NYC’s Elite Horace Mann Prep School Hid Decades Of Sex Abuse

NYC’s elite Prep School, Horace Mann, has been hiding decades of sexual abuse from cops and parents. Many of their teachers and coaches were secretly abusing and molesting students for a very long time. Click below to read the full story.

Melissa Nash

Sexual abuse was covered up for decades at a swanky Riverdale prep school where the children of the city’s monyed elite are educated, according to a bombshell report.

The New York Times Magazine story, to be published Sunday, outlines multiple incidents of molestation by at least three teachers and coaches at the Horace Mann School between 1978 and 1994 and describes the school’s discreet response, which did not involve telling cops or parents.

One student, who was abused for years, eventually killed himself. So did one of the teachers quietly forced to resign after complaints from the boys.

Some ex-students traced lifelong problems with booze and failed relationships to their abuse at the Bronx school. “I have been running from this thing most of my life,” one said.

Two predators were ousted, but one especially brilliant music teacher survived rape accusations and remained on staff for years, choosing a new “anointed” favorite boy every year, the story says.

The teachers who vanished without explanation went to other schools — where they had access to other kids — because of the $37,275-a-year private school’s emphasis on discretion, the story says.

The shocking exposé is written by 1982 Horace Mann alumnus Amos Kamil. It was posted online Wednesday.

There were no allegations of recent abuse at Horace Mann, whose many illustrious alumni include former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger.

Dozens of former students flooded the paper’s website with comments suggesting there were several more predators at the prep school over the years.

“I’m furious. I feel like the school I cherished didn’t protect me,” wrote one woman.

“I was there. I heard rumors. I did nothing. To all of the victims, my classmates and those who came later: I am so very sorry that I did nothing to help,” wrote another alum.

Horace Mann’s response was guarded. A former trustee told Kamil, “No one will talk to you. They are all lawyering up.”

The school’s headmaster, Thomas Kelly, sent a letter to parents Wednesday alerting them that the story was being published.

“These allegations are highly disturbing and absolutely abhorrent,” he wrote. “We can assure you that none of the individuals mentioned in the article is currently employed by the school nor have they been for a number of years.”

One of the villains of the magazine piece was Mark Wright, a charismatic and popular art teacher, who was also the football coach.

A former student described being asked to sit for a portrait.

“I remember exactly what he said: that he needed to see the connection between my legs. The next thing I knew, he had my penis in his hand. I was so scared,” the now-middle-aged former student recounted.
One alum started a website last year about music teacher Johannes Somary, who he said abused him in 1973.

Another student who said Somary abused him said the Swiss musician took him on solo trips to Europe. When the boy told his parents he didn’t want to share a room with Somary on trips anymore, he said the teacher “sat in my living room like a jilted lover, begging me to stay in the same room with him . . . right in front of my father.”

Twenty years later, still at Horace Mann, Somary assaulted a teenage student, Ben Balter, on a trip to Europe, the teen’s family says.

Balter told his parents what happened — after they found him nearly dead from an overdose.
His mother, who still works at the school, says she confronted Somary with, “How dare you put your tongue down my son’s mouth?”

She said he replied, “That’s how we Swiss kiss!”

The school rallied around Somary, who was married with children. Administrators told Balter’s mother it was a “he said/he said” situation and there was no proof of wrongdoing.

Balter killed himself in 2009.

Somary died in February 2011 at age 76.

Wright, the art teacher, died in 2004.

Stanley Kops, who coached the swim team and joined the boys in the shower, resigned in 1983 after a student said he touched him on a camping trip. Kops committed suicide the following year.

The Daily News’ Michael O’Keeffe has exposed similar claims of sexual abuse decades ago at Brooklyn’s Poly Prep, which is being sued by former students who say the school covered up the molestation of boys by football coach Phil Foglietta.