Last week in Norristown, Pa., Headmaster George W. Balles, 33, of Warminster Military Academy, was charged with rape, adultery, assault & battery, and contributing to the delinquency of minors. A cop had caught him one night in a parked car with an eleven-year-old girl, whom he is accused of raping. The girl was one of some 30 or 40 children in his school, the majority of whom had tales to tell which the District Attorney described as "the most depraved stories of immorality I have ever heard." Wife Laura Balles, 35, who described her life with Headmaster Balles as "idyllic bliss," was up to her neck in whatever he was doing to the children.
Warminster Military Academy was founded last fall when the Balleses bought a farmhouse near Norristown. Parents were stupid or careless enough to entrust their offspring to this institution. Tuition: $1,100 a year plus some $5 a week for laundry plus $74 for a uniform.
In Chicago last week, the American Association of Junior Colleges heard warnings that quack, fly-by-night schools and colleges are springing up all over the U.S.—most of them hoping to grab veterans, who are each allowed $500 tuition under the G.I. Bill of Rights.