementary school students with a belt.

The local sheriff’s office also released graphic details of a battery charge in 2012 that The Times reported last month. While it was previously known that Michael Landry pleaded guilty in that case to whipping the student, the report detailed additional allegations of choking, slapping and forcing a child to eat rat feces.

The report included a witness statement from a 13-year-old student who said that he, too, had been whipped, choked and lifted off the ground by the neck. The student accused Michael Landry of stepping on his face and kicking him in the stomach.

The Breaux Bridge Police Department also reopened a criminal investigation into whether Michael Landry battered a student named Nyjal Mitchell, who had spoken with The Times.

“These families feel that the current law enforcement response is long overdue,” said Ashlee McFarlane, a lawyer at Gerger Khalil &amp; Hennessy in Houston, who is helping dozens of parents, students and former staff members work with investigators.

The Landrys have denied abusing children but refused to discuss the Mitchell case. They did not respond to requests by email, text and telephone for comment on the State Police investigation and the new allegations of abuse.

After being inundated with calls and reports last week, the local police met with representatives from the St. Martin Parish District Attorney’s Office, the parish sheriff’s office and the State Police to discuss how to proceed. Because the school has had four locations over the past 13 years, the abuse of some of the children may have taken place in different jurisdictions. The law enforcement agencies decided that the State Police should lead the investigations.

McFarlane called the involvement of the State Police encouraging and said the families she worked with “hope to see a thorough yet urgent investigation into their complaints.”

But the halting response of local law enforcement has left some families skeptical that Michael Landry will be held accountable.

Mitchell’s family filed complaints with the Breaux Bridge police in February 2017, alleging multiple instances of choking, dragging and hitting. But a case summary obtained by The Times showed the police believed the incidents occurred outside the city limits, and sent the file to the sheriff’s department in St. Martin Parish, Louisiana’s equivalent of a county. The sheriff’s department interviewed the Mitchell family but did not indicate whether it was moving forward.

“I feel like the local police departments failed us,” said Mitchell’s mother, Mary Mitchell. “What message are we sending if we tell them to speak up if someone is hurting you, and then say, ‘You should’ve said it sooner,’ or ‘Not enough people saw it’?”

Students said Michael Landry coerced them into saying they did not witness what happened to Mitchell. One graduate, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said she and her peers kept Mitchell’s assault a secret because they wanted to get into college.

After The Times’ story, the Breaux Bridge police determined that at least one incident occurred within town limits and reopened the investigation.

In response to a request for comment on the Mitchell case, the St. Martin Parish sheriff’s department said it could share information about only the 2012 incident, and that other cases pertained to “potential criminal litigation” and could not be discussed.

The details of that 2012 case were strikingly similar to the allegations later made by Mitchell.

In that case, Landry was accused of choking, slapping and slamming a 12-year-old boy onto the floor, then putting his foot on the child’s head. He is said to have dragged the student, made him kneel and forced him to eat rat feces. Michael Landry admitted to investigators that he had whipped the boy with his belt.

The investigators took photos of the child’s bruises and welts, and captured text messages from Michael Landry to the parent admitting that he had whipped her child. Landry told investigators that the boy’s mother had given him permission to physically discipline her child, but she said that was a lie. Landry pleaded guilty and served a year of probation, according to court documents.

The 2012 episode was reported to the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, but the sheriff’s report noted that the agency declined to investigate “because the report did not meet the legal and policy definition of child abuse and neglect” and because the student no longer attended T.M. Landry.

In a statement this week, a spokeswoman for the agency, Heidi Rogers Kinchen, said the department was not legally obligated to investigate or respond to the recent abuse allegations at T.M. Landry.

The agency only investigates abuse perpetrated by a “caretaker,” Kinchen said, defined in state law as “any person legally obligated to provide or secure adequate care for a child.” That includes parents, guardians, an employee of a public or private day care center and even a tutor, but Kinchen said in an email that “a nonresidential school, including its owners/operators and teachers, would fall outside that definition.”

The Times story also prompted Daphne Hall to report what she said was abuse of her son, who is developmentally delayed, with the Breaux Bridge police. Two students told Hall that Michael Landry had put her son in a closet.

Her son, now 6, told her last week that Landry also placed him in a trash can. Hall said that while attending kindergarten at T.M. Landry, her son would say, “I belong in the trash.” She said Landry had told her that the boy had gotten into the trash can by himself.

