Great Is the Truth
Secrecy, Scandal, and the Quest for Justice at the Horace Mann School
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A shocking exposé of sexual abuse and the struggle for justice at one of America's most prestigious schools
In June 2012, Amos Kamil's New York Times Magazine cover story, "Prep-School Predators," caused a shock wave that is still rippling. In his piece, Kamil detailed a decades-long pattern of sexual abuse at the highly prestigious Horace Mann School in the Bronx. After the article appeared, Kamil closely observed the fallout. While the article revealed the misdeeds of three teachers, this was just the beginning: an extraordinary twenty-two former Horace Mann teachers and administrators have since been accused of abuse.
In Great Is the Truth, Kamil and his coauthor, Sean Elder, tell the riveting story of how one of the country's leading schools was beset by scandal. In 1970, Horace Mann hired R. Inslee "Inky" Clark Jr. as its headmaster. As Yale's wunderkind dean of admissions, Clark had helped revolutionize the Ivy League by recruiting a more diverse student body. In the coming years, he would raise Horace Mann to new heights of academic distinction even as serious complaints against beloved teachers were ignored. Kamil and Elder introduce those teachers, among them a popular football coach who had reportedly tried out for the Washington Redskins, a distinguished conductor who took his prize students on foreign trips, an otherworldly English teacher who discussed Eastern philosophy over tea and helped tend the school's gardens, and another English instructor, who told his students that they were mere dust under his foot in comparison to Shakespeare.
In gripping detail, Kamil and Elder relate what happened as survivors of abuse came forward and sought redress. We see the school and its influential backers circle the wagons. We meet Horace Mann alumni who work to change New York State's sexual abuse laws. We follow a celebrity lawyer's contentious efforts to achieve a settlement. And we encounter a former teacher who candidly recalls his inappropriate relationships with students. Kamil and Elder also examine other institutions-from prep schools to the Catholic Church-that have sought to atone for their complicity in abuse and to prevent it from reoccurring.
"Great is the truth and it prevails" may be the motto of Horace Mann, but for many alumni the truth remains all too hard to come by. This book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand how an elite institution can fail those in its charge, and what can be done about it.
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Kamil's book-length treatment of the sexual abuse scandal at an elite New York City prep school tells the story behind his 2012 New York Times Magazine feature on the topic, and reports on the tumultuous aftermath of the feature's publication. Following the Sandusky calamity at Penn State University, and long after a close friend and classmate confided in Kamil that he had been raped by one of their revered Horace Mann teachers, Kamil uncovers other stories of similar sexual abuse at the school. The incidents occurred over 30-plus years dating back to 1960s. After the story breaks, more alumni come forward claiming abuse, and the victims band together to demand accountability from the prestigious institution. In all, former students implicate 22 teachers on 63 charges of abuse and claim negligence on the part of multiple administrations. On Facebook and in a support group held in N.Y.C., factions debate what justice should look like and how best to seek it, especially in a state with such a conservative statute of limitations. Finally confronted (in a meeting at the Harvard Club), the school's board of trustees refuses to submit to a full-scale, independent investigation, and individual parties mediate meager settlements. It's tedious reading, but the story runs hot for Kamil, who learns firsthand and seemingly for the first time that a powerful institution might value its reputation over its ethical obligations. The cast of characters is unwieldy, and pages of Horace Mann reveries, complete with clinking glasses of Scotch, don't exactly welcome readers to the rarified world of the N.Y.C. prep school and its alumni.