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After ASIJ admission that teacher abused kids, ex-students demand inquiry

Alumni want to know why children's accounts of abuse by Moyer were ignored

Dark history: One of the remaining copies of “The American School in Japan: A History of Our First Century” shows teacher Jack Moyer with the girls’ basketball team he coached in 1971. Copies of the book were destroyed after Janet Simmons, a former ASIJ student who was abused by Moyer in the early 1970s, confronted staff about the book, which praises Moyer. | JON MITCHELL

By Jon Mitchell
Special To The Japan Times

May 12, 2014

Alumni from the American School in Japan are demanding an independent inquiry into whether school officials covered up knowledge of sexual abuse committed by teacher Jack Moyer.

The former students claim that ASIJ staff, including past head teachers, were notified of Moyer's abuse on numerous occasions during his employment with the school in Tokyo between 1963 and 2000, but the school ignored the complaints and allowed Moyer to continue working with young children.

Alumni also worry that current ASIJ administrators have failed to share information on Moyer's alleged crimes with the Metropolitan Police Department or the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Moyer is believed to have worked with Japanese elementary school and junior high school students from the mid-1980s until 2003. He committed suicide in 2004.