“I can’t believe I actually paid for someone to harass and torture my child,” Hall said.

Bryce Cormier, the father of a former T.M. Landry student, said he filed a police report last year accusing Michael Landry of throwing his son to the ground and forcing him to kneel. He placed his children in a new school but could not get official transcripts from T.M. Landry.

His wife, Tanya Cormier, asked the police to help her get her children’s transcripts, according to the police report. The police told the Landrys that withholding the records was “pointless,” and they eventually produced a “report card-type document,” according to the report.

“In that envelope were grades and courses that he didn’t even take,” Bryce Cormier said. “I took it to the new school and the principal said, ‘I can’t do anything with this.' ”

Cameron Gray, who attended T.M. Landry in the 2016-17 school year, said he witnessed Michael Landry run into the building, grab a classmate by the throat and throw him into a closet. He said Landry berated him for his low ACT scores and dim Ivy League prospects, and encouraged his peers to tease him.

“Mike never put his hands on me, but mentally he did,” Gray said. “The more you get teased, the more you want to get better, and the more you don’t do better, the deeper you fall into sadness.”

His parents pulled him out of the school last summer after his mother discovered him on the balcony of his summer vacation rental, contemplating suicide.

“Mental abuse leaves a different type of scar,” Gray said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/12/us/politics/tm-landry-college-prep-investigation.html" id="ea298ff8-88b8-3779-a019-9936dd90b436">The New York Times</a>.

State Police Investigating Abuse at Celebrated Louisiana School

WASHINGTON — The Louisiana State Police have begun an investigation of T.M. Landry College Preparatory School, leading a coordinated law-enforcement response to allegations of physical abuse at a school that gained national attention for vaulting working-class black students to the nation’s most elite colleges and universities.

The FBI opened the inquiry after an investigation by The New York Times detailed instances of transcript fraud and physical and emotional abuse at the school.

In the fall, dozens of former students and teachers told The Times that T.M. Landry’s founders, Michael and Tracey Landry, doctored school transcripts with fake grades, nonexistent school clubs and fictitious classes. They said the couple embroidered their college application recommendation letters with fabricated stories of hardship that played on negative racial stereotypes.

The report also prompted the Louisiana State Police to open a local law enforcement investigation into more than a dozen allegations of physical abuse at T.M. Landry. That investigation is continuing.

While the scope of the Justice Department investigation is not known, the FBI has discussed T.M. Landry’s college application practices as part of the inquiry, according to one person interviewed by federal investigators who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the case is not public.

The inquiry comes against the backdrop of a wide-ranging admissions scandal this year, which exposed how ultrawealthy families bribed officials and faked elaborate athletic credentials to get their children into desirable colleges.

Despite the vast differences, the cases underscore just how important and competitive college admissions have become.

The FBI said it does not confirm or deny the existence of investigations and declined to comment. The Landrys did not respond to a request for comment.

The Landrys and T.M. Landry Board Chairman Greg Davis have told parents and donors that they have done nothing wrong, and they are working to expand the school’s enrollment and repair its reputation. The school has told investigators that it has lost scores of students after the Times article, and that its graduating class dwindled to four, from 16.

In February, the Landrys abruptly broke the school’s lease and moved out of an old factory building after failing to meet fire safety codes. It now operates from a former skating rink, according to local news reports.

This spring, the school posted a solemn video on Facebook that showcased its remaining seniors and the colleges that had admitted them: Emory University, Colgate University, Morehouse College, Bucknell University, St. John’s University, Providence College, Clark Atlanta University, Spelman College, Spring Hill College, Tulane University and Howard University. The video was a far cry from those that went viral in recent years, filled with clips of students celebrating and crying with joy as they learned they had been accepted to Ivy League schools.

Davis has also played up the findings of a 23-page report that summarized an internal investigation into the allegations published in The Times. In letters to donors, Davis said the report, which was released in April, “validates the academic outcomes” of T.M. Landry students.

The New Orleans law firm that Davis hired to conduct the internal inquiry, Couhig Partners, worked with Paul Pastorek, a former state superintendent of schools, who described Davis as a personal friend in his glowing summary of the inquiry.

T.M. Landry “appears to have been a genuine incubator for success, particularly for self-reliant students willing to put faith in a nontraditional education model,” Pastorek wrote.

“No school can be everything to every student, T.M. Landry included,” he wrote.

