"You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say that you did not know."

abolitionist William Wilberforce, speaking before the British parliament in 1789

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PART I: 1962-64 SEXUAL AND PHYSICAL ASSAULTS

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house soccer, 1962
I'm in the middle of the second row

Shortly after I entered the Lawrenceville School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey, in the fall of 1962, the school doctor molested me. I was a fourteen-year-old freshman.

We new students were instructed to report to the infirmary, where we stripped to our undershorts and lined up for what we were told was a mandatory physical examination. When it was my turn, I entered into a small, windowless exam room, where Dr Blackmar awaited me.

He told me to drop my shorts, and abruptly grabbed and fondled my balls with his bare hand. He told me to turn my head and cough, which I did. As he conducted the exam, he looked me in the eyes, not in the genital area.

My testicles were the only part of my body he touched or examined. When done, he retreated to a small desk, where he jotted down some notes while mumbling medical mumbo jumbo. I was too shocked and disoriented to hear what he was saying. He dismissed me, and the next student entered. My time with the doctor lasted less than one minute.

My health was good, and I had no symptoms in the genital area or in any other part of my body. The doctor took no medical history, asked no questions, and offered no advise.

Blackmar used no gloves and offered no privacy-protecting hospital gown. There was no third party present during the exam, even though there were nurses on duty that day to collect urine samples. I didn't see him wash his hands either before or after the exam.

His manner was brusque and impersonal and his actions gave the impression of an assembly line.

The experience left me feeling hurt, shocked, and confused. No one had ever before touched that part of my body, let alone in such an impersonal and insensitive way.

I'll never forget the look of helpless resignation and weary exasperation on the nurse's face as we students circulated into and out of the exam room. It was as if she knew all too well what was going on inside.

To relieve the tension, we laughed among ourselves about the funny doctor, calling him Quackmar behind his back and speculating about his pedophilic preferences. Someone said that he preferred the strapping young man type. Being small and skinny, weighing about eighty or eighty-five pounds, and being late to enter puberty, I felt somewhat relieved that the encounter wasn't even worse.

With the exception of my roommate, I had yet to make any friends in school.

Another student speculated about what Blackmar would do if someone sprang an erection on him during the exam.

That was the last time I saw Blackmar. I hoped I'd never again be forced to see any doctor who showed such a cold disregard for his patients' feelings.

More than half a century later, I can still feel Blackmar's bare hand on my balls.

§ § §

I felt lucky as a newly-arrived freshman to be placed in an accelerated math class for sophomores with Dr Ross Harrison. This class of no more than a dozen students met for two years, with largely the same boys both years.

Harrison had a habit of hitting the boys, including me, after an incorrectly answered question. He struck with a closed fist on the upper arm, just below the shoulder. In boxing terms, it was a jab, but without the gloves. Sometimes he struck with the extended knuckle of his middle finger, which hurt even more.

The sickening thud of his forceful, well-placed strikes was clearly audible to the rest of the class.

What was worse, he instructed the students to hit each other. If a student got a question wrong, Harrison would sometimes order another student to hit him.

Some students struck their classmates firmly, others lightly, and it was always an adventure to see what would happen next. Occasionally a student would deliver a hard shot, causing a nervous titter to ripple through the class. I hoped that he wouldn't ask me to hit anyone, and to my recollection he never did.

The feeling among us boys was that it was to our advantage in terms of college admissions to seek the favor of our teachers. This was especially so if one were taking an accelerated or advanced placement class. It was almost a matter of perverse pride to accede willingly to Harrison's program of ritualistic abuse.

A check of the 1965 yearbook reveals that among the highly selective colleges that members of that particular math class attended were Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, and MIT.

§ § §

I don't wish to continually relive the pain and horror of having my body violated and my safety threatened, but they don't go away. I still remember the pain, but the confusion and shame are even worse.

Following the assaults, I threw myself into my classwork. This was partly to avoid the vagaries and uncertainties of socialization in what I viewed as a hostile environment, and partly because I was desperately afraid of failing the classes I was doing poorly in.

As a schoolboy I believed that whatever your chosen path in life, you would need to endure a harsh and unforgiving environment where only the strongest survived. You were, therefore, best advised to become accustomed early in life to its ever increasingly overwhelming austerities, rigors, and demands.

I worked hard in my math and science courses, and did well, but I worked even harder in my humanities classes, in which I was always struggling. I could make neither head nor tail of my literature and fiction readings, whether in English or a foreign language. I also struggled with composition, poetry, and creative writing. No matter how hard I tried, I always panicked and drew a mental blank, unable to think of anything to write about.

It was as if my imagination and the parts of the brain that process storytelling and interpersonal interactions had shut down.

Nevertheless, I became friendly with three or four fellow day students from Princeton, with whom I rode the bus daily to and from school. I had little desire, however, to befriend those who were doing what I considered hard time while living inside the gilded but austere bird cage of a boy's boarding school. I quickly developed a disliking for the overprivileged, narcissistic, preppie atmosphere, and the competitive sports and Ivy League admissions-oriented mentality that seemed only to intensify with each passing year.

My way of coping was to stop talking. For years I lived in a selective, self-imposed silence while at school.

HOUSE REPORTS

My housemaster Dren Geer was the only teacher who drew a connection between my social withdrawal and my academic difficulties. Here are some excerpts from the reports he wrote to my parents. (He said nothing directly to me about the issues raised here.)

Paul's shy verbal reticence has continued to affect all that he does. The struggle that he had on his midyear English and history exams, the comments from his teachers in these courses, and his silent friendliness in the house all reflect the obvious difficulty he has with verbal communication.

Unfortunately the courses that he faces during the next two and a half years will demand more and more fluency, and unless he begins to break down the barriers of hesitancy that constrain him whenever he has to speak or write, I foresee an increasingly difficult problem for him.

He feels uneasy when confronted by the indefinite complexities of verbal communication. (March, 1964)

§ § §

His participation in the affairs of the house this fall have been limited to quiet passage to and from class and passive observation of the activities of others. (December, 1964)

William Drennan Geer graduated from Lawrenceville in 1952. His father was an editor and publisher at Time Life, Inc. After completing his studies at Harvard University, the younger Geer taught at Lawrenceville from 1956 to 1965. He later served as principal at a public high school in Newton, Massachusetts.

In the fall of my senior year, I wrote my American History thesis on the controversy surrounding the political activities of the atomic physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. (The professor was then living and working in my home town of Princeton.) For the remainder of the year, I went through the motions of school while barely lifting a finger for my schoolwork. There was little heart in my effort. Early in my final semester, I turned eighteen, registered for the draft, and mentally checked out of school.

Looking back, I believe that my molestation during freshman year dealt a serious blow to my desire to apply myself fully at Lawrenceville and beyond. In many ways, my emotional growth stopped at the age of fourteen.

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PART II: A LAWRENCEVILLE STORY

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In the early 2000s, almost forty years after my molestation, I wrote an essay entitled, "A Lawrenceville Story: Lessons Our Daddies Taught Us." I posted it on my website in 2009. It began:

One of the first things you noticed about the Lawrenceville School, besides the green lawns, the leafy trees, and the world-class landscape architecture, was the funny doctor. His name was Blackmar, but we called him Quackmar. At the beginning of each year, you would have to go to his office and strip to your underpants. He would sit on a chair in front of you, tell you to drop your shorts, grab your balls, and ask you to turn your head and cough. That comes to 600 pairs of nuts!

Lesson: All abuse begins with sexual abuse.

As of 2023 the essay has sold dozens of copies as an e-book on Amazon and has been downloaded more than nine hundred times for free from my website.

I now view my abuse at the gloveless and loveless hands of a physician and a math teacher as totally unacceptable under any circumstances. At the time, however, I saw them as little more than bizarrely twisted and contorted manifestations of a much larger and deeper culture of interpersonal mistreatment.

Lawrenceville's culture of homoerotic sadomasochism oozed and seeped into every inch of its well-manicured lawns and dusty, old buildings. In the essay I described a catalog of attacks of varying degrees of unsubtlety on those who fell on the wrong side of America's deepest and most intractable class, ethnic, and racial divides.

Children are nothing, however, if not adaptable to changing circumstances. Sometimes, perhaps, a bit too much so for their own good.

In one context, blind trust can be a canny survival strategy, but in another it can have disastrous consequences.

GOING PUBLIC

Those who go public with their abuse must first assess the risks. I've had few contacts with the school over the years. No one in my family, before or after me, has attended Lawrenceville. There was, therefore, little risk of direct retaliation.

At worst, coming out would mean that it would be awkward to attend school events when they're scheduled near my home in the Bay Area. Such events have always been problematic for me, for obvious reasons. I've chosen not to engage in alumni giving nor participate much in alumni social activities.

No one wants to be the first family member to accuse grandpa of being a child molester. This is no way to win friends.

As Amanda Thomashow, an activist and survivor of abuse at the hands of the child molesting doctor Larry Nassar, wrote in the Lansing (MI) State Journal, "Reporting it, not reporting it, both options are their own, unique brands of painful."

Harrison died accidentally in 1976. Blackmar, though long retired from service as a physician, was still alive when I published my essay, and there was some possibility of a defamation lawsuit.

§ § §

After publishing the essay, I heard from two or three former classmates. We talked a little about old times and current happenings in our lives, but the sexual and physical assaults I reported in the essay didn't come up in our conversations.

My classmates may well have been quite astonished that I'd write such an essay. I'd remind my critics that I did mention two teachers who have had a positive effect on my life. (One was Harrison.)

I could have written a love letter to Lawrenceville, but it would have been much shorter.

To my knowledge no one before or after me has written a nonfiction memoir of life as a Lawrenceville student. One reason I was prepared to do so was because I'm not new to the subject of abuse.

In 1994 I published a book-length memoir of my years in the Hare Krishna cult, another classic example of the abuse of institutional power. It has sold hundreds of copies on Amazon and has been downloaded thousands of times for free from its website.

One might say that my tolerance level for official misconduct in any setting is close to zero.

§ § §

Over the past two decades, the press has reported on a number of sexual assault scandals involving schools, colleges, the Church, and other institutions.

2002 JANUARY 6: BOSTON GLOBE SERIES ON CATHOLIC CHURCH

Boston Globe: Church allowed abuse by priest for years: Aware of Geoghan record, archdiocese still shuttled him from parish to parish

Several priests in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston were convicted of sex crimes against children and served time in prison.

The series brought priestly abuse to the attention of the public and led to other criminal prosecutions across the nation and overseas.

The Diocese ultimately paid nearly $100 million to settle cases brought by almost one hundred alleged victims. It's estimated that over the years Church authorities have tried to cover up the abuse of thousands of victims.

2011-12: JERRY SANDUSKY/PENN STATE UNIVERSITY SCANDAL

Press reports about Jerry Sandusky, a former football coach, surfaced in 2011. (By way of disclosure, I was a graduate student there in the mid-1990s, when Sandusky and the now-disgraced head coach, Joe Paterno, were still active as a coaches.)

In 2012 Sandusky was found guilty on dozens of counts of sex crimes against young boys and sentenced to thirty to sixty years in prison. Many of the assaults happened on the Penn State campus. The amount of the settlement with the survivors was in excess of $90 million.

2013 MAY 16: WILLIAM AYRES OF SAN MATEO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA

San Francisco Chronicle: Ayres pleads no contest to molestations

"Ending a six-year legal saga, a once-respected child psychiatrist for San Mateo County who was awaiting a second trial on child-molestation charges pleaded no contest Thursday to eight felony counts."

William Ayres, a prominent child psychiatrist, was charged with molesting boys who were sent to him for counseling in the 1980s and 1990s. He died in state prison in 2016.

2016 MAY 7: BOSTON GLOBE ARTICLE ON PREP SCHOOLS

Boston Globe: Private schools, painful secrets

"More than 200 alumni of New England's most elite schools say they were abused. Here's what they say happened and what the schools are doing about it."

2016 JUNE 14: TEACHER DRUGGED AND MOLESTED BOYS FOR YEARS

Guardian: How did one of the worst paedophiles in history get away with his crimes? For more than 40 years, William James Vahey drugged and abused hundreds of pupils at international schools around the world.

"A Guardian investigation reveals that, despite numerous opportunities to stop him, nothing was done."

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PART III: MESSAGES FROM THE HEADMASTER

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On June 13, 2016, the Lawrenceville headmaster sent the alumni a short, 500-word message on the subject of "inappropriate, intimate contact" between students and adults. He suggested that if we knew of any "instances of unacceptable behavior," we should contact him, the school doctor, or the school's longtime legal counsel there in New Jersey.

I wanted to believe the headmaster's comforting words. It was heartwarming to learn that the school had finally awakened to the fact that it was responsible for protecting its students from attacks by its employees.

I took the message at face value. The school was trying to do the right thing, I thought.

2016 JUNE 15: REPLY TO THE HEADMASTER

Responding to the headmaster's message seemed like the right thing to do. A couple of days later I sent a reply that included a link to my 2001 essay with its brief but blunt description of my abuse at the hands of Blackmar and Harrison.

Dear Headmaster Murray,

About a decade and a half ago, as I was tossing around some ideas for an essay about my early adulthood, I quickly realized that I first needed to address my formative years at Lawrenceville.

The resulting essay is available on Amazon and on my website.

I wanted the reader to understand that inappropriate contact between students and staff cannot be understood in isolation from the issues of power, privilege, gender, and sexual orientation.

It saddens me to learn from news accounts that these issues remain unaddressed at many of Lawrenceville's peer schools and more broadly.

My class had its fiftieth reunion last month. I was invited to submit a short piece for the yearbook, which I declined to do. I feel that in the long run my story is safer — though by no means perfectly safe — in the hands of the public.

I applaud your decision to reach out to the community. In my opinion, breaking down the walls that separate the private academies from the larger society by thoroughly airing these issues is the only way forward.

Sincerely,

Paul Ford
Class of 1966

On June 16 the headmaster sent this reply:

Dear Paul,

I read with great interest your long, thoughtful, sometimes wry, sometimes sad account of your Lawrenceville days. I went to prep school in the early '80s, and while things were changing, there were elements in your description that reminded me of my experience.

I am currently at a conference at St. Paul's School in Concord, NH — we are looking at different ways of examining and better understanding school culture. I am helping facilitate a working group looking at what we refer to as the Hidden Curriculum — we wrote a group definition based on our understanding of this underground culture of socialization:

[...]

Anyway, I share it with you because in all honesty, we are working hard to get a read on the negative elements of any school experience, and in my mind, especially the various ways in which the adult community inadvertently contributes to the hierarchies and negative traditions that exist. Thanks for sharing your piece — you gave me much to think about.

Sincerely,

Steve Murray

After some thought, I realized that perhaps it was more realistic to assume that about forty percent of the headmaster's message to the alumni was driven by legal requirements and forty percent by public relations, with the remaining twenty percent driven by a genuine concern for the health, well-being, and safety of its students.

I later discovered that the message was likely motivated almost entirely by the Sandusky scandal. It was Lawrenceville's way of limiting its legal liabilities by starting the clock on the statute of limitations for any potential victims.

Today, I believe, based on his actions, that the headmaster has no concern for student safety beyond its potential impacts on the school's reputation and fundraising efforts.

I also thought that it was ironic that the headmaster sent his message to me from St. Paul's, a school that has long struggled to protect its students from the sexual predators among its employees.

2017 DECEMBER 18: THE HEADMASTER'S MESSAGE

In December, 2017, eighteen months after his first message to the alumni, the headmaster sent a second message. He reiterated that he was looking for "serious sexual misconduct," which he defined as "an act of a sexual or intimate nature between a faculty member and then-current student."

He asked us to contact himself, the director of human resources, the legal counsel in New York, or an anonymous web portal.

The headmaster's three-thousand-word message described four incidents that occurred at Lawrenceville, one in each of the decades from the 1960s through the 1990s. He chose not to name any of the alleged perpetrators, even after admitting that the local press had already reported on at least one of them. All of the offenders were "terminated or required to retire" as a result of the allegations, he assured us.

The first incident involved "inappropriate contact or attempted inappropriate contact with a student" in the 1960s. The alleged perpetrator apparently died in the 1980s.

The second incident involved a student who suffered "sexual assault or attempted sexual assault in the form of groping" in the 1980s. The alleged perpetrator had previously violated the school's rules concerning alcohol usage in the company of students.

