Mann Alive! New York School Ignores Crisis

Horace Mann School has a crisis, courtesy of a New York Times article by alum Amos Kamil. The Bronx school, which charges up to $40,000 in tuition, is alleged to have former teachers who sexually abused students there.

"From the elevated platform of the No. 1 train’s last stop at 242nd Street, you can just about see the lush 18-acre campus of the Horace Mann School. The walk from the station is short, but it traverses worlds. Leaving the cluttered din of Broadway, you enter the leafy splendor of Fieldston, an enclave of mansions and flowering trees that feels more like a wealthy Westchester suburb than the Bronx. Head up the steep hill, turn left, then walk a bit farther, past the headmaster’s house. From the stone wall that runs along Tibbett Avenue, you can see practically the whole school...." (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/magazine/the-horace-mann-schools-secret-history-of-sexual-abuse.html)

"I heard about some teachers who supposedly had a habit of groping female students and others who had their eyes on the boys. I heard that Mark Wright, an assistant football coach, had recently left the school under mysterious circumstances. I was warned to avoid Stan Kops, the burly, bearded history teacher known widely as “the Bear,” who had some unusual pedagogical methods. Even Clark came in for some snickering: he had no family of his own, and he had a noticeably closer-than-average relationship to the Bear, another confirmed bachelor." (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/10/magazine/the-horace-mann-schools-secret-history-of-sexual-abuse.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1)

Nothing on the official website acknowledges the allegations. (http://www.horacemann.org/page.cfm?p=319) Further, the school's apparent crisis communications plan consisted of -- nothing. "In researching the story, author and HMS graduate Amos Kamil contacted Tom Kelly, current headmaster, many times before receiving a reply."

"(The statement) noted that current leadership is not in the position to comment of events involving former and, in some cases now deceased, faculty members.' HMS released a letter to alumni yesterday in which Kelly promised to 'develop and implement a thoughtful process that places the first priority on those alumni most in need.' The trustees will soon meet to discuss the abuse matter." (http://www.odwyerpr.com/blog/index.php?/archives/4633-Kekst-Reps-Sex-Abuse-Scandal-Rocked-Prep-School.html)


Horace Mann School has nothing on its website about the allegations. The New York  Times, however, had this to say. "In the days since they were first described in an article in The New York Times Magazine, the accounts of abuse by several now-dead Horace Mann teachers have put a sharp new focus on state laws that make New York among the most restrictive in limiting legal recourse in child sexual abuse cases. For years, efforts in Albany to liberalize the laws have failed, often encountering fierce resistance from the Roman Catholic Church and other institutions that feared financially devastating lawsuits." (http://www.nytimes.com/schoolbook/2012/06/13/horace-mann-case-incites-new-look-at-state-sex-abuse-laws/)