NEW YORK
New York Daily News
BY MICHAEL O’KEEFFE
Tuesday, June 2, 2015
Attorney Kevin Mulhearn has been battling for sexual abuse victims for years: The Orangeburg, N.Y., attorney overcame numerous legal obstacles to settle a landmark lawsuit filed by a dozen men who claimed Poly Prep covered up years of assaults by the elite Brooklyn school’s longtime football coach, Phil Foglietta. Mulhearn has also represented men and women who claimed two other iconic New York schools, Horace Mann and Yeshiva University, also covered up years of sexual abuse by staff and faculty members.
In the following column, Mulhearn explains why New York lawmakers should pass the Child Victims Act. The bill sponsored by Assemblywoman Margaret Markey (D-Queens) calls for the elimination of criminal and civil statutes of limitations for future child abuse victims; it would also open up a one-year window for victims of past crimes to pursue criminal and civil cases.
Last week, the Honorable Leslie Crocker Snyder (ret.), founder of the Manhattan DA’s Sex Crimes Prosecution Bureau and co-author of New York State’s Rape Shield Law, issued her report on sexual abuse that occurred at the elite Horace Mann School in the Bronx in the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. The report, titled “Making Schools Safe,” commissioned by the Horace Mann Action Coalition, concludes that at Horace Mann at least 64 students were sexually abused by as many as 22 faculty and staff. Judge Snyder’s report describes the scope and extent of the parade of sexual abuse at Horace Mann and makes pointed recommendations for how independent schools can protect our children. For anyone with children in New York schools, especially private schools, this thoughtful and insightful Report, despite (or maybe because of) its repugnant subject matter, should be required reading.
The squalid abuse facts themselves are horrendous in their own right but the most disturbing component of the report is the craven response of various school officials and trustees to sex abuse complaints made by abused students. The report describes a prolonged, multi-decade Horace Mann cover-up, highlighted by the loss or destruction of voluminous sex abuse records and the deliberate indifference of a former headmaster who himself engaged in the sexual abuse of young boys. Like with the Catholic Church, Horace Mann officials confronted with direct allegations of sex abuse by soul-shattered victims were too often far more concerned with protecting the reputations of both institution and sex predator employees than the children entrusted to their care.
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