The third incident, which occurred in 1992, involved "several students [who] reported that a long-time administrator and coach had inappropriately touched and kissed them."

The fourth incident, from the 1970s, involving "a long-time teacher and housemaster" who forced students "to perform pushups fully unclothed, while the teacher in question watched."

Two sentences and one paragraph in the message stand out. The first is the only sentence that the headmaster choose to put in bold type:

To date, the School has not received any firsthand reports from victims about sexual contact or sexual relationships between faculty and then-current students as part of this process.

The second sentence, which appears later, is one of only two in the report that are underlined:

To date, no known cases or allegations have surfaced involving more intrusive or traumatic sexual contact by a faculty member with a student.

Sadly and disappointingly, both statements are false. Or perhaps the headmaster was playing word games in making a distinction between unwanted or unnecessary sexual touching and sexual intercourse, or between improper contact by a teacher and improper contact by a doctor.

A paragraph of note that appears later in the message reads as follows:

These behaviors were all serious breaches of fundamental trust and of our duty of care. In each instance of misconduct of which we are aware, students reported the incident to a trusted adult shortly after the behavior occurred. In other words, in these instances our students felt empowered to report the behavior as inappropriate, which enabled the School to address the conduct. [underscoring by the headmaster]

The headmaster writes tautologically that the victims who came forward "felt empowered" to do so. The absurdity of the statement aside, he failed to acknowledge the hard reality that the majority of victims in any context never report to the authorities, or indeed tell anyone at all. On those rare occasions when a person does come forward, however, it's almost always in spite of structural disincentives, not because of positive incentives.

The headmaster's use of the word "students" as opposed to "victims" in the above quotation appears to be a reference to the first incident, which was reported by a student witness, not by the student victim himself.

Also unmentioned is the fact that few of the incidents involving staff misbehavior were reported by other staff to the headmaster or the police. Any robust and comprehensive solution to these issues must involve the full empowerment of staff as well as students to report misbehavior.

A fifth incident, which was more recent, involved inappropriate conduct by a teacher, whom the headmaster named as Michael Reddy. He offended against a minor prior to his employment at Lawrenceville. Reddy is the only one of the five offending teachers whom the headmaster chose to name.

I informed the headmaster — who is a legally mandated reporter — about Blackmar and Harrison in June, 2016, a year and a half before the message. He chose to make no reference, with or without names attached, to either of the situations I reported.

TRANSPARENCY

The headmaster repeatedly emphasized transparency in his messages:

In an effort to be more transparent and to signal genuine concern for all members of the community, some schools have made the decision to reach out proactively to learn if there are any past instances of unacceptable behavior. I feel that Lawrenceville has a responsibility to do this as well. (June, 2016, emphasis mine)

The increased scrutiny that the independent school world has recently undergone has caused an often painful, but fundamentally important reckoning, and the result is that today's standards of transparency and accountability have risen far above standards in past decades. (December, 2017, emphasis mine)

Despite these assurances, the school hasn't been forthcoming with the names of perpetrators, the scope of the allegations, and specific steps beyond broad generalities that it has taken to address these issues.

2018 FEBRUARY 15: REPLY TO THE HEADMASTER'S MESSAGE

Dear Headmaster Murray,

I'm writing in response to your e-mail message to the community of December 18, 2017.

I applaud you for reaching out to the community and for reporting your findings to us. I was, however, a bit surprised that you didn't mention the issue concerning Dr Ted Blackmar that I reported to you.

I was also surprised, but not shocked, by the following sentence:

To date, the School has not received any firsthand reports from victims about sexual contact or sexual relationships between faculty and then-current students as part of this process.

You put this sentence, and only this sentence, in bold type. Yet with all respect it appears to be the least true statement in the message.

Let me be clear: One of my first recollections of Lawrenceville when I entered as a freshman in the fall of 1962 was being examined in the infirmary by Dr Blackmar. We new students all lined up, stripped to our shorts, and were told to prepare to enter one by one into a small exam room. When it was my turn, I entered. There was no one there except me and the doctor. He told me to drop my shorts, and proceeded to grab me by the balls. The exam was over in less than one minute, when it was the next student's turn.

We laughed among ourselves afterwards about the funny doctor, calling him Quackmar behind his back. Someone speculated about his pedophilic preferences. It was said that he preferred the strapping young man type. I was small and skinny and late to enter puberty, so I felt somewhat relieved. Someone else speculated about what he would do if someone sprang one on him during the exam. I was fourteen years old and weighed about eighty or eighty-five pounds. I didn't yet know anyone in my form.

I'm no medical expert, but I now know that some physicians only perform gynecological and testicular exams on patients who are twenty-one years of age or older, who are symptomatic, or who are sexually active. I was none of these things, and would not be for many years. This causes me to wonder what the necessity of the exam was.

Ted Blackmar was a resident Lawrenceville employee from 1958, according to the Olla Podrida, until 1973, according to his obituary.

Here's what I would like you to do:

1. Let the community know that at least one student has reported inappropriate physical contact in a medical setting at Lawrenceville. Perhaps this will encourage others, such as my Second Form classmates, and possibly many others, to come forward and share their experiences. You have my permission to use my name. I've been public about this abuse for seventeen years.

2. If the policy that was then in place — mandatory genital contact between the medical staff and an asymptomatic minor who is unaccompanied, who is uneducated on the procedure, who hasn't given consent, and whose parents haven't given consent — is unacceptable under the current policy, then I ask you to publicly spell out what the current policy is.

3. In formulating your policies, please consider the following:
 • patient education and informed consent
 • having a nurse present during all exams involving sensitive areas
 • providing a choice of clinician and nurse whenever possible
 • anonymous questionnaires following all office visits
 • mandatory written medical report for all appointments; no "off the books" treatments or examinations, except in an emergency
 • maintaining all medical records in perpetuity
 • mandatory reporting for all adults — not only legally mandated adults — who witness abuse or suspect that a child may be in danger
 • full and active cooperation with state medical authorities and law enforcement to resolve any potentially criminal behavior
 • ongoing active solicitation of student and alumni experiences
 • erring on the side of caution; believing rather than disbelieving the complainant

These issues don't go away, as much as we may want them to. If anything, they intensify over the years if left unaddressed. What Lawrenceville can do is admit its mistakes, and spell out not in broad generalizations but in concrete detail what steps it has taken to address these issues.

What's needed is a bond of trust between doctor and patient. Like any relationship, it's built up over time and can't be achieved between strangers in a setting that resembles an assembly line.

I know that Lawrenceville now has girl students. I hope that the medical protocols and guidelines are strong for them as well.

These past few weeks have been highly stressful for me in the wake of allegations of sexual misconduct at Michigan State University SportsMedicine. Watching the victim impact statements on videotape has given me an unforgettable master class in the difference between good and bad doctoring. It has also dredged up memories I wish I could forget.

I also wish that on entering Lawrenceville I had had the knowledge I now have. Children need to learn not only the three R's but how to protect themselves from an often hostile and unforgiving world. Sometimes that hostility and lack of caring comes from people we tell them to trust. Parents can't always be there to protect their child, no matter how much they might want to be.

As I said in my previous message, although the specific issue at hand — power and control in the medical exam room — is important in its own right, it cannot be fully separated from larger issues of power, privilege, and control at Lawrenceville and beyond.

For this reason, I believe that while all members of the school community have an important role to play, in the end a full and open public airing of these issues is necessary.

Best Regards,

Paul Ford
Class of 1966

2018 FEBRUARY 16: THE HEADMASTER REPLIES

Dear Paul,

I must apologize for mistaking or misunderstanding your earlier message regarding your experience with Doctor Blackmar. You described what some might interpret as a hernia exam, and as it happens, inguinal hernias are not uncommon in adolescents. But your very recent note clarifies how you viewed it, and as I say, I truly apologize for not realizing your intent. Rereading your earlier note, I now see more clearly what you were trying to convey. We are still in the process of receiving various recollections from alumni, and we currently have the benefit of outside counsel who are conducting the investigation. They may wish to follow up with you, and if so, would you be willing to share your experience directly with them?

Sincerely,

Steve Murray

§ § §

During 2017 and early 2018, the press called out Lawrenceville and other schools for their failure to stop sexual abuse under the color of authority.

2017 MAY 22: ST PAUL'S SCHOOL

New York Times: St. Paul's School Acknowledges Decades of Sexual Misconduct

"There was an English teacher, the investigators said, who groped a student and had a sexual relationship with another. A female student said a music teacher sexually touched her in his car. And there was a sacred studies teacher, a minister, whom one student accused of rape."

The Concord, New Hampshire, prep school has a long history of sexual abuse and coverup.

2017 DECEMBER 7: BALTIMORE FISHBOWL

Baltimore Fishbowl: Two Baltimore-Area Private School Teachers, Married, Accused of Sexual Misconduct with Minors

The article details the alleged sex crimes against children committed by Michael Reddy and Alyssia Reddy, a married couple who resided and taught at Lawrenceville. The alleged offenses did not involve Lawrenceville students.

2018 JANUARY 31: SOUTH FLORIDA GAY NEWS

South Florida Gay News: Former Prep School Housemaster Accused of Abuse Decades Later

"Push ups. Sit ups. Jumping jacks. Repeat."

"John Watkin, 59, of Chapel Hill, North Carolina can remember those exercises like they happened yesterday, even though it was 40 years ago in 1978."

"It was punishment. All high school kids get in trouble. But this wasn't a normal reprimand."

"Watkin was naked and dripping wet while his housemaster, a long time teacher at the prestigious Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, sat in his brown leather chair a few feet away and watched him, instructing him on which exercises to complete."

The Broward County-based weekly interviewed six former students who alleged that Bruce Presley forced them to perform naked exercises while he watched. It described him as "a prominent gay entrepreneur, philanthropist, and documentarian."

Presley earned his BS degree at Yale University and arrived at Lawrenceville in 1960. When I was there, he was teaching introductory science classes. I had no interactions with him, but I gathered that the boys thought he was a bit odd. I heard no reports of sexual misconduct.

Presley left Lawrenceville in 1984 and started a computer textbook business, which he eventually sold. There's no evidence that he ever taught school again.

Following the recent revelations of sexual harassment, Presley fell out of grace in his community in Florida. He faced no criminal charges, however, possibly due to the statute of limitations. The gay community has been falsely accused of pedophilia for a long time, making this a highly sensitive issue.

Faced with overwhelming evidence that the charges were true, SFGN, to its credit, was in no mood to defend Presley, even if he were a prominent member of the community.

Presley, who was in his upper seventies at the time of the revelations, has granted no interviews and has not spoken publicly about the allegations.

2018 FEBRUARY 8: THE TRENTONIAN

The Trentonian of Trenton, New Jersey: Two former Lawrenceville School housemasters accused of sexual abuse

"One of New Jersey's most prestigious private boarding schools is exploring decades-old allegations about a former dormitory leader at the institution accused of forcing students to do naked exercises following showers."

This article includes additional information about Michael Reddy, who the headmaster named in his description of the fifth incident in his December, 2017, message, and his wife Alyssia Reddy.

Michael Reddy, who was a teacher and housemaster at Lawrenceville from 2013 to 2017, reportedly had sex with a child prior to his employment there.

Alyssia Reddy, who taught at the Pennington School in Pennington, New Jersey, was arrested in 2017 for sexually assaulting one of her students. Pennington is a coed boarding school about five miles from Lawrenceville.

2018 FEBRUARY 11: PLANET PRINCETON

Planet Princeton: Decades later, victims of a former Lawrenceville School housemaster's sexual harassment share their stories

"Brent McCowan fled his prep school about six weeks before graduation and didn't return until 40 years later."

"Back in 1978, when he was a boarding student living in McPherson House at the prestigious Lawrenceville School, he says his housemaster, Bruce Presley, summoned him to his apartment at 10 p.m. after lights out to punish him again for leaving the campus without permission."

Two former Lawrenceville students who live in the New Jersey area and three others who were flown in met at the school with Headmaster Murray, other school officials, and lawyers.

The men said they had no desire to sue. Rather, they were interested in seeing that future generations of students weren't subjected to the same treatment.

The school offered to pay for their counseling.

My fear is that the school's handling of the Presley situation sends a message that to get its attention, you must go the press. It was only the embarrassment that the press can cause the school that motivated it to do the right thing. I fear that the school believes that, in the absence of press coverage, it can safely ignore the legitimate concerns of its students.

2018 FEBRUARY 28: MESSAGE FROM HEADMASTER

Following the press coverage of Bruce Presley's abusive behaviors, the headmaster sent a third message to the school community. For the first time, he named an employee (Presley) who offended against Lawrenceville students. He also announced his decision to turn the investigation over to outside counsel.

Sexual assaults on children are always illegal, of course, but sadly, it's clear that in practice, hitting that causes no permanent physical damage is a matter of little concern to the civil authorities. In addition, the law pays even less attention to the psychological damage caused by a physical assault, even though all that the child services professions have taught us in recent decades suggest otherwise.

The Reverend Samuel McClintock Hamill became Lawrenceville's third headmaster in 1837 and remains to the present day its longest serving leader. He also served as the New Jersey State Superintendent of Public Schools. He wrote this in The American Journal of Education (1856):

If children are well governed in a school, and taught proper subordination, parents will not complain of the particular forms of discipline. The private and judicious use of corporal punishment should have a place in a good system of school government.

No judicious Board of Trustees should put a person into a school room, to train and govern and keep order a company of youth, and yet tie his hands on this subject. Is it right, indeed, to say to a teacher, govern these youth, and yet not allow him the judicious use of such means as are necessary rightly to execute his work? Surely it is enough to endure the vexation, weariness, anxiety, and toil incident to his position without being thus trammelled.

Notwithstanding the sentiments of Dr Hamill and other educators, New Jersey in 1867 became the first state in the union to outlaw corporal punishment in its schools. When I was at Lawrenceville nearly a century later, the Garden State was still the only state with such a law. While most states have since outlawed the practice, corporal punishment remains legal in a number of states, most of them in the South and the Midwest.

In 1977 the US Supreme Court, in Ingraham v. Wright, a case involving a student in Florida who missed several days of schooling due to injuries suffered in a brutal beating at the hands of school authorities, found that the Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment did not apply. The Court also rejected a claim of lack of due process even though the boy was denied any opportunity to defend himself from an allegation of disobedience.

The justices in the minority maintained that under the majority's reasoning, a student would need to commit a crime in order to be afforded Constitutional protections. Merely being accused of non-criminal disobedience didn't suffice.

Other critics have pointed out that whereas in most states teachers are required to report signs of abuse to the authorities, under this decision, if it's the teacher himself or herself who is the perpetrator, then no such report is necessary. Moreover, this is true even if the parents have requested that the school refrain from physically punishing their child.

The battered petitioner in the case, fourteen-year-old James Ingraham, was the same age as me when I first suffered physical and sexual abuse at Lawrenceville.

Corporal punishment is usually defined as punishment for a disciplinary infraction. In the case of Harrison's misbehavior in the classroom, however, there were no disciplinary transgressions. The hitting was administered for a failure to attain the desired level of academic achievement. In other words, a failure of teaching.

Corporal punishment in schools raises many of the same questions as other forms of abuse, namely necessity, parental consent, Do No Harm, and appropriate boundaries between school employee and student.

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PART V: LARRY NASSAR SURVIVOR STATEMENTS

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As the saga of abuse at Lawrenceville was playing out in the press and in the alumni e-mail inboxes, a major scandal was breaking at Michigan State University. Multiple women reported that an MSU sports medicine doctor had sexually abused them under the guise of medical treatment.

2016 SEPTEMBER 12: INDIANAPOLIS STAR

Indianapolis Star: Former USA Gymnastics doctor accused of abuse

"Two former gymnasts, one an Olympic medalist, have accused a prominent, longtime team physician for USA Gymnastics of sexual abuse."

This is the first of a series of articles detailing the abuses perpetrated by Larry Nassar, a sports medicine physician. He was charged with multiple counts of abuse, as well as child pornography. Convicted in federal and state courts, he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

2018 JANUARY 16 TO 24: VICTIM IMPACT STATEMENTS

Over a long weekend in early February, I watched on YouTube as more than one hundred survivors of abuse at the hands of Larry Nassar delivered their heart-breaking impact statements.

