A memoir by Tony Cointreau — the New York-based scion of the French liqueur family — bravely details the child molestation he experienced at the prestigious Browning School on the Upper East Side.
Cointreau, who became a performer and philanthropist, claims the abuse began when he was 8 years old in 1950 at the hands of a teacher he calls “Mr. Fuller.”
“From the beginning of the school year, he gave me a special honor. I was proud when he asked me to stay with him . . . after everyone else had gone,” Cointreau writes in “Ethel Merman, Mother Teresa . . . and Me” (Prospecta Press).
He details how the fiend molested him on school grounds and class trips, and tried to take him to the country alone before he was “arrested for sexually molesting another boy.”
“It took me over 40 years to tell anyone,” Cointreau told us. “I can deal with it now. I know it was not my fault.”
He said he was so close with screen star Merman, he keeps her ashes in his closet, as well as a lock of Mother Teresa’s hair after working with her for years in New York and Calcutta.