But Couhig described its own work as incomplete. It did not receive requested information from law enforcement agencies regarding abuse allegations at the school, including police reports and witness statements quoted by The Times. And it did not obtain publicly available court documents showing that Michael Landry pleaded guilty in 2012 to a count of battery and was sentenced to probation for beating a student.

Couhig interviewed five current students, two alumni, six staff members and the Landrys.

While the firm concluded that T.M. Landry was a nurturing place for students and that the Landrys were well intentioned, much of the report confirmed the Times’ reporting, including instances of transcript fraud and an episode in which a child was placed in a trash can.

Couhig said that while it “did not uncover evidence of systemic fraud, some errors and discrepancies were apparent in records, as were apparent efforts to show the students in the best light possible.”

The firm found an instance in which classes on students’ transcripts did not match with their college applications, and another in which grades were incorrectly reported as A’s instead of B’s. The Landrys also reported on college applications that students had placed in the top 10% and 20% of their class, rankings that Michael Landry essentially acknowledged were made up. One student’s transcript showed all “advanced” courses that the Landrys later said should have been “honors”; they blamed it on a clerical error. And of nine college recommendation letters reviewed by Couhig, seven contained “large or small portions of identical representations.”

Michael Landry and Pastorek said they would notify colleges that had received applications with discrepancies, according to the report.

The report concluded that the discrepancies appeared “largely insignificant, potentially unimportant to an admissions officer, and appear to be explained by mere sloppiness.”

Asked about the disparities, however, “Tracey and Mike Landry sometimes provided explanations that were contradictory,” the investigators wrote.

The couple did not agree on how they managed student transcripts. Tracey Landry said the school did not maintain them, but instead created and tailored them to suit a new school or a graduate, based on email exchanges between Michael Landry and teachers or his own assessments.

Michael Landry, however, told investigators that each student’s transcript was stored in an online account. When he could not produce much documentation of such a system, Michael Landry told Couhig that the school “has a software person” working on a new transcript portal.

When Michael Landry was asked about an instance in which one student’s grades were changed from B’s to A’s on the transcript submitted to colleges, he took responsibility for the discrepancy. He said that he entered the grades, and that “although he didn’t want to admit it, he needed glasses but refused to see the doctor,” the investigators wrote.

And the couple had differing explanations for the “substantially similar recommendation letters” used for multiple students. Tracey Landry said the letters had been shown to parents and students, who confirmed their accuracy. Michael Landry said that the letters were not shown to parents or students, and that any similarities were a “mistake.”

Asked about the abuse allegations made by students and teachers, Michael Landry acknowledged his guilty plea in 2012 — which he had denied to The Times — but said it was for spanking a student. According to court records, Landry was accused of choking, slapping and slamming a 12-year-old boy onto the floor, and then putting his foot on the child’s head. He is said to have dragged the student, made him kneel and forced him to eat rat feces.

In the investigation, Michael Landry denied a 2017 case in which he was accused of choking and dragging a student and making him kneel. He acknowledged grabbing the student by his hoodie.

He admitted to placing a student in a trash can — he was alleged to have done this to a student with disabilities — but said it was part of an “Oscar the Grouch” game he played with students, rather than a punishment. He also said he had placed a student with special needs in a “large storage room” to calm him down, rather than to discipline him.

The internal investigation determined that “kneeling appears to have been normalized method of discipline or correction,” but that the students and the Landrys denied that Michael Landry ever became violent with students. In the investigation, Michael Landry said that wall-sits and kneeling were used to motivate students and prepare them for the challenges of the real world. He defended yelling at students, saying he “believes that students liked being yelled at, because it helped them reach their goals.”

Investigators said Michael Landry had reformed a number of his educational practices and eliminated corporal punishment after the Times article was published.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/02/us/politics/tm-landry-fbi-college-admissions.html" id="71dff98d-cd3a-3d64-a601-a624254b6344">The New York Times</a>.

FBI is said to be investigating college admissions practices at T.M. Landry

LAFAYETTE, La. — T.M. Landry College Preparatory School, a private school in Louisiana that garnered national attention for helping underprivileged and minority students attend elite colleges, is under federal investigation over its college admissions practices after disclosures that it cut corners and doctored applications, according to multiple people contacted by the FBI.

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Katie Benner and Erica L. Green

Articles written by the author

State Police Investigating Abuse at Celebrated Louisiana School

FBI is said to be investigating college admissions practices at T.M. Landry