The first speaker was Kyle Stephens, a woman who Nassar abused in a non-medical setting when she was six years old. Seven working days later, the sentencing phase of the Ingham County trial concluded with a statement by Rachael Denhollander, a former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics athlete. She now leads a campaign dedicated to holding MSU, USAG, and the United States Olympic Committee publicly accountable for their actions and inactions.

It was during the viewing of these videos that I became convinced that I was a survivor of sexual abuse. I have these brave women to thank for erasing all of my lingering doubts, confusion, and self-blame.

GOOD DOCTOR/BAD DOCTOR

Let's take a closer look at what we mean by good doctoring. Here's what some of the medical professionals who gave statements at the Nassar sentencing had to say.

Christina Barba, who was first assaulted by Nassar at the age of fourteen, is a Doctor of Physical Therapy:

As a professional I know there are very few instances when there's any need to treat a patient skin-on-skin in a sensitive area.

Gina Nichols is a Registered Nurse. Her daughter Maggie Nichols is a gymnast and a survivor of Nassar's abuse:

I just have a little bit more to say ... as a parent and a healthcare professional. I've been a registered nurse for thirty-five years, and my husband, by the way, is a doctor. And you know what my husband is: a real doctor. A real doctor that treats children, and helps them to get better, not to hurt them, like you have to hundreds of people.

You disgraced yourself by calling yourself a doctor to the medical community.

A real doctor never sees a child alone in a room and does 'procedures' on them. A real doctor has an adult present when working with a child. A real doctor gets parental consent. A real doctor never under any circumstances would touch a child in their genital or anal area. A real doctor if he would need to be in private parts would wear gloves. A real doctor would explain every single thing he is doing to the child with a parent or an adult with them. A real doctor, as I said before, helps heal; he doesn't hurt.

You actually are not a real doctor, you're not a doctor at all. You're a serial child molester, a pedophile.

Brittney Schumann was an eleven-year-old gymnast when she met Larry Nassar. She's now an obstetrician/gynecologist:

There's no valid reason to penetrate an adolescent girl's introitus [opening that leads to the vagina] for a sports injury with the exception of maybe a straddle injury.

You're fooling no one.

As a physician who performs these kind of exams daily on a wide range of females, these were not treatments. The decision to perform an exam of this type is not taken lightly, and often requires taking the time to discuss with the patient and parent whether this exam is absolutely right.

What happened to informed consent, parental consent, chaperones, and the first responsibility as a physician to do no harm?

Shame on you.

Every physician knows that to provide treatment without consent or knowledge of that procedure is assault.

You assaulted me.

Tiffani Berra is a Doctor of Physical Therapy. Her younger sister, Lindsay Woolever, is a survivor of Nassar's abuse:

I specialize in treating pelvic floor dysfunction, and I would just like to say as a clinical specialist in treating pelvic disorders in women and men, I am appalled that you would try to pass what you were doing for what I do. Unlike you, I take my oath very seriously. And I use my techniques and skills to try to help women and give them tools to help themselves heal from any injuries and disorders that they may have going on.

You used your powers to abuse little girls. And what you did, myofascial release, I do that every day in my practice. But I would never do something like that without proper patient education, proper consent, gloves, if I need to do internal treatment. And as a healthcare provider, I'm ashamed that someone like you was able to get away with this for so long.

Brad Johnson, who is the father of Nassar survivors Maddy Johnson and Kara Johnson, is a medical doctor:

I'm here today to address Larry Nassar, both as an osteopathic physician, and as a father of two beautiful girls that were ... abused by you. Before I begin I'd like to say how proud I am of each and every survivor in this courtroom. I will never forget your stories and the pain in your voices as you so courageously tell all those stories that we've heard.

As a physician we are given a great privilege to care for our patients. What a wonderful and beautiful privilege this is. Our patients trust us with their most intimate problems, their fears, their bodies, and their history. They trust that we will care for them with compassion and respect and love. That we will do no harm. They place their trust in us without knowing us, because we are physicians.

The pain you caused was intentional. You did not care for these young girls with compassion, respect, and love. Your care was selfish, not selfless.

You preyed on the most vulnerable, you preyed on innocence, and you preyed on trust.

You are not a physician, you are a pedophile. You only used your degree as a platform to sexually abuse your patients one by one for your sick and your very perverse pleasure.

REVISITING THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF MY ASSAULT

There are old and enduring principles of medical ethics at work here: necessity, prior informed consent, Do No Harm, and the maintenance of appropriate professional boundaries.

In less than a minute, Blackmar violated all of these principles.

There was no medical necessity for the exam he performed on me. Many physicians only perform testicular or gynecological exams on patients who are twenty-one years of age or older, who are symptomatic, or who are sexually active. I was none of these things. This leads me to question the necessity of the exam.

While it may make some sense in a residential environment to screen incoming students for communicable diseases, it makes no sense to screen universally for non-communicable testicular problems.

There's such a thing as a legitimate testicular exam, which checks for lumps, growths, or other abnormalities. The headmaster suggested that Blackmar may have been checking for a hernia, but he didn't examine my abdominal wall or my inguinal canal. He touched and fondled only my testicles.

When an examination of a sensitive area of the body is indicated, it's usually performed as part of an overall physical and health evaluation. This was not the case here.

The totality of my experience with Blackmar — including the atmospherics as well as the details of the procedure itself — leads me to believe that this wasn't a legitimate exam.

As an adult, I see my primary care physician for a physical exam every year. I'm thankful that no doctor since Blackmar has found it necessary to manhandle my genitals the way he did.

No doctor should ask a patient to disrobe in their presence. The customary practice is to allow the patient to disrobe and put on a hospital gown, or at least a sheet, while the doctor waits outside the room. No patient should ever be alone with their doctor while naked.

The medical literature on women's and teenage girls' breast exams emphasizes the use of the pads of the middle fingers, not the fingertips. Thus the patient has at least a minimal level of protection against an ill-intentioned provider.

In an article about a doctor who had reportedly molested numerous young children, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that a fellow pediatrician

told police [that] genital exams of young children involve a 'quick visual inspection' and should take about 'three seconds.' She called exams of young children naked and alone with a doctor 'bizarre,' 'suspicious,' and 'peculiar.'

The literature on physical exams for both men and women emphasizes communication, minimizing discomfort, building mutual trust and confidence, and creating an overall positive experience for the patient. A patient who has a negative experience may be less likely to seek medical help in the future.

A poorly executed exam — let alone one undertaken under false pretenses or with malign intentions — can alienate a patient, especially at such a young age.

Blackmar made no attempt to obtain my or my parents' consent before performing the exam. I was a day student and had my own family doctor. Nor was there any attempt at patient education. The patient has a right to know what the doctor is doing to his body and why. No examination or intervention should come as a surprise to the patient, and the patient should always feel empowered to refuse an exam.

Do No Harm means not giving the patient any problems they didn't have when they came to see the doctor.

Gross insensitivity on the part of the provider can leave the patient feeling traumatized and confused, and can cause long-term issues involving trust of authority figures, trust in the medical profession, and trust in intimate relationships.

The doctor is there to heal, not to traumatize. For healing to happen, there must be a bond of trust between doctor and patient. Like any relationship, it's built up over time and cannot easily be achieved between strangers in a setting that resembles an assembly line.

Looking the patient in the eyes while touching his genitals is a gross failure to maintain appropriate professional boundaries.

Blackmar left Lawrenceville in 1973 at the age of fifty-one. The circumstances of his departure are unknown, but it appears that he never practiced medicine again. Never married, he died in 2010.

A TURNING POINT

The impact statements at Larry Nassar's sentencing hearing devastated me. I realized, however, that I was not going to let my assault under the pretense of medical examination defeat me. Having released the guilt, shame, and confusion, I was finally ready at the age of seventy to move forward with my life.

I don't know what the future holds — nor does anyone else. Neither can I control what other people do, as in the end that's up to them. I did know, however, that I was no longer going to be a passive victim. Rather, I was going to be a victor.

After hearing these women's stories, I was one-hundred percent convinced that I was molested — there was no doubt left in my mind. I discovered that there's a bigger difference between ninety percent and one-hundred percent convinced than there is between fifty percent and ninety percent convinced.

For nearly forty years I said and did nothing about the assaults. Realizing that this strategy wasn't working, I decided to try a different path.

The Lawrenceville headmaster is a temporary employee, and I'm a permanent victim. He'll remain on the job until he loses the confidence of the board of trustees, while I, on the other hand, will always be an alumnus. You can't fire an alumnus or revoke an earned degree.

The lessons learned in school — both positive and negative — cannot easily be unlearned.

The headmaster will continue to use his talents to craft a carefully balanced mixture of truths, half-truths, and strategic omissions. Believing that he has no other choices, he'll continue to try to paint a picture of a reformed Lawrenceville aware of its past as it looks forward to ever greater platitudes of institutional achievement.

When the headmaster's days at Lawrenceville are over, he'll likely return to whatever he was doing before. I, on the other hand, will always be a strong survivor of child abuse, and a vocal and committed advocate for systemic change.

I will, therefore, win. In a manner of speaking, I've already done so, simply by coming forward and telling the truth. I'm willing to outwork the other side, I'm willing to put the safety of students like myself above all else, and I believe in the power of truth.

The school, on the other hand, has only its own narrow and parochial self-interest to protect. It's convinced that institutional prerogatives can and will prevail, at whatever cost, over individual well-being.

That's a mismatch. The truth wins every time.

The school apparently believes that the solution to these problems lies in tweaks to its bureaucratic procedures, in minor adjustments to its program of instruction, or in the creation of additional layers of bureaucracy.

I believe that the solution involves the genuine empowerment of students in the shaping of the environment around them, and an insistence upon mutual accountability and mutual respect among all parties.

2018 MAY 16: NASSAR SETTLEMENT

ABC News: Michigan State to pay $500M to survivors of Larry Nassar's abuse

"Michigan State will pay $500 million to survivors of Larry Nassar's sexual abuse in what is believed to be the largest settlement ever in a sexual misconduct case involving a university."

2018 JUNE 5: CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY

Lou Anna K Simon was president of Michigan State University when the first formal complaints against Nassar were brought to the attention of senior management. She turned the matter over to a team of physicians rather than to trauma-informed rape counselors and experts in sexual assault. Not surprisingly, the doctors exonerated Nassar's behavior, and he continued to assault girls and women for many more years.

Simon testified on June 5, 2018, before a US Senate subcommittee that was looking into the Nassar scandal. Here she responds to a question from Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut:

Sir, I am not a doctor, nor am I capable of making judgements about medical procedures and their appropriateness. I have throughout my career believed that experts should be investigators, and those of us in a position of leadership should take the results of those investigations and take them seriously.

Granted that the ex-president isn't a doctor. I'd ask, however, if she as a lay person knows the difference between good touch and bad touch? If she were being examined and there was some question in her mind as to the appropriateness of the exam, what would she do? Would she put the matter before the doctor, and the doctor alone? Or before other doctors? I'd hope that, if such doubts should linger, she would avail herself of victim advocate or rape counselor before making up her mind about how to think about the touching.

Even after stepping down from her job, Simon continues to devalue the experiences of patients, and continues to express support for the same system of deference to doctors and their judgement that led to the disastrous problems with Nassar.

To Simon being an administrator means not having to deal directly with student concerns. Medical professionals and lower-level administrators can do that.

We are an imperfect system.

False dichotomy and red herring. Perfection isn't required. To the contrary, what's needed is a commitment at all levels, including the highest levels, to first serve the interests and needs of the patients under your care, many of whom are juveniles, rather than the interests of their providers and their providers' bosses.

I think going forward we have to think very seriously about again how we think about the voices and how we hear them, the processes that are very bureaucratic, and done for lots of reasons, including legal reasons, that may have accumulated into the wrong unintended consequences.

Here we have more attempts at offloading responsibility to committees, to abstract processes, and to the prerogatives of legal counselors more interested in protecting the reputation of the university than in taking appropriate steps to guarantee the safety of its students and patients.

Had I been asking questions, I'd have asked the former president when she first discovered that there were bureaucratic roadblocks to serving the needs of students, and what concrete steps she took to overcome those roadblocks. One might also ask who put those roadblocks there in the first place.

And we have to continue to make systems better with people and with encouragement to have the highest standards. And with that that is our collective responsibility, that is our moral responsibility, and I keep thinking about ways the voices can happen differently, be heard differently.

I'd also have asked Simon if at any point in the sordid Nassar affair she had met one-on-one with a victim or survivor. I suspect that she didn't.

Senator Jerry Moran, Republican from Kansas, responded:

We welcome the input of all those who have suggestions about what needs to be done to accomplish a more perfect system that works to protect people. When I think about a system, I also just would remind folks that we all have an obligation to other people, other human beings. Whether the system or not is a perfect system, individuals have a responsibility to care for others and that includes reporting to authorities any allegation about abuse.

And so while we work toward a system, it's just a reminder that we have a responsibility as human beings to behave — regardless of what the system says — to protect those individuals who have reached out for our help.

§ § §

After hearing Simon's barely coherent rambling, dissembling, and blame-shifting words, I decided that trying to get through to the leadership of large organizations was a hopeless endeavor.

They're ignorant of the issues surrounding trauma and survival. They've spent so much time building walls around themselves with their bureaucratic procedures that they've become incapable of feeling for those on the other side, the students they're charged with serving.

Simon became president of MSU in 2005 after serving as interim president from 2003 to 2005. In 2017, the year the Nassar scandal broke, she was offered a prestigious professorship. The following year, as the scandal played out nationwide on our television screens, she further angered the survivor community by refusing to attend the court hearing in the sentencing phase of the trial.

Nassar was an MSU employee, many of his victims were MSU students, and many of his non-MSU victims were assaulted in his offices on the MSU campus.

Nevertheless, Simon was allowed to resign the presidency while remaining on the MSU payroll.

In November 2018, prosecutors filed two felony charges and two misdemeanor charges against Simon for lying to investigators in the Nassar matter. In May 2020, a judge threw out the charges.

In July 2019, MSU announced that Simon would retire effective August 31 with cash payments in the multi-million-dollar range, as well as other benefits, according to the Detroit News. She retains her title as president emeritus.

Simon's doctorate was in Higher Education. One might say she was deep in the weeds of educational administration from the beginning. One might have hoped, however, that she had learned more about putting students first while studying for her master's degree in Student Personnel and Counseling at her alma mater, Indiana State University.

Perhaps the best hope is to work at the ground level to design protocols that will boost the public's confidence in the safety of the medical examination room.

§ § §

Coming out is a continuing process and one of its most difficult challenges is learning how without flinching to mention the unmentionable and speak the unspeakable. These are places where no one wants to go, and yet we must go there and we will.

POST-TRAUMA SYMPTOMS

Being a survivor of abuse may partially explain my own depression and anxiety, my feelings of fear, worthlessness, anger, rage, and despair, as well as my sleep disturbances.

Nicole Reeb is a dancer and an athlete. Nassar abused her during weekly treatments for back and hip pain when she was a high school student:

I could never rid myself of a constant sense of unease. Honestly, I still can't.

Despite the challenges, I've never been more optimistic and hopeful than I am today about the Lawrenceville's future and my future. Once we realize that our fates are forever bound together, we can then move forward to a place of greater transparency and accountability.

LOSS OF TRUST

Kyle Stephens's non-medical abuse began at age six and continued for six years. She first reported Nassar at the age of twelve:

Sexual abuse is so much more than a disturbing physical act. It changes the trajectory of a victim's life, and that is something that no one has a right to do.

Amanda Cormier was referred to Nassar by his physician wife. He first molested her at the age of fifteen:

These things that happened to me in his office long ago were not short-lived uncomfortable moments. They were lifelong traumas that have changed the way I walk in the world.

Victim 125 is an attorney. Her abuse began in 1992 at age twelve. She was one of the first to report Nassar to the authorities:

You chose to take from me, from all of us, something that was simply not yours to take.

Do you even remember what we will never forget?

Jenelle Moul, a gymnast, addressed Nassar:

I thought you were fixing me, but I have realized you broke me.

INTIMACY AND RELATIONSHIPS

Mary Fisher Follmer, who is a physician, read a statement written by her gymnast daughter Maureen Payne:

In the beginning of our lives, you tried to rob us our will, our dignity as women, our ability to trust, our capacity for love, and our strength.

The sexual assault I suffered has stayed with me all these years. Its traumatic memory is embedded in my body as much as in my brain. That's why these kinds of post-traumatic psychological conditions tend to resist most forms of cognitive and talking therapy.

