WASHINGTON (DC)
Washington Post
February 17, 2018
By Fred Barbash
Kamehameha School in Honolulu is one of a kind. Situated on a sprawling 600-acre campus on choice Oahu land, its massive multibillion-dollar endowment supports a first-rate K-12 education for some 3,000 children of Hawaiian ancestry. It offers otherwise deprived families a wealth of facilities, exceeding those of the fanciest private schools in the country, with more than 70 buildings, including an Olympic-size swimming pool and an athletic complex seating 3,000 spectators.
Kamehameha School is “a towering symbol of Hawaiian pride” with a proud legacy, as Hawaii News Now expressed it. Named for the great monarch who united the Hawaiian Islands — King Kamehameha I — and established in the will of his last direct descendant, it has educated some of the Islands’ leading lights since 1887.
But it also harbored a sordid secret for years: The school was covering up what a lawsuit brought by 32 of those former students described as “decades of monstrous sexual abuse” perpetrated largely against male boarders who were entirely in the care of Kamehameha.
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