On July 30, 2024, former Brighton gym teacher and gymnastics coach Duncan Ververs testified via videoconference, giving a deposition in the Child Victims Act case brought against him by multiple gymnastics students. Some of these students say that Ververs sexually assaulted them a hundred times or more when they were underage.

Ververs’ testimony is enough to make observers want to consign him to the seventh circle of hell, in part due to what he doesn’t say. He makes no attempt to contest his guilt or claim that he did not commit these assaults. Instead, much like notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, Ververs gives the same boilerplate response to every question: “On the advice of my counsel, I invoke my Fifth Amendment privilege and decline to answer.”

As the deposition drags on, Ververs shortens his responses to a single phrase: “Fifth Amendment.” He does not answer a single substantive question asked by the attorneys, not even “Did you work or were you an employee of the Brighton School District at any time prior to the year 2000?”

This is a man who was in close contact with hundreds of Brighton students each year, ranging in age from primary school to high school. He held teaching positions at Brighton schools for the better part of 30 years and left abruptly in 2001 after multiple BHS students accused him of sexual misconduct. 

Stay tuned for a future post on how BCSD and the school board swept the Ververs matter under the rug upon his dismissal, leaving Brighton families in the dark about their children's exposure to a serial abuser.