(A few words about terminology. What I'm calling sexual assault, a term that came into use in the 1970s, would probably have been called indecent assault when I was in school. Sexual abuse came into use in the 1980s. I try to avoid pedophile, because of its inappropriate and misleading reference to the Greek philia, which implies respect and compassion for others, as well as true friendship or caring, as opposed to eros, which denotes erotic love or desire.)

Luckily, I suffered no confusion over my sexual orientation after being molested by an older man. I do wonder, however, whether the attack left me feeling less free and at ease in later social, sexual, and intimate situations.

VICTIM VERSUS SURVIVOR

We all struggle with the language that surrounds victimhood and survival. Some use one term or the other, with survivor being preferred, as it's forward-looking and suggests a more hopeful future.

A bit of research revealed that this issue is complicated. It turns out that some people are able to embrace both terms, while others reject both.

The prosecutor's office read Victim 10's statement. She started gymnastics at age six and met Nassar at the Twistars Gymnastics Club. He groped and penetrated her four times while she was a student at MSU.

I am a victim of sexual assault. I am a survivor of sexual assault. I don't even know if one can survive the events that rob a person of their wholeness, their innocence.

All we can do is try. All we can do is support one another as the band-aids are ripped off every time sexual assault is mentioned.

Emilie Morgan is the author of "Don't Call Me a Survivor," an essay anthologized in Listen Up: Voices from the Next Feminist Generation [1995, 2001], Barbara Findlen, editor:

Please don't call me a survivor. I really don't feel like one. I live my life as if I were raped yesterday. Essentially I was: it happens again every night in my dreams. I am not a victim either. I am just a woman — and a statistic.

[...] Please don't call me a survivor. Not yet, anyway. I have a lot more healing to do, and it's going to take time. I am just a woman who has a story to tell, and I am learning how to make it heard.

Chanel Miller, who was sexually assaulted on the Stanford University campus after attending a fraternity party, wrote in her memoir Know My Name [2019], "I am a victim. I have no qualms with this word, only with the idea that it is all that I am."

Abuse is a theft of self-determination, whether it be for a brief moment or for years. Healing begins when we take back the power and begin again to make our own decisions in life. This in turn requires taking control of the language, and in particular, the ability to name oneself and to characterize one's own experiences.

Victim, victor, survivor, statistic, all of them, or none of them, that's our choice.

APOLOGY AND FORGIVENESS

A number of survivors found it difficult or impossible to forgive.

Kyle Stephens addressed Nassar:

You used my body ... for your own sexual gratification. That is unforgivable.

The prosecutor's office read Victim 10's statement:

Nassar, you deserve an eternity of suffering for the damage you have caused, and there is no bone of forgiveness in this body, for you robbed me of that when you put your filthy hands all over my body with malice, disrespect, and a sheer will to destroy me as a human being deserving of love, dignity, and a right to be happy in life.

Other survivors expressed a desire to find a way to forgive.

I quoted Tiffani Berra above. She's a Doctor of Physical Therapy whose younger sister, Lindsay Woolever, is a survivor of Nassar's abuse:

I know that her healing will start today, and will continue, but with that said I want you to understand you have changed the dynamics of our family for years. We went through a lot, trying to figure out what happened to this happy, fun-loving, humorous girl ... and now we know.

She is so strong, and like she said, we thank you for admitting your wrongdoings. From this day forward I know she will be working on forgiveness and we will as a family so that we can start to heal.

Sterling Riethman was a twenty-year-old competitive diver when Nassar abused her:

I don't need anything from you. I don't need an apology, and I don't need an explanation. What I need is accountability. What I need is the promise that no one else will ever have to endure the vast systemic failures that we endured.

What I need is systemic changes at the highest levels to end the culture of abuse that is sweeping our nation.

Emily Morales, a gymnast, was eighteen years old when she delivered her impact statement. Nassar first molested her while she was in middle school:

I want you to look at me. I believe in forgiveness, Larry. You and I are human beings. We make mistakes. Although you have hurt me, I want to forgive you and feel closure and move on to healing in my life.

I want you to apologize to me right here. I want to forgive you, but I also want to hear you say tell me that you regret all the hurt that you caused.

Katie Black, a gymnast who was turning twelve years old when she met Nassar, said in her impact statement, "I don't need your apology to move on, but you do."

As for myself, I'm not as far along in my healing processes as some of the young women who delivered their statements at the Nassar sentencing. I'm in no mood to forgive anyone, whether it be the perpetrators or the administrators who knew, or should have known, about the abuse.

Some administrators continue to this day to deny, minimize, and delay. They need to know that healing cannot begin until they fully disclose and accept responsibility.

To be sure, forgiveness can have a religious and therapeutic meaning, however. It allows us to acknowledge our own sinful nature as we grapple with the transgressions of others, and it helps us to move forward with our healing and with our lives.

I'd have appreciated an apology, but a manipulative non-apology is worse than nothing at all. We must also keep in mind that even a sincere apology cannot change the facts.

Blackmar and Harrison abused over long periods of time. These weren't isolated instances of bad judgement. To the contrary, they appear to have been calculated and remorseless.

WOUNDS, SCARS, AND HEALING

That which is lost is lost forever. It's important to be realistic and to acknowledge this truth. That's my belief.

Jade Capua was seventeen years old when she delivered her impact statement. Larry Nassar molested her when she was thirteen:

There are some days that this horrifying experience fills my brain, and I can't think about anything else. It left a mental scar that unfortunately will always be something that happened.

However, I'm a strong believer that wounds heal into scars, and these scars become stories that you share and heal from each day as time goes on.

Scars can be worn proudly, as they tell the stories of our lives. They can be offered to others in a spirit of love and respect, as we commit ourselves to healing together.

Scar tissue, however, isn't normal tissue. It has fewer pores and nerve endings and is less supple than healthy skin. A scar functions as a much-needed, life-saving barrier between the body and the outside world, but it doesn't breathe, feel, or communicate as well as healthy skin.

Similarly, an emotionally damaged person can learn to function, to survive, but some of the subtle joys, and even pains, of life may be lost, at least for the time being.

Healing rarely happens on its own. Rather, it happens when we understand that we're here to help others with their pain, just as they're here for ours.

Olivia Cowan, who first met Larry Nassar as a thirteen-year-old patient at MSU SportsMedicine, said this at his sentencing: "The scars will remind me that the past is real, but the future is bright."

Aly Raisman is a three-time Olympic gold medalist in gymnastics. She was one of the Nassar survivors who accepted Arthur Ashe Award for Courage at the 2018 ESPYS Awards ceremony:

If we choose to listen, and we choose to act with empathy, we can draw strength from each other. We may suffer alone, but we survive together.

GUILT, SHAME, AND SELF-BLAME

Emily Morales is an eighteen-year-old gymnast:

My innocent, naïve self had no idea that what he was doing was not medical care, it was sexual abuse. He was abusing his power as a doctor to use my body for his own sexual pleasure.

I remember my doctor sitting me down a year ago and asking me if I had been assaulted by Larry. I had no idea what she was talking about.

As she explained, I was filled with confusion and uneasiness. He had done that to me. Every time I saw her after that she asked me how I was doing. I told her it had no effect on me. I didn't care, I was fine. My mental problems had nothing to do with Larry.

You see, I was struggling, and still am, with depression and anxiety, but I always blamed myself for that. I thought it was my own imperfections, mistakes, ugliness, and poor social skills that made me so unhappy.

At school, I was always on edge, I had horrible stress, and for a while I stopped talking while I was there. I wanted to disappear, and I didn't want any attention. The happy-go-lucky social butterfly was gone. The stress, social anxiety, depression, and hopelessness followed me into high school.

Despite counseling and medication, I still had a hard time.

I was convinced I was simply bad at being a human being, as I often told myself.

I will not take my own life, I'm going to take it back.

Amanda Smith, a gymnast, first met Nassar when she was eight years old. He abused her when she was fourteen:

I was ashamed, although I'm not quite sure what I was ashamed for. It wasn't until recently that I put two and two together. You abused me. You violated my body. You made me feel emotions no fourteen-year-old should ever have to feel.

Megan Ginter is an eighteen-year-old high school student, gymnast, track and field athlete, and horseback rider. Nassar abused her when she was thirteen years old:

I have been sexually abused by Larry Nassar, but I will not let what happened define me. I will persist until I get the closure that I need and learn to view the abuse as something that has given me strength, rather than something that has defeated me.

I am done being ashamed of something that was out of my control.

RESPONSIBILITY OF AUTHORITIES

Jessica Tarrant is a sergeant in the Marine Corps. Nassar assaulted her at the age of fourteen. She delivered her statement by videotape:

At fourteen, I may have been too young to understand the difference between abuse and treatment. But it is unacceptable for medical professionals to claim the same. If it wasn't a coverup, it was gross negligence.

Olivia Cowan was sexually abused by Larry Nassar on the Michigan State University campus:

It's horrifying that MSU and USA Gymnastics are not stepping up to the plate to admit their wrongdoing. I've gone from a raving fan of MSU to now seeing green and white in the very same way as I do Larry Nassar. I want MSU and USAG to know that what they have done is on the same level of accountability as the crime Nassar has committed.

Nassar first abused Aly Raisman when she was fifteen years old:

False assurances from organizations are dangerous.

FINDING ONE'S VOICE

Kayla Spicher was assaulted in "hundreds and hundreds of visits" over twelve years:

You took away my worth, my privacy, my innocence, my energy, my time, my safety, my confidence, my childhood, and my own voice — until today.

Amanda Smith suffered abuse at the hands of Larry Nassar when she was fourteen years of age:

Even when my voice cracks, it will be heard.

TRANSFORMATIONAL HEALING

Victim 10, in a statement read by the prosecutor's office, addressed Nassar:

We will continue to work every day, every moment, to take our power back. It will not be without challenge, without hardship, without pain, but we will fight to ensure that abuses like yours will never be perpetrated against another human being. Not on our watches.

So in essence, thank you. Thank you for destroying me. The Phoenix will always rise from the ashes and I can tell you with the conviction of a million armies that the ones you sought to ruin will rise up and create change that will negate the harms you have caused.

Your wrongs will be made right.

HOW TO SURVIVE A SEXUAL ASSAULT

To survive we must have the courage to reject the oratory of power and privilege. But this isn't enough. We must counter-intuitively make ourselves vulnerable again. Doing so will open us up to all forms of healing.

Chanel Miller wrote in her memoir:

I wrote to expose the brutality of entitlement, gender violence, and class privilege in our society.

[...] I survived because I remained soft, because I listened, because I wrote. Because I huddled close to my truth, protected it like a tiny flame in a storm.

AFFIRMATIONS

I had always thought of New-Age affirmations as overly simplistic and nearly brain-dead. They were one-dimensional answers to multifaceted and nuanced life questions, questions that in the end may indeed prove to be unanswerable.

Affirmations were at best aspirational, expressing a desire to achieve a state of mind that one doesn't currently possess. If you repeat an affirmation often enough, however, it magically becomes true, or so the New Age philosophy promised. It was all about mind over matter.

You might say that over the years I've developed a growing respect for the brain-dead. No one was more astonished than me when I began to embrace what sounded at first like childish affirmations but which quickly became more like adult statements of accomplished fact.

I'm a strong survivor of child abuse.

This isn't about the perpetrators. They're history. It's about me, my recovery, and my health.

Strength is the courage to confront the tough questions head-on. Weakness is thinking that you know all the answers.

I will not only survive, but I will thrive and flourish.

Today is the first day of the rest of my life.

I'm getting stronger every day.

There are good days and bad days, but the trend is upward and my future has never been brighter.

Conversely, the perpetrators and those equally culpable individuals who enable them or cover for them lead static lives that are stuck in the past. Their future cannot and will not be brighter than their past for the simple reason that they're unwilling to embrace meaningful change.

One person can make a difference.

Even a small gesture can make a difference in people's lives, if it's done with love and respect.

Anyone can improve their immediate situation by making small changes in their lives.

I know that depression can be an issue for some survivors of abuse. Take a small step today on your own behalf: take a walk around the block, sweep out your kitchen, clean out that messy drawer.

And many more:

Keep moving forward. Don't fall into lethargy or sloth. Don't wait for things to happen, make them happen.

There's nothing I can't do or accomplish.

SEIZING THE MOMENT

We're living in a special moment, the #MeToo movement. It would be wise to take advantage of it.

But we're also living in a time when the rise of populist nationalism has unleashed powerful, almost medieval, reactionary nativist forces. This is especially so with regard to issues that are related to gender identity and sexuality.

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PART VI: E-MAIL BLAST TO ALUMNI

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In March, 2018, I spoke on the phone with Bruce Yannett of Debevoise & Plimpton, the law firm that's conducting an investigation on behalf of the school. (Debevoise is the firm that would later investigate allegations of sexual misconduct against Les Moonves, the former chairman and CEO of the media giant CBS.) The details I reported to Yannett concerning Blackmar and Harrison are the same as those I had posted the previous month on my website.

2018 APRIL TO JUNE: MESSAGE TO ALUMNI

Frustrated with the glacial pace of progress in the headmaster's office, I decided to take a more active approach. As he had failed to name either of perpetrators of crimes against me, it became evident that doing so myself might encourage additional conversation.

My message to the alumni mentioned my abuse at the hands of Blackmar and Harrison, and asked them to contact the school with any information they may have to offer. I added a sentence at the end promising confidentiality to anyone who chose to contact me directly.

Subject: Re: The Headmaster's Letters to the Lawrenceville Community

Fellow Lawrentians,

Over the past few years, you've received several messages from Headmaster Murray on the subject of inappropriate contact between staff and students.

I'm writing to those classes who were in school when Ross Harrison of the Math department, and Ted Blackmar, the school doctor, were on staff. Their years of service were 1952 to 1976 and 1958 to 1973, respectively.

I've informed the headmaster and the school's legal counsel that Blackmar performed an improper testicular exam on me and other students, and that Harrison hit me and others in the classroom.

It has been a long time, but I encourage anyone with information about inappropriate encounters between these staff members and students to get in direct touch with the headmaster or any of the other contacts he has provided. You can also report at an anonymous website.

In addition, if anyone has information about the circumstances surrounding Blackmar's departure from the school in 1973, please let the school know.

I hope you'll join me in sharing what you know with the headmaster, and in encouraging him to continue his efforts to develop, articulate, and implement policies that will make it harder for present and future school employees to abuse.

I believe that a complete airing of past events, though difficult for all parties, is the first step toward healing and the creation of an atmosphere that's safe, nurturing, and conducive to learning for all students.

For more details about my story, see Tears of Freshman Year.

Correspondence with me will remain confidential.

Best regards,

Paul Ford
Class of 1966

§ § §

From late April through mid-June, I sent the above message in batches to more than sixteen hundred alumni from the classes that were at school when Blackmar and Harrison were on staff. To my knowledge, no one had ever used the alumni e-mail database in such a way.

I made no attempt to cherry-pick my recipients nor to avoid ruffling feathers. Among the recipients were many who held impressive titles: ambassador to the United States from a wealthy Middle Eastern nation; chief executive of one of the world's largest media companies; president of a Central American country; longtime president of an influential conservative think tank; sportswriter and network television sportscaster; college president and Lawrenceville headmaster. The current director of Alumni Relations was also on the list.

None of the above-mentioned individuals responded.

Looking through the biographies of those alumni whose names are less well known to the public reminded me of how many had chosen to work in elite professions such as law, medicine, and capital management.

E-mail etiquette requires that the sender must obtain the recipient's permission before signing them up for a list. I felt, however, that what was at stake was of greater importance than any inconvenience a recipient might feel upon receiving an unwanted message.

No one received more than one message from me, unless they chose to reply.

This is in effect a "greater good" argument that allows a Samaritan to run into the street to save a child from being struck by an oncoming truck, even though she may be in technical violation of the jaywalking laws.

I understand that whether one accepts this analogy depends on one's point of view. I was, however, prepared to face the consequences of my actions, as any practitioner of conscientious disobedience must be.

Forty-three alumni responded. Their responses ranged from requests to be removed from the list, to assertions that the writer had never suffered any untoward treatment, to second- and first-hand accounts of abuse at the hands of Blackmar, Harrison, and other staff members.

I don't recall who was with me in the infirmary on the day Blackmar that molested me, but I do recall the names of about half of the dozen or so students who were in the math classes with Harrison. Two are deceased, and none of the others responded to my message.

I promised and have subsequently maintained confidentiality for all respondents. The only exception was an anonymized and paraphrased summary which I sent to the school's lawyer. Even this was the subject of much agonized reflection. Lawrenceville in my day was a closed, insulated, and isolated institution. One could safely assume that, living in such close proximity, there was very little that others didn't know about you.

It would be unethical to involuntarily "out" any survivor of abuse, and all the more so in the case of child abuse.

All of this is further complicated by the fact that simply observing or having knowledge of abuse can be a form of terrifying abuse in its own right, especially if one is a child away from home. Even second-hand information that a close friend, for example, has been mistreated may lead a person to question their own safety and to suffer their own post-traumatic stress reactions.

In his messages to the community, the headmaster described a handful of instances over the years in which authorities who had been made aware of ongoing abuse took decisive action. None of the alumni I heard from were able to make such a report. Each abusive situation that was brought to the attention of the administration was left to fester for the duration of the student's time at Lawrenceville, and beyond.

I'm in no position to preach about coming out. It was nearly forty years before I was ready to go public about Blackmar's abuse.

Shortly after I sent my message to the alumni who graduated in the Blackmar era, the school, without notification or explanation, locked me out of its alumni database. I've since received no more "Dear Members of the Lawrenceville Community" e-mail messages from the headmaster on this or any other subject.

SUMMARY OF RESPONSES: ABEL EDWARD "TED" BLACKMAR III

I received multiple reports of testicular examinations. Some were from alumni who have a medical or military background.

REPORTS FROM MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS

An alumnus reported that Blackmar improperly fondled his testicles on multiple occasions. He added that, while undergoing his own medical training, he learned that best practices require that when such an exam is performed on an asymptomatic patient, it should be done only within the context of a comprehensive head-to-foot physical exam.

Two other alumni who trained as physicians reported that Blackmar performed testicular exams on them. One also remarked on the lack of an accompanying examination of other parts of the body. The other reported that it was his understanding that Blackmar performed testicular exams on as many as one hundred and eighty incoming students each year.

I fear that over the doctor's decade and a half of service at Lawrenceville, thousands of students may have been at risk of potential harm at his hands.

Another alumnus stated that it was his understanding that Blackmar performed testicular exams on all of the students in the school, and that all were aware that he was performing these exams on others. (This was also my understanding at the time.)

I was astonishing and disappointing, however, to discover that several respondents who worked in the medical field felt the need to vigorously defend Blackmar's assaults.

A physician stated bluntly and matter-of-factly that it was his observation that many if not most of those who trained in his field of obstetrics and gynecology did so with a mixture of honorable and dishonorable motivations. I never thought that, even if — heaven forbid — this had been the case, anyone would ever have the nerve to put such a statement into print.

Another physician reported that, when questioned, Blackmar would say that he was checking for hernias, which he wrongly believed were prevalent among teenage boys.

While hernias can be found in men of all ages, they're most common in middle age or older.

A third physician commiserated with the difficulty he believed Blackmar must have felt while performing hundreds of testicular exams on teenaged boys. He blamed the doctor's seemingly mechanical and unfeeling approach to medicine on his boredom with the medical routines. The writer added without explanation or justification that in his opinion the incident I described couldn't have constituted abuse.

MILITARY VETERANS

A respondent who is a military veteran said that he regretted that I hadn't had what he called the "learning experience" of being in the military. Presumably, he meant by this the ability to tolerate physical and sexual abuse as one is forced to endure a rite of passage into a sexually and psychologically twisted version, or perversion, of manhood.

Another respondent defended Blackmar's abuse by stating that ad hoc and unsupervised testicular exams were commonplace in the military. Even more disturbing was the public nature of the acts he described, and the fact that they were seemingly designed to embarrass and humiliate the victim while reinforcing the power and authority of the military command.

This respondent concluded: "Everybody knew about Dr Blackmar. ... We all got the same 'treatment' from him ... Get over it."

Such reasoning is an example of a logical fallacy known as the appeal to normality, or in the present context, the normalization of bad behavior. If everyone does it, it must be okay.

Neither of these former members of the military explained how a failure to prevent attacks on adults can be used as a justification for a failure to prevent attacks on children. Most societies offer greater protections to children than to adults, for the simple reason that the latter are better able to defend themselves.

There's never any justification in any circumstance or context for a sexual attack on anyone, young or old.

OTHER REPORTS

An account of an overnight stay in the infirmary when, at a time when no one on the medical staff was treating the student, a person presumed to be Blackmar was standing too close and lingering near him too long for the student's comfort.

A report of hearing the following joke:

"Dr Blackmar, I think I have a broken finger."
"Drop your pants."

A report of hearing jokes about how much Blackmar enjoyed giving rectal exams.

One recalled the nickname "Dr Quackmar." Another recalled that the students called him "Fingers."

According to a death notice in the Hamilton College alumni magazine, Ted Blackmar was born in New York City on January 16, 1922, and graduated from the college in 1944. He was the son of a lawyer and grandson of a New York State Supreme Court judge. His grandfather was a longtime trustee of the college.

Blackmar was the resident physician at the Peddie School in Hightstown, New Jersey. He served for two years as a medical officer during the Korean War, before becoming the medical director at Lawrenceville.

Beginning in 1948 and continuing throughout his life, Blackmar operated a summer camp in the Adirondack Mountains for boys between the ages of 12 and 16.

ROSS HARRISON

There were multiple reports of punches, jabs, and knuckle hits to the upper arm and shoulder. Reports of knuckle rubs to the head, referred to as "Nuggies" or a "nougy." Two reports of a temporary pain or stinging sensation.

Most of the incidents happened in class or in tutoring sessions, often after the student had given a wrong answer. One incident occurred while the student was working at the drama club to which Harrison was chief technical advisor.

A report that Harrison forced the writer and other students to adopt homoerotic poses before hitting each other. Upset by this, the student prepared to leave school, only to be dissuaded by his housemaster.

This incident raises questions about the ability or desire of the faculty to police itself. The housemaster knew about the abuse, and was able to arrange for the student to safely transfer to another class, but he failed to stop the abuser. In addition, the lack of involvement of the administration in this story speaks volumes about its indifference to student safety.

A second-hand report that Harrison had a reputation for punching his students.

A report that Harrison repeatedly insulted the writer in class due to his ethnic-sounding first name.

Harrison is described as "a little weasel," "a small, nasty old man," and "this creep." He was also said to be possessed of a "Napoleon complex."

A number of alumni defended Harrison, however, as it became clear that many had already experienced physical abuse and corporal punishment in and out of school.

One alumnus even said that he appreciated the hitting, as he felt that "it made the student-teacher interaction more intense."

Another mentioned the physical abuse he had previously suffered from teachers in parochial school. Yet another, recalling Harrison's hitting, maintained that it had caused him no suffering or fear.

An alumnus stated that his treatment at Harrison's hands was of little cause for concern to him, as he had already been desensitized by similar treatment from older siblings.

Another added that he believed that the treatment of students was worse at other schools, and that students often treat each other worse than do the teachers.

Harrison graduated from Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York, in 1933. He taught at Peddie School before arriving at Lawrenceville in 1952.

OTHER ALLEGED PERPETRATORS

The abuses happened in all grades, from first-year students just arriving on campus through seniors preparing to graduate. They also involved staff members other than Blackmar and Harrison.

PETER CANDLER

An alumnus reported that Candler was inappropriately close to his students, and another reported that there were persistent rumors to this effect.

Peter Candler was the director of Periwig, the drama club. He graduated from Williams College in 1949 and came to Lawrenceville in 1959. He died in 2018.

STEVE LAVINO

Two reports that Lavino inappropriately touched a student, leading to his firing.

Steve Lavino succeeded Richard Gaines as housemaster or co-housemaster of Cromwell House in about 1967. Lavino was asked to leave the school after he inappropriately touched a student. He was a graduate of Williams College, circa 1965. He is believed to have died in the 1980s.

Lavino is almost certainly the unnamed man described in the first incident in the headmaster's December, 2017, message.

PHIL PRATT

Pratt coached the swimming and diving teams, and taught math. I was in his Calculus class in my junior year, and he wrote a recommendation for college on my behalf.

I received a second-hand report that Pratt had inappropriately touched female members of the swim team, leading to his separation from service. He was an administrator as well as a coach at the time of the alleged incidents.

A personable man, he presented himself as one of the good guys, someone who had chosen to work in education for the right reasons.

He also sat on the admissions committee. My impression was that he was the athletes' representative on the committee, a strong advocate for top-rated athletes who wanted to finish their secondary school career at Lawrenceville.

It was a surprise, therefore, to learn that he had been forced out after allegations of unwanted touching and kissing of female athletes. (Girls had first been admitted to the school just a few years prior to these alleged incidents.) At the time of his departure in 1992, he was the director of admissions and an officer of the school.

One can understand the dangerousness of the territory here. Pratt was heavily involved in recruiting, admitting, and coaching his athletes. Some of them may have felt powerless under such circumstances to refuse his advances.

Pratt is the unnamed perpetrator in the third incident mentioned in the headmaster's December, 2017, message.

Philip Gorton Pratt was born in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1932. The son of a schoolteacher, he graduated from Harvard University in 1953. After teaching for a time at the Hill School in Pottstown, Pennsylvania, he joined the Lawrenceville faculty in 1958.

Pratt died in 2015.

JOHN DAMON HUMASON

A report that Humason offered a thinly veiled sexual invitation to a student he had invited to his home. The student declined the invitation.

Humason was born in Connecticut and graduated from Wesleyan College in 1938. He joined the English department at Lawrenceville in 1944.

Because of his obvious sexual attraction to adolescent males, we called him Hum Job Humason, or Hummmmason.

BRUCE PRESLEY

A report that Presley retaliated against the writer for his failure to play along in class with Presley's sexual overtures.

UNNAMED TEACHERS

After inviting a student to his apartment, a teacher put his hands without warning on the student's shoulders. Feeling uncomfortable about the unwanted touching, the student quickly left the apartment.

Another teacher struck a student on the head with a book, leaving him momentarily unconscious, according to a report. The incident occurred after the student had used a bad word in the company of other students, but not the teacher, prior to a class. The student took the incident as a valuable learning experience.

TEACHERS WHO WERE CLOSE FRIENDS

Reports that masters who became close friends, including Humason and Frank Heyniger, and Presley and Herman Besselink, enabled each other's inappropriate behavior.

Heyniger taught my junior-year Modern European history class. He was an heir by marriage to the Corning Glass fortunes. I noticed no funny sexual vibes, but there was a hint of alcoholism.

According to his obituary, Frank Heyniger was born in New York and educated at Lawrenceville and Princeton University. He started teaching at Lawrenceville in 1941. He died in 1970 at the age of 53.

Herman Besselink was born in the Netherlands and studied at the University of Michigan. In 1964 he came to Lawrenceville, where he taught history and ultimately became the department chairman. He was master of Haskell House when I boarded there in 1965-66. I was unaware of any sexual misconduct with students.

Besselink later became the master of Kinnan House. He died in 1997.

OTHER TEACHERS TO AVOID

In addition to the above-mentioned John Humason, I tried to avoid being alone with Chet Wagner, who taught my freshman-year French class, and Fred Gerstell, who taught history and who I didn't have as a teacher.

Their gazes were predatory and there was a tangible, visceral homoerotic tension in the air whenever they were around. I had no direct or indirect knowledge of improper contact between them and their students, but I do know that I was scared to death in their presence.

Upon my arrival as a freshman, my housemates quickly advised me that Wagner, who sometimes filled in on weekends for our regular housemaster, was known for trying to get into bed with the students.

Chester Hall Wagner graduated from Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, in 1935, and served in the US Army from 1942 to 1946. He taught French and English and coached wrestling at Lawrenceville from 1948 to 1977. He died in 2009.

Frederick Wood Gerstell graduated from Yale University in 1958 and earned an MA from the University of Michigan. In 1961 he arrived at Lawrenceville, where he taught history and served as an administrator. He currently lives in Florida.

DEMOGRAPHICS OF RESPONDENTS

Before sending my messages, I didn't know that I was conducting something of a demographic study. I received hostile reactions from many class years, but some of the most strident messages came from those who graduated in the classes before mine.

Their responses contrasted with the generally more sympathetic responses from my own schoolmates, the post-World War II Baby Boomers. I'd like to think that the 1960s and 1970s-era movements in favor of civil, women's, and LGBT rights have penetrated at least to a limited extent even in societies as isolated as Lawrenceville.

ALUMNI HOSTILITY

It's clear that many alumni are hostile to change.

In one of the more astonishing messages I received, a man who regularly gives money to the school nevertheless expressed a reluctance to come forward about the abuse he suffered there. It's hard for me to imagine what kind of leverage the school, or his fellow alumni, must have over him.

Unlike our counterparts at the public high schools, we private school alumni exert considerable influence in the running of our schools. Alumni giving is a critical part of a private school's overall financial strategy, and the alumni have long formed an important part of its paid and volunteer staff.

It's important to have a forward-thinking administration, but systemic change can't and won't happen without the active involvement of the alumni.

An alumnus falsely blamed the child abuse at Lawrenceville on the sexual orientation of the perpetrators. That is, gay men are child abusers, in his view, an old and thoroughly discredited trope. Its very existence speaks to the power and persistence of the myth of male heterosexual superiority and dominance that still pervades our culture.

A respondent who calls himself a historian was unable to restrain his urge to employ the caps-lock key when engaging in name-calling against an advocate for change.

Another alumnus felt that my waiting until the perpetrators were dead before reporting was an act of cowardice. I do regret saying nothing about Harrison before his death in 1976. I did, however, break my silence and come out publicly as a survivor of Blackmar's abuse almost a decade before he died.

The most ominous response I received was a cold phone call from an alumnus I'd never met. (My phone number is listed in the alumni directory.) After several minutes of trying and failing to dissuade me from continuing to publicly raise the issue of sexual assault at Lawrenceville, he ended the call by saying, "If you hit the king, you have to kill him." This was an obvious attempt at intimidation, if not a direct death threat.

The abuse never stops.

Recent media reports involving other institutions suggest that one who chooses to go public with their criticisms is at a heightened risk not only of further victimization but also of self-harm.

Upon my arrival at Lawrenceville at the age of fourteen, I failed to understand fully that my presence there as a student amounted to a lifelong commitment to its unwritten code of loyalty. I also failed to understand that the code even included not complaining about criminal behavior. The deep culture that gives rise to these issues seems to persist regardless of changes in administration. No one presently at Lawrenceville was there when I was there, and yet the same mentality persists.

SEXUAL ABUSE AS POSITIVE EXPERIENCE

Sadly, some alumni have decided not only to tolerate bad behavior, but to embrace it. That is, for them the sexual abuse and humiliation of boys and young men are important parts of the training processes and disciplinary procedures that are used to establish and maintain the male chauvinistic social order.

GENERATION GAP

The men who were forced to perform pushups while naked are examples of younger alumni coming forward together in an attempt to bring about real change. Sadly, my generation has yet to follow in their courageous footsteps.

CULTURE OF FEAR

An alumnus who suffered abuse at Lawrenceville reported a reluctance to contact its legal counsel out of fear that the school would retaliate against family members who are currently enrolled there.

A report that an alumni reunion publication declined to publish the writer's essay about bullying at Lawrenceville due to its content.

2018 MAY 23: BRUCE YANNETT

I sent an anonymized and paraphrased summary of the alumni responses to Bruce Yannett of Debevoise & Plimpton. He encouraged me to ask the complainants to contact his office. Some had already done so, and at least one has used the anonymous online reporting service.

I wondered why people felt more comfortable talking to me about their abuse than to the school's lawyer. Perhaps this is because I pose no threat to anyone, I don't work for the school, and I have no ability or desire to retaliate against or exact retribution from anyone.

Lawrenceville is a self-perpetuating network of interdependencies that, loosely speaking, resemble an extended family. In such a setting, blood relationships will always have the highest priority, followed by blood proxies including racial, regional, and national identity; religion; and school and college colors.

What's stopping the school, which has student records, employee records, and class lists going back decades, from taking the initiative to get in touch with those students who may have been at risk of abuse by the school's own predatory employees?

Admittedly, anyone who reaches out to a potential survivor of abuse must do so with the utmost sensitivity. In close consultation with victim advocates and therapists who specialize in interpersonal trauma, one should provide the student with a range of choices for reporting, accompanied by appropriate support services.

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PART VII: DEBEVOISE REPORT RELEASED

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The school released the findings of the Debevoise investigation, which it said was the result of more than eighty interviews and a review of its records. The lengthy 3,600-word report provided no new names of perpetrators of abuse. Bruce Presley remains the only employee in Lawrenceville's troubled earlier history to be so named.

In the "New Reports" section below, the headmaster acknowledged two complaints, one presumably mine, of improper touching by "a former school doctor." The headmaster chose not to name Dr Blackmar. He did, however, repeat the same falsehood he offered to me privately in February, namely that the doctor's actions amounted to a "hernia exam." To the contrary, Blackmar inappropriately and improperly manipulated my testicles and my testicles only. He didn't touch or examine the wall of my abdomen or any other part of my body.

Using the headmaster's tortured logic, there's nothing wrong with a doctor feeling an adolescent girl's naked breasts with his bare hands, without discussion, consent, or even a chaperone. This is sexual assault.

I remind the school that no examination of the sensitive areas of the body — or for that matter any part of the body — can ethically be performed without careful and painstaking fidelity to the bedrock principles of medical necessity, informed consent, Do No Harm, and professional boundaries.

Furthermore, Blackmar was more than simply "a former school doctor." He was Lawrenceville's medical director for a decade and a half. As such, he almost certainly had control of the hiring and firing of the nursing staff. It could well be that, out of a fear of retaliation, they felt less than fully empowered to report any abuse they may have witnessed or suspected.

I wonder what concrete steps the school has taken since Blackmar's departure to ensure that no student ever leaves an exam room with the impression that the doctor has sexually attacked them.

Make no mistake: these exam room misadventures are deliberate crimes aforethought. Even if they were inadvertent, however, the responsibility for any miscommunication that may have existed lies squarely with the party in locus parenti — the school — and not with the student.

I credit the school for raising the issue of student-on-student bullying and hazing, but the report makes no mention of non-sexual teacher-on-student violence or harassment. (Bruce Presley's forced naked pushups were clearly sexual harassment, even though the headmaster couldn't bring himself to use the word sexual.) Whatever the school's policies may have been in the 1960s and 1970s, Ross Harrison's prolific and unrestrained use of physical abuse as an ersatz teaching tool was and is illegal under state law.

I received as many complains from alumni about Harrison as I did about Blackmar.

2018 JUNE 27: MESSAGE FROM HEADMASTER

Here are some excerpts:

I forcefully reject this apology. A true apology frankly and bluntly acknowledges the full measure of the wrong done and expresses a heartfelt awareness of the scale and scope of the harm it has caused. A generalized statement of regret is woefully insufficient. Healing cannot and will not begin until we have the courage to be brutally honest with ourselves about our past actions and inactions.

Far from bringing about closure on this dark era in the school's history, this letter inflicts even more pain.

It's axiomatic in the field of trauma-informed therapy that one never tells a survivor of assault that they weren't assaulted. Such outright gaslighting failed badly for Michigan State University in the Larry Nassar scandal, and it will never work for any other organization. All parties lose under such a strategy.

Schools need to learn that the child's well-being is of greatest importance and that its own financial and public relations concerns are of lesser importance. They also need to learn that it isn't the responsibility of the survivors to educate the school on the subject of trauma and its long-lasting effects. Rather, it's the school's responsibility to educate itself.

It's a measure of the school's lack of self-education that it has yet to reach out to me and ask if there's anything it can do to help.

2019 OCTOBER 5: ANOTHER DISTURBING MESSAGE FROM THE HEADMASTER

ABC7 New York Eyewitness News reported that the Lawrenceville headmaster sent the following message to the school community:

2019 OCTOBER 7: PLANET PRINCETON

Planet Princeton: Teacher at Lawrenceville School charged with aggravated sexual contact for allegedly touching two students

"A second-year teacher at the Lawrenceville School has been arrested and charged with aggravated sexual contact for allegedly inappropriately touching two boys at the school, according to the Mercer County Prosecutor's Office."

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PART VIII: PEER COUNSELING AND HEALING

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While moving forward with my e-mail project, I realized that I needed support. From mid-spring through early summer, I received peer counseling services at the offices of San Francisco Women Against Rape.

HEALING PROCESS

Those who study abuse know that many if not most survivors never tell anyone. Not their parents, their children, or their spouse, and not their best friend, doctor, or therapist. No one.

One reason for this is that going public with one's story and confronting one's tormentors can result in a second victimization, which is often worse than the first.

Chanel Miller said in her impact statement, "It is enough to be suffering. It is another thing to have someone ruthlessly working to diminish the gravity, the validity of this suffering."

Everyone at Lawrenceville knew about the molesting doctor and all of Harrison's students knew about the hitting.

Everyone knew, and yet no one knew. This is the sad and all-too-familiar pattern of institutional abuse. Universal acknowledgement from below, and universal ignorance, indifference, and denial from above.

BRUCE MCCLELLAN

Henry Bruce McClellan served as headmaster from 1959 to 1986, making him the longest serving head of school since the turn of the Twentieth Century. He had yet to become headmaster when Blackmar and Harrison were hired.

There's no evidence, however, that McClellan ever disciplined either man for misbehavior that should have been evident. On the contrary, Harrison became the chairman of the math department, and an annual mathematics prize was posthumously named after him.

In my time, Lawrenceville had eighth grade students. I fear that Blackmar may have molested boys as young as thirteen under McClellan's watch.

In addition, McClellan was headmaster when at least two of the four incidents mentioned in Headmaster Murray's December, 2017, message occurred. McClellan was head of school during entire tenures of Steve Lavino and Bruce Presley, who were among the abusive teachers referred to, but not named, in the message.

It's possible that McClellan played a role in the departures of Blackmar in 1973 and Presley in 1984, or was at least made aware of the circumstances.

According to the current headmaster, record keeping then was minimal, and there's no evidence that the school notified civil authorities about any of these cases of child abuse.

To be clear, all decisions of any importance would have required the headmaster's approval. It appears, however, that to men like McClellan, being the top administrator meant not needing to occupy himself with what he may have viewed as the administrative trivia of disciplinary cases involving individual staff members.

That is, what characterizes the administrator in this view of governance is his distance from, not his proximity to, the details of staff behavior and staff management.

The farther up the chain of command one is, the less knowledge of, and the less involvement in, disciplinary decisions one has. The system is designed to favor senior administrators over junior ones, and in turn, staff at all levels over students.

McClellan graduated from Williams College in 1946, studied at Oxford, and arrived at Lawrenceville in 1950. He became headmaster just nine years later at the age of thirty-five. He died in 2008.

BLACKMAR

Unlike Larry Nassar, Blackmar made little attempt to "groom" his victims. That is, to methodically and systematically prepare them for their eventual sexual exploitation.

With one exception we know of, Blackmar employed an impersonal, drive-by approach to his molestation of children. He didn't even make a rudimentary attempt at a bedside manner. Perhaps he was perversely inspired by stories of rampant doctor-on-patient sexual abuse in the Navy, where he served as a medical officer during the Korean War.

Testicular examinations are reportedly used in the military to harass, humiliate, and publicly embarrass the junior service members. One might call such illicit exams the ultimate assertion of military rank, privilege, and power.

The exception to Blackmar's drive-by strategy was one student whom he molested on multiple occasions. This tragic situation, which stands out as the worst tale of abuse among the many reported to me, suggests an ongoing relationship between doctor and patient that almost certainly involved some form of coercion or emotional manipulation.

An alumnus reported that Blackmar discovered an inguinal hernia and referred him to a surgeon for what proved to be successful treatment. He went on to say that he was grateful for the exam, because it may have led to the prevention of possible further damage to his intestines.

One wonders how many other students Blackmar's shotgun approach to genital examination may have scared away, even if, in an unlikely best case scenario, his intentions had been honorable.

Had Blackmar checked the eyes, ears, or throats, for example, of all of his patients, he almost certainly would have eventually found symptoms of disease in these organs.

But he didn't. He only checked our genitals.

THE SCHOOL'S RESPONSIBILITY

Headmaster Murray frames these issues with what I'll call a "bad apple" model. There's nothing much wrong with the system as it is, he assures us, although it can always be improved by way of a few tweaks here or incremental changes there.

What's wrong with the system, under his model, is that from time to time a few bad actors bring unwanted behaviors with them from the outside. The system itself neither encourages such behavior nor provides a fertile breeding ground for such bad actors.

That is, everything is okay except for a few rogue actors who choose to flout the rules. Purging them will, therefore, purge the system. Training students to come forward after they're attacked will prevent future attacks, we're told. Perhaps a few bureaucratic procedures do need to be tweaked, but the system itself is largely adequate as it is.

The suggested changes, such as easier reporting, more complete background checks, and strengthened school-directed counseling for students in need, are all designed to protect the generally benign institution from sinister outside influences.

My own experience of reporting abuse only to have nothing happen proves the point that reporting, by itself, isn't the answer.

A DIFFERENT MODEL

May I suggest a different model? The system itself needs to change from the inside out and from the outside in. Hierarchical systems are by their nature havens for abusers and those who would protect them. And the more rigid and entrenched the institutional mindset, the more room for maneuvering there will be for the criminal employees, and the more sudden and catastrophic will be the failures.

Even a well-designed reporting system doesn't go far enough. While a boarding school is by necessity in locus parenti, it, like any good parent, also has a duty to nurture and facilitate its students' maturation and decision-making processes. By graduation, they should be ready to accept at least some of the responsibility for their own governance. In our eagerness to protect, we mustn't overprotect and fall into the trap of permanently infantilizing the student.

Active student participation is the key to a well-designed safety program. This requires a concession of power on the part of the administration. A successful student-designed and implemented peer-to-peer safety-education program requires not only student initiative, but the active involvement of a faculty or administrative sponsor, agreed upon mutually by all parties.

Most schools have at least one faculty or staff member who is known for their rapport with students as well as for their discretion. We must work hard to encourage and empower such individuals to help bridge the communication gap between students and administration.

To put it differently, it isn't enough to simply let the crowd know where the emergency exits are. Together we must build structures that are more resistant to disasters.

There are limits, however, to what even the best-run institutions can do solely on their own initiatives. In the end, we must invite all stakeholders — students, teachers, administrators, parents, and alumni — into the decision-making process. Full transparency and ongoing public scrutiny are critically important.

In the midst of these difficult and longstanding issues, I choose to remain optimistic.

INSTITUTIONAL BETRAYAL AND THE ATROCITY-PRODUCING SITUATION

Like other institutions, private schools exist primarily to consolidate, protect, and further enhance their own power and influence. All stakeholder groups within these organizations bear shared responsibility for bringing about long-overdue changes to entrenched attitudes and practices. Many stakeholders at all levels, however, seem paralyzed by the belief that they lack the power or authority to do so.

In my research for this piece, I was astonished to discover that attitudes of powerlessness to bring about needed change extend all the way to the top of the hierarchy.

Institutions that accord their stakeholders less than full age-appropriate agency in the making of the decisions that affect their lives are at risk of creating an atrocity-producing situation. We must be careful, therefore, not to absolve anyone in the command structure of their responsibility to act with moral conscience and moral clarity. At the same time, we acknowledge that conscience-driven actions may at times be nearly impossible to complete in an environment that actively fosters and promotes inappropriate imbalances of power among its stakeholders.

This analysis has important implications. If the institution itself is culpable, or if everyone in it bears a portion of the responsibility, then no one is responsible. We must be careful not to fall into such a trap. No staff member should be allowed to escape their individual responsibility to act, not only as a legally and professionally mandated caretaker, but also in a larger sense as a human being with agency and a conscience.

The term atrocity-producing situation was introduced by the psychohistorian Robert Jay Lifton in his work with Vietnam veterans. Lifton notes that when institutions are brought to account for their actions, it's almost always their lowest ranking members who are punished. Rarely are the leaders punished, even as we recognize that it's they who bear the greatest responsibility for creating the conditions that gave rise to the atrocities.

Likewise, as we've seen for the past half century or more at Lawrenceville, on those rare occasions when a staff member has been held to account for an assault on a student, it has been only the perpetrators themselves who are punished. To my knowledge, no one in a position of supervisor to a perpetrator has been punished for their actions or inactions in such cases.

The US troops who served in Vietnam reported in interviews with Lifton that the physician assigned to treat them typically suffered from a "... misplaced confidence in his profession and his professional self: his assumption that as a member of a healing profession, whatever he did healed." [The Nazi Doctors, 1986, p. 464]

We may never know what Blackmar was thinking, and his sudden resignation in mid-career and ultimate death, along with institutional stonewalling, have covered many tracks. We've seen, however, that Larry Nassar, after having been challenged for his pattern of harmful behavior in the examination room, engaged in a vigorous and sustained effort to retroactively justify his crimes by way of a series of scientifically questionable research papers.

Of equal or even greater importance is the behavior of the enabling institution. Echoing the attitudes of the Army physicians in Vietnam, the Lawrenceville School has argued in effect that whatever actions its healer took must perforce be healing.

The psychologist James Hillman suggests in We've Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy — and the World's Getting Worse [1992], that trauma can arrest the development of the mind and emotions.

Regarding the abuse, the actual abuse in early childhood — what does the damage, besides the shock and the horror and all those other things, is that early abuse tends to literalize the imagination. It either literalizes the imagination or disassociates it into multiple personality, so that it's split off. [p. 28]

What suffered most in my case was my creative imagination and my ability to enter with my entire self into the world of fiction, fantasy, and storytelling. These are among the most important skills that any school can teach its students, and a failure to learn them can lead to a lifetime of negative consequences.

The psychologist Jennifer Freyd used the term institutional betrayal in her book on child abuse, Betrayal Trauma [1996]. She defines betrayal as "the violation of implicit or explicit trust." She added, "The closer and more necessary the relationship, the greater the degree of betrayal." [p. 9]

The antidote for betrayal by an institution that's capable of producing atrocities is full public transparency and a robust system of trauma-informed support and ongoing education for all stakeholders.

BUILDING A DURABLE CULTURE OF VIOLENCE

I refuse to believe that the Lawrenceville School knew nothing about Ted Blackmar's criminal behavior. He was as much a part of the woodwork, and as important a part of the Lawrenceville experience, as any other employee. Indeed, as medical director, he was more than just an employee — he was on the school's management team.

In addition, there's evidence that at least one nurse had concerns about Blackmar's behavior. It isn't known whether she raised these issues with her superiors.

It would be naïve, then, to believe that the same institution that's capable of hiring and protecting predators is also capable of disciplining them.

BRING ON THE LAWYERS

We're well aware of the school's playbook. Deny, dismiss, or minimize everything, unless it has already reached the press. Stonewall. Run out the clock on the statutes of limitations. Wait until the victims are dead or too incapacitated to travel for a deposition. View all reports of assault as a threat to the institution rather than an opportunity for growth, healing, and — dare I use the word — education. Take preemptive legal steps to avoid costly lawsuits.

The headmaster's refusal to talk directly to an aggrieved alumnus, instead referring him to an outside law firm, is a form of aggression in its own right. Such an act threatens to sever any existing lines of healthy communication that may have led to genuine healing.

The school solicited no input from the survivors on the selection of the law firm. To the contrary, the white-shoe firm that the headmaster selected has built a reputation as a defender of institutions against lawsuits brought by survivors of sexual harassment and assault. The man I spoke to, Bruce Yannett, represented Deerfield Academy, a New England prep school, after sexual misconduct charges were brought against its employees. (Full disclosure: Yannett and I are both graduates of Brown University.) His colleague Mary Beth Hogan, who also participated in the Lawrenceville investigation, represented CBS Corporation after its CEO was accused of sexual misconduct in the workplace, according their biographies on the Debevoise website.

Over the years, institutions have increasing relied on and deferred to lawyers. It may be that the legal and regulatory landscape is more complex today than it was half century ago. The difference, however, is that today it's the legal counsel, not the school administrator, who is too often calling the shots.

Any lawyer can say, "No, you can't do that." This requires little legal imagination. A more thoughtful lawyer, one who is able to see a little farther down the road, might say to the client, let me help you get where you want to go. Let me help you get to a place where we can protect the interests of both the institution and its students, parents, and alumni.

Our common enemy is the notion that this is a win/lose, zero-sum game.

2018 JUNE 18: ATTORNEY JEFF FRITZ

I never thought seriously of filing a lawsuit against the school. Among the significant hurdles are the statutes of limitations, the deaths of the perpetrators, and the lack of witnesses who are willing to come forward.

Another reason not to sue was my belief that there's no monetary solution to such problems. The only solution is for the school to take ownership of its past and commit to full transparency in the design and implementation of robust programs that will make improper behavior far less likely in the future.

Financial settlements can't change the past, and neither do they guarantee that institutions who hire and protect predators will in fact change their behavior. My fear is that the school would simply write off the settlement as part of the price of doing business, and continue as ever with its failed policies.

I also wanted to be able to continue to speak freely and publicly on these issues of national importance. This might be impossible while a lawsuit is pending, or after a settlement that includes a non-disclosure agreement.

My recent communications with the Lawrenceville School and its law firm have convinced me that nothing has changed in more than half a century. The school has moved from outright denial to the rhetoric of change without a meaningful change in the way it treats survivors of abuse.

Frustrated again with the headmaster's inability or unwillingness to report my abuse to the community and to publicly name my perpetrators and me, I reluctantly decided to contact a lawyer.

Jeff Fritz of the firm Soloff & Zervanos asked me to gather my psychotherapy notes. I remembered seeing eight therapists from the 1980s through the 2000s. Many are retired. Among those I was able to locate, only two had kept my records.

Due to problems associated with the statute of limitations, it was impossible to file a lawsuit at the time. There is, however, some hope that New Jersey will join with some of its neighboring states in passing a law that will allow a lawsuit such as mine to go forward.

MEDICAL PRIVACY LAWS

I discovered that there are no federal laws requiring psychotherapists to create or maintain notes. Nor, if such notes should exist, are they required to make them available to the patient. To the contrary, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), which sets the nationwide standards for medical privacy, states explicitly that psychotherapy patients have no right of access to their notes.

This isn't the case with physical medicine. The same law requires that all medical records must be made available to the patient upon request.

It is, therefore, the responsibility of the states to define and enforce the rights of psychotherapy patients. My home state of California requires that notes be kept for a minimum of seven years following the termination of therapy. This applies, however, only to clients whose termination date is in 2015 or later. All of the therapy I received happened long before that year.

It should be noted that nothing in state or federal regulations prevents a therapist from keeping a patient's records for more than seven years, should the therapist choose to do so. Nor does it prevent the therapist from providing any notes that may exist to the patient upon their request.

We return again to the same power imbalances between provider and client or between school and student that created the fertile ground for the sex crimes to happen in the first place.

Patient records should be the property of the patient. They should have the right to obtain and dispose of them as they see fit.

LAWYER VERSUS LAWYER

With the exception of pro bono work, most lawyers are reluctant to bring a suit unless doing so makes financial sense for their firm. One lawyer told me that he was disinclined to sue on my behalf unless I could find fifty victims of Dr Blackmar who were willing to come forward. (I am, to my knowledge, the only alumnus so far to make my concerns public, even as I and others believe that the actual number of victims is likely in the hundreds, if not thousands.)

While civil litigation has its place, it also has its limitations. Pitting the financial interests of the perpetrating and enabling institution against those of the plaintiff runs the risk of failing to address critically important non-material concerns, such as healing and non-monetary forms of reparation.

A resolution driven entirely by financial considerations also has the insidious effect of seeming to equate the interest of the victim with that of the victimizer when no such moral equation can ever be made.

THE FINAL PIECE OF THE PUZZLE

We've already seen that institutions such as education, medicine, law enforcement, the church, and until recently, the media, have failed to fully engage the issue of pervasive and systematic child sexual abuse in society. The reason should be obvious by now. They've failed to fully address these issues within their own institutions.

The failure of the legal profession to vigorously champion the interests of the survivors is the last component of this disturbing enigma. Left unaddressed, the failures of these important institutions threaten to guarantee a lack of progress on this critically important issue.

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PART IX: RECOMMENDATIONS

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Bringing abusers of any kind to account for their crimes is always a challenge, but all the more so when it comes to medical abuse.

MEDICAL ABUSE

We aren't just fighting against individual rogue providers. We're confronting a larger dysfunctional system that allows these crimes to happen repeatedly and without significant disciplinary consequences over long periods of time. The medical establishment is a part of a larger universe of similarly dysfunctional institutions, including educational, religious, and civic institutions, all of whom apparently feel the need to harbor and protect the abusers in their midst.

The perpetrators of medical abuse and their protectors will always claim "medical necessity" — an all-purpose way of dismissing a survivor's most important concerns. We must explode this myth.

To understand the subject of patient safety and responsible behavior on the part of the doctor, we must first acknowledge that those who possess the power to heal also possess the power to destroy. This truism, as I outlined above, has been understood for centuries. That's why there are codes of medical ethics that include necessity, informed consent, Do No Harm, and appropriate professional boundaries.

Despite obstacles, a system of guidelines and checks has developed over the years.

My own brief experience as a lay volunteer at a community medical clinic taught me an important lesson. I had previously thought that a person either possessed empathy toward others or did not. It turns out, however, that almost anyone can be taught to empathize with the patient.

Anyone can be trained to at least follow rules and guidelines that are intended to help the provider to do the right thing by the patient, even under difficult or novel circumstances.

Training in the ethics of caring must begin on the first day — or even before — and must be constantly reinforced throughout all training exercises, residency, and clinical work.

The state boards of medicine are at best reactive. If they respond at all, it's almost always after the damage has already been done. We, the public, are left to put the broken pieces back together.

What goes on behind the closed curtains and doors of the examination room may be difficult to regulate, but this shouldn't stop us from making a good-faith effort to protect the patient. Best practices have evolved over the years by common consent, rather than by the force of law or regulations. It's clear, however, that the state boards have chosen to exert little direct authority over how physicians conduct their exams and procedures.

Women with breast and gynecological issues have come to expect at least a measure of dignity and respect in the exam room. No disrobing in front of the doctor. If requested, a third party must be allowed to be present for the duration of the exam. Providers always use gloves, as well as lubricant when needed, and take other steps to make the patient feel comfortable about their clinical experience.

To these protocols I'd add prior, informed consent for all exams, tests, and procedures and a requirement that clinical notes be taken, kept in perpetuity, and made available to the patient or their authorized representative upon request. Some survivors may choose not to come forward until decades after the assault.

It's also important for institutions to provide a choice of clinician whenever possible. As we've seen in the Michigan State and Ohio State cases, as well as at Lawrenceville, having but a single choice of doctor can be a recipe for disaster. While not all sports-team doctors are serial abusers, we should be frank with ourselves and acknowledge that potential abusers might well gravitate toward a situation where the patients have little or no choice of doctor. Such patients are at risk of becoming a captive, vulnerable population for a would-be abuser.

All of these issues become even more acute when we're dealing with children who lack the support that's needed to successfully challenge their superiors.

CLINICIAN CONDUCT IN EXAM ROOM

 • Patient education and informed consent prior to any exam or procedure
 • Limiting skin-to-skin or glove-to-skin contact in the sensitive areas, absent a compelling medical necessity that has been thoroughly discussed with the patient and consented to
 • Presence of a friend, relative, or other third party during all exams involving sensitive areas of the body; medical staff employed by a doctor's office may be reluctant to report abuse
 • No disrobing in the presence of medical staff; disrobing only to the extent necessary to perform the exam
 • Anonymous questionnaires following all office visits
 • Mandatory written medical reports for all consultations, exams, and procedures
 • Maintenance of all records in perpetuity, providing them upon request to the patient or a person designated by the patient

RESPONSIBILITIES OF ADMINISTRATORS

 • Thorough background checks and ongoing vetting of all personnel, including volunteers, who have contact with patients
 • Mandatory reporting for all adults who witness abuse or have reason to suspect that a minor may be in danger
 • A commitment that the school will contact law enforcement even if it's conducting its own investigation
 • Assignment to each assault victim of a professional case manager who has experience in rape counseling and victim advocacy
 • Full and active cooperation with state medical authorities and law enforcement to resolve any potentially criminal behavior
 • Ongoing active solicitation of student and alumni experiences
 • Erring on the side of caution; believing rather than disbelieving the complainant
 • Immediate suspension of all medical personnel who are under active investigation — no contact with patients until investigation is complete
 • Public statement that the school will not disparage the motives or intentions of those who have chosen to come forward
 • Employees who are dismissed for cause should be denied a settlement consisting of cash or benefits
 • A commitment not to enter into non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with victims, and not to enforce any such clauses if and when they're found in existing agreements
 • A commitment that the school will fully reimburse victims for all needed therapeutic services and other abuse-related expenses

LEGISLATION

 • Lengthening or eliminating the statute of limitations, especially with regard to sex crimes against children. There's no statute of limitations on the victim's pain and suffering.
 • Strengthening of reporting requirements to include all adults who have contact with children, or who have management oversight of those who do
 • All medical records and psychotherapy notes should be made available to the patient or client upon request. Patients should continue to have the right to determine who sees their records.

TEACH YOUR CHILDREN

The present challenges at boarding schools will continue unabated until we adopt a different model of child development. You can build protective walls around children — there's a time and place for that — but it would be better to begin as soon as possible to prepare them for the challenges of life.

It broke my heart to hear Larry Nassar survivor Alexis Alvarado say, "I was taught that it was not okay for anyone to touch you down there, except a doctor."

Ms Alvarado, who was a preteen at the time of her abuse, did as she was told. And yet the unthinkable happened.

What's needed is a world in which students who are away from home for the first time, who have yet to make friends with other students, and who are unfamiliar with the arcane rules and disciplinary procedures that accompany residential life, feel empowered to negotiate on an equal basis with older authority figures.

To the contrary, all that a child has been taught may well militate against this: Obey your parents. Do what the teacher says. The doctor is a healer who has your best interest in mind.

AFTERWORD

Faced again with similar circumstances, I wouldn't cooperate with a legal investigation for which the school has paid. Such investigations appear to be little more than an effort to gain intelligence about, and ultimately, leverage over, those who may report abuse. Despite their rhetoric, institutions don't see the survivor as a family member in need of healing, but rather as an alien or enemy who is in need of management.

This puts the survivor who is now an adult in a position that's distressingly similar to the one he was in as a freshman trying in vain, and with similarly catastrophic results, to please his superiors.

Our public life has devolved to the point that criminal charges against child predators, whether brought in a timely manner or not, are almost non-existent. Sadly, the only remaining remedy for survivors is a civil litigation system that's equally hamstrung by strict and unrealistic limitations.

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PART X: ONGOING PRESS REPORTS

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The press continues to report on cases of widespread sexual abuse in a variety of institutional settings.

2018 JANUARY 23: RCMP SEX ABUSE BY DOCTOR

Toronto Star: Female Mounties allege sexual abuse by doctor at RCMP health office

"Halifax police are investigating allegations from dozens of female RCMP officers and recruits who say they were sexually assaulted by a doctor at the Mounties' health clinic in Nova Scotia over two decades."

2018 MAY 16: USC SEX ABUSE BY GYNECOLOGIST

Los Angeles Times: Young women have for years reported bad behavior on the part of a USC doctor. Nevertheless, the university allowed him continue treating students.

"For nearly 30 years, the University of Southern California's student health clinic had one full-time gynecologist: Dr George Tyndall. Tall and garrulous, he treated tens of thousands of female students, many of them teenagers seeing a gynecologist for the first time."

2018 JULY 20: OHIO STATE SPORTS MEDICINE DOCTOR

Akron Beacon Journal: Ohio State has at least 100 firsthand accounts of sexual misconduct by Strauss

"COLUMBUS: More than 100 former students have reported they were sexually abused by former Ohio State physician Richard Strauss, the university said in an update Friday."

"Ohio State first announced the investigation into Strauss in April, stemming from allegations of sexual abuse during his time as a team physician for the university's wrestling team. Since then, the investigation has continued to expand, with athletes from 14 men's varsity sports and former patients of Student Health Services reporting allegations about Strauss."

2018 AUGUST 8: LES MOONVES OF CBS

New Yorker: Les Moonves and CBS Face Allegations of Sexual Misconduct

"Six women accuse the CEO of harassment and intimidation, and dozens more describe abuse at his company."

2018 AUGUST 14: CATHOLIC DIOCESE IN PENNSYLVANIA

Morning Call of Allentown, PA: Scathing Pennsylvania grand jury report accuses hundreds of priests of sexually abusing more than 1,000 children

"A scathing grand jury report released Tuesday reveals accusations of sexual abuse against 301 priests — 37 from the Allentown Diocese — whose actions went unchecked for decades in dioceses across Pennsylvania."

2018 AUGUST 18: KEY SCHOOL IN ANNAPOLIS, MARYLAND

Washington Post: Former students of Key School in Annapolis allege sexual misconduct

"A private school in Maryland has launched an investigation into allegations that a culture of sexual abuse flourished decades ago with administrators' knowledge."

2018 SEPTEMBER 9: LES MOONVES OF CBS

New Yorker: As Leslie Moonves Negotiates His Exit from CBS, Women Raise New Assault and Harassment Claims

Just hours after the magazine published the article above, CBS announced on its corporate website that Moonves had stepped down:

CBS Corporation and National Amusements Announce Resolution of Governance Disputes and Transition to New Leadership

2018 SEPTEMBER 11: MSU ATHLETE ALLEGES RAPE COVERUP

Detroit News: Ex-MSU athlete's suit alleges Nassar raped her, Perles covered it up

"Serial pedophile Larry Nassar videotaped the rape of a young field hockey player that led to her pregnancy in 1992 — and when her coach at Michigan State University complained about it, former athletic director George Perles intervened and covered it up, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court."

2018 SEPTEMBER 13: ST PAUL'S SCHOOL

New York Times: St. Paul's School to Get State Monitor, but No Charges, After Sex Abuse Reports

"Responding to reports of sexual abuse and misconduct over a matter of decades, the state of New Hampshire on Thursday opted not to prosecute former employees of St. Paul's School, one of the most prestigious prep schools in New England, and instead assigned an independent monitor to the campus for up to five years."

2018 OCTOBER 18: ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY

New York Times: A Wave of Child Sex Abuse Accusations Against a Doctor, and Hospital Says It Knew

"For almost 30 years, parents sought out Dr Reginald Archibald when their children would not grow. They came to his clinic at The Rockefeller University Hospital, a prominent New York research institution, where he treated and studied children who were small for their age."

2019 JANUARY 19: LANDON SCHOOL IN BETHESDA, MARYLAND

Washington Post: Private school in Maryland discloses alleged sexual abuse from over 50 years ago

"An elite all-boys private school in suburban Maryland revealed that seven of its alumni have reported sexual abuse by a longtime teacher, more than 50 years after the alleged acts."

2019 MARCH 11: SYRIAN GOVERNMENT FORCES

Washington Post: Syrian forces use widespread sexual violence to humiliate and silence male prisoners, new report says

"Syrian government forces are using widespread sexual violence to humiliate and silence male prisoners, psychologists and a monitoring group said Monday, offering a rare window into a form of abuse rarely discussed by its survivors."

2019 MARCH 18: PEDIATRICIAN IN PENNSYLVANIA

NBC News: Dr Johnnie Barto, a sexual predator pediatrician, gets up to 158 years in prison

"A Pennsylvania pediatrician who admitted to molesting several generations of children was sentenced Monday to spend the rest of his life in prison after 18 now-grown women took turns pleading with the court to throw the book at him, with many calling him a 'monster.'”

2019 MARCH 19: WEST VIRGINIA CHARGES BISHOP AND DIOCESE

Washington Post: Catholic diocese and former bishop in West Virginia knowingly employed pedophiles, according to lawsuit filed by state attorney general

"West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey sued the Catholic diocese of Wheeling-Charleston and its former bishop Michael J. Bransfield on Tuesday, charging that they 'knowingly employed pedophiles and failed to conduct adequate background checks' for people working in Catholic schools and camps, a news release from Morrisey's office says.”

2019 MARCH 25: PRIVATE SCHOOL IN NEW YORK CITY

New York Times: Report Alleges Sexual Misconduct at Saint Ann's, Prestigious Brooklyn Private School

"A yearlong investigation has found allegations of sexual misconduct, including male teachers having sex with students, at Saint Ann's School, a Brooklyn private school known for its experimental educational approach and artistic culture.”

2019 APRIL 10: STUDENT RAPED AT MICHIGAN STATE

New York Times: Michigan State Discouraged Reporting of Rape Allegation Against Athletes, Woman Says

"Bailey Kowalski, 22, sued Michigan State last year for violating her rights under Title IX.”

2019 APRIL 11: COACHES ABUSED CANADIAN WOMEN'S SOCCER ATHLETES

Guardian: 'The Sickest Thing': Canadian Soccer Rocked by Claims of Systemic Abuse

"At least 14 former high-level players have alleged Canada Soccer and the Vancouver Whitecaps failed to protect youth team members from abuse and inappropriate behavior by coaches.”

2019 APRIL 14: PEDIATRICIAN LONG ACCUSED OF MOLESTATIONS IS STILL PRACTICING MEDICINE

San Francisco Chronicle: South Bay pediatrician faces new complaint of sex abuse from juvenile patient

"A Bay Area pediatrician and former foster parent who has been accused of sexual molestation by more than a dozen children and teens since 2001 is under investigation for a third time, after a new allegation of abuse in Santa Cruz County."

"The investigation of Dr Patrick Clyne, 57, who practices in the small community of Freedom, is a joint effort by the Medical Board of California and the Watsonville Police Department, police officials said. It involves a complaint from a child patient that was first reported to the Santa Cruz County Sheriff's Office in May.”

2019 MAY 17: OHIO STATE DOCTOR ABUSED STUDENTS OVER DECADES

Washington Post: Ohio State team doctor sexually abused 177 students over decades, report finds

"An Ohio State team doctor sexually abused at least 177 male students from 1979 to 1996, and school officials failed to take appropriate action despite being aware of numerous reports of the physician's misconduct over the 17-year period, according to an investigative report released Friday."

2019 MAY 20: MARYLAND DOCTOR ACCUSED OF MULTIPLE ASSAULTS

Washington Post: Frederick doctor arrested on 65 sexual offense and assault charges involving patients

"A Frederick, Maryland, doctor, who this month was charged with raping an 18-year-old woman during an examination, was arrested Monday after a grand jury indicted him on 65 sexual offense and assault counts against 11 more victims, including many juvenile girls, Frederick police and the State's Attorney's Office said in a joint statement."

2019 AUGUST 6: BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA

Washington Post: Boy Scouts failed to stop hundreds of previously unreported sexual predators, a lawsuit alleges

"A group of lawyers is claiming to have uncovered hundreds of previously unreported cases of sexual abuse in the Boy Scouts of America, according to a lawsuit filed Monday in Pennsylvania. The plaintiff in the case, named only as S.D. to keep his identity private, is alleging that he was assaulted 'hundreds' of times by a scout leader in Pennsylvania over the course of about four years in the 1970s."

2019 AUGUST 8: MEN'S HEALTH SPECIALIST AT USC ABUSED PATIENTS FOR TWO DECADES

USC Annenberg Media: 48 male patients say campus doctor sexually abused them — and USC was warned: Five of those patients, all of whom were students, say they told the university that Dr. Dennis Kelly subjected them to invasive exams and made sexual remarks.

"Year after year, for more than 20 years, young men who entered the USC student health center were sent to Dr. Dennis Kelly. Once the exam room door closed behind them, say 48 former patients who are gay or bisexual, Kelly subjected them to sexual abuse, such as fondling their genitals or making them kneel naked on the exam table for rectal probes. One man recalled that Kelly, without warning, inserted a metal instrument into his anus, then leaned forward and whispered, 'How often do you let your partner cum in you?'"

2020 JANUARY 7: GYNECOLOGIST AT USC

New York Times: Judge Signals Approval of USC's $215 Million Settlement With Ex-Gynecologist's Patients: More than 18,000 women are expected to receive $2,500 to $250,000 from the University of Southern California

"A federal judge in Los Angeles said this week that he was inclined to give final approval to the University of Southern California's $215 million class-action settlement with former patients of Dr George Tyndall, the campus gynecologist accused of sexual misconduct involving hundreds of patients during his decades-long tenure."

2020 SEPTEMBER 9: GYNECOLOGIST AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

cnn.com: New York gynecologist charged with six federal sex abuse counts

"A former Columbia University gynecologist accused by the wife of former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang of sexual assault has been indicted for allegedly sexually abusing female patients — including a minor — over nearly two decades."

"The unsealed indictment in US District Court for the Southern District of New York accuses Robert Hadden, 62, of six counts of enticing and inducing dozens of victims to travel to his medical offices in New York and subjecting them to unlawful sexual abuse from about 1993 to 2012, according to prosecutors. The charges involved a minor and five adults."

2021 MARCH 25: GYNECOLOGIST AT USC

Washington Post: USC agrees to pay $852 million in latest settlement involving gynecologist accused of abuse: The university has agreed to pay more than $1 billion in recent years to settle lawsuits related to George Tyndall

"The University of Southern California has agreed to an $852 million settlement to resolve lawsuits from hundreds of women alleging that the university failed to respond adequately to complaints that a gynecologist sexually abused patients at its student health center, according to terms disclosed Thursday.

"USC and attorneys for the plaintiffs made the terms public after a hearing in Los Angeles County Superior Court. The magnitude of the settlement — about one-seventh the size of the $5.9 billion endowment USC reported in 2020 — made it a landmark case for higher education."

2021 JUNE 10: SPORTS PHYSICIAN AT UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

New York Times: Son of Bo Schembechler Says He Was Abused by Team Doctor at Michigan: Matt Schembechler said his account of abuse when he was a child in 1969 was ignored by his father, Bo, who was the new head football coach at Michigan

"A son of Bo Schembechler, the coach who did more than any other to build the University of Michigan program into the one with the most wins in college football history, said his father angrily ignored his account of sexual abuse by a university doctor in 1969."

2021 JUNE 11: TEACHER AT SCHOOL RUN BY MINNESOTA CHRISTIAN SECT

Washington Post: 'People of Praise leaders failed me': Christian group tied to Justice Amy Coney Barrett faces reckoning over sexual misconduct

"EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. — In December, Katie Logan called the police in this Minneapolis suburb to unearth a buried secret: Her high school physics teacher had sexually assaulted her two decades earlier, she said. She was 17 and had just graduated from a school run by a small Christian group called People of Praise. He was 35 at the time, a widely admired teacher and girls' basketball coach who lived in a People of Praise home for celibate men."

2021 JUNE 17: SEX ABUSE AT CALIFORNIA PREP SCHOOL

New York Times: Thacher, a California Prep School, Apologizes for Past Sex Abuse: In a 91-page report, the private coed boarding school in Ojai detailed sexual assaults and harassment against students dating back to the 1980s

"Several faculty members at the private, coed Thacher School in California sexually abused and harassed students or engaged in inappropriate relationships with them, according to a report released by the school, which detailed allegations that went back to the 1980s."

2021 JULY 1: SETTLEMENT IN BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA LAWSUITS

Reuters: Boy Scouts reach $850 million settlement with sex abuse victims

"The Boy Scouts of America has reached an $850 million settlement with groups representing tens of thousands of men with sexual abuse claims, a major step toward addressing a deluge of accusations that sent the organization into bankruptcy."

2021 JULY 14: INSPECTOR GENERAL REPORT ON FBI INVESTIGATION OF LARRY NASSAR

New York Times: Inspector General Says F.B.I. Botched Nassar Abuse Investigation

"In a report released just before the start of the Tokyo Olympics, the inspector general found that the F.B.I. was delayed by more than a year in ramping up its investigation, allowing Mr Nassar to abuse more victims."

2021 JULY 29: FORMER ARCHBISHOP INDICTED ON CHARGES OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

New York Times: Ex-Cardinal McCarrick Faces Sexual Assault Charges

"Theodore McCarrick, 91, the former Roman Catholic archbishop of Washington, was charged with three counts of indecent assault and battery. He is accused of abusing a 16-year-old boy in 1974."

2021 JULY 31: NEW YORK DIOCESE COVERED UP RAMPANT CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

Albany (NY) Times Union: Bishop acknowledges child predators were sent for 'treatment' — 'The professional advice we received was well-intended but flawed, and I deeply regret that we followed it'

"The Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany engaged in a decades-long cover-up of chronic child sexual abuse committed by its priests by employing practices described in a recent statement from former Bishop Howard J. Hubbard, who ran the diocese from 1977 to 2014."

2021 AUGUST 31: SURVIVORS SETTLE WITH USA GYMNASTICS

USA Today: USA Gymnastics, survivors reach agreement on proposed $425 million settlement

"USA Gymnastics has reached a $425 million settlement agreement with hundreds of women who said they were sexually abused by Larry Nassar, their coach or someone else affiliated with the sport."

2021 SEPTEMBER 23: SEXUAL ABUSE BY PHYSICIAN AT UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Washington Post: In Larry Nassar’s shadow, a larger sex abuse case at the University of Michigan

"Sixty miles from Nassar’s one time office, a similar but much larger case of sex abuse is playing out with little of the same attention. More than 950 people have come forward to accuse the late University of Michigan doctor Robert E. Anderson of abusing them while he was on staff between 1966 and 2003, according to lawyers who represent the survivors."

"That total surpasses the scale of the molestation at Michigan State, as well as similar incidents at the University of Southern California and Ohio State University. Attorneys for the University of Michigan survivors contend the allegations against Anderson constitute the largest example of sexual exploitation by one person in U.S. history."

2021 OCTOBER 5: LARGE SCALE CHILD ABUSE IN FRENCH CATHOLIC CHURCH

Guardian: French Catholic church expresses 'shame' after report finds 330,000 children were abused: Church asks for forgiveness as it accepts findings of 'appalling' abuse by clergy and lay members over 70 years

"The French Catholic church has expressed 'shame' and pleaded for forgiveness, after a devastating report found that at least 330,000 children were victims of sexual abuse by clergy and lay members of church institutions over the past 70 years."

2021 OCTOBER 11: PHYSICIAN DRUGGED AND ASSAULTED PATIENTS FOR YEARS

New York Times: After Years of Sexual Abuse Allegations, How Did This Doctor Keep Working? Hospital staff members looked the other way while Ricardo Cruciani addicted vulnerable women to pain medications and assaulted them, according to a new lawsuit.

"Consumer advocates say that Mr. Cruciani's ability to continue seeing patients despite a long trail of misconduct and complaints is not unusual."

2021 OCTOBER 18: TEACHER SENTENCED FOR SEXUAL ABUSE OF STUDENTS

Washington Post: Maryland teacher who sexually abused two students sentenced to eight years in prison

"Moments before imposing prison time in a sexual abuse case Friday, a Maryland judge called attention to the profession of the man before him, calling it perhaps the most significant relationship for a 14-year-old."

"'You were a teacher,' Montgomery County Circuit Judge David Boynton said. 'A teacher has the ability to support and help a person develop and grow and flourish, or to absolutely crush them. And that's what you did.'"

2021 NOVEMBER 23: TEACHER ALLOWED TO CONTINUE TEACHING DESPITE MULTIPLE COMPLAINTS OF HARASSMENT

Berkeleyside: Berkeley High knew for 15 years of allegations chemistry teacher sexually harassed students

"After years of sexual misconduct complaints, the school district signed a gag order allowing Matthew Bissell to quietly resign."

2021 NOVEMBER 26: FORMER HEADMASTER OF BOARDING SCHOOL SENTENCED FOR CHILD ABUSE

BBC: Paedophile headteacher of navy boarding school jailed

"A 90-year-old former headteacher has been jailed for sexually abusing pupils over a period of 20 years."

2021 NOVEMBER 30: HIGH SCHOOL ROWING COACH ABUSED STUDENTS

Washington Post: They trusted a coach with their girls and Ivy League ambitions. Now he's accused of sex abuse.

"Kirk Shipley, the rowing coach at Walt Whitman High in Bethesda, Md., held onto his job through two investigations into his behavior. Then he was arrested."

2021 DECEMBER 13: FINANCIAL SETTLEMENT FOR NASSAR SURVIVORS

New York Times: Nassar Abuse Survivors Reach a $380 Million Settlement: The agreement reached with U.S.A. Gymnastics and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee will compensate more than 500 girls and women abused in the sport.

"Hundreds of female gymnasts who were sexually abused by Lawrence G. Nassar, the former team doctor of the national gymnastics team, have agreed to a $380 million settlement with U.S.A. Gymnastics and the United States Olympic & Paralympic Committee, ending the latest dark chapter in one of the biggest molestation cases in sports history."

2022 JANUARY 10: TEN-YEAR-OLD BOY MOLESTED AT SUMMER CAMP

USA Today: 'The most intense violation of my life': A beloved camp, a lost boy and the lifelong impact of child sexual trauma

"Peter said the abuse occurred over multiple summers in the late 1950s at Vermont's Camp Najerog, where parents sent their sons for an education on the outdoors. It would split Peter into the boy he deserved to be and the one he would become. The abuse he recalls, and the lingering questions about what the camp did and did not know, what the adults around him did and did not do, would come to define every aspect of Peter's life."

2022 JANUARY 19: FINANCIAL SETTLEMENT FOR UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN SURVIVORS

Washington Post: University of Michigan agrees to $490 million settlement in sex abuse scandal: Funds will compensate survivors of abuse involving the late university sports doctor Robert Anderson.

"The University of Michigan said Wednesday it has agreed to pay $490 million to settle claims from more than 1,000 people who say a longtime sports doctor on its staff sexually abused them over many years. The development punctuates a series of scandals that have sent the prestigious school reeling."

2022 JANUARY 20: FORMER POPE ACCUSED OF FAILING TO DISCIPLINE PEDOPHILE PRIESTS

New York Times: Benedict Faulted for Handling of Abuse Cases When He Was an Archbishop: A newly released report by a law firm said the former pope mishandled at least four cases of sexual abuse accusations in Germany.

"ROME — A report commissioned by the Roman Catholic Church in Munich and released on Thursday accused the retired Pope Benedict XVI of mishandling at least four cases of sexual abuse by priests when he was the archbishop there. Members of the law firm that conducted the investigation also said Benedict had attended a meeting about a pedophile priest that he claimed he didn't go to, or know the details of."

2022 FEBRUARY 8: YOUTH SOCCER COACH ABUSED PLAYERS VERBALLY AND SEXUALLY FOR YEARS

Washington Post: 'Nobody believed those teenagers': Former NWSL coach Rory Dames was accused by youth players of misconduct decades ago, records and interviews show. He coached his way to power and prominence anyway.

"Last fall, when players in the National Women's Soccer League publicly accused prominent coach Rory Dames of verbal and emotional abuse, Megan Cnota was immediately transported to two decades before, when she was a teenager playing for Dames in suburban Chicago."

2022 FEBRUARY 8: SETTLEMENT IN CASE OF ABUSIVE GYNECOLOGIST AT UCLA

Washington Post: University of California agrees to $243.6 million settlement in UCLA sex abuse scandal: The settlement is the latest by a university reckoning with allegations dating back years

"The regents of the University of California have agreed to pay more than $240 million to settle claims from 203 women who say that a former gynecologist-oncologist at the University of California at Los Angeles sexually abused them."

2022 APRIL 21: ATHLETES SUE FBI OVER BOTCHED INVESTIGATION OF LARRY NASSAR

New York Times: 13 Nassar Abuse Victims Seek $10 Million Each From F.B.I.: A lawyer for the athletes said the F.B.I. mishandled reports and evidence that could have prevented Lawrence G. Nassar, who is now in prison, from abusing others.

"Thirteen female athletes who were sexually assaulted by Lawrence G. Nassar, the former sports doctor for the U.S.A. Gymnastics national team and Michigan State University, are seeking $10 million each from the F.B.I., alleging that its agents mishandled an investigation and allowed Mr. Nassar to continue abusing more victims, a lawyer said on Thursday."

2022 MAY 18: SETTLEMENT IN SUIT AGAINST NEW MEXICAN ARCHDIOCESE

New York Times: New Mexico Archdiocese to Settle Sex Abuse Claims for $121.5 Million: The settlement announced by the Archdiocese of Santa Fe is among the largest of its kind involving the Catholic Church in the United States.

"The Archdiocese of Santa Fe in New Mexico said that it had reached a $121.5 million settlement agreement to resolve a bankruptcy case that stemmed from clergy sex abuse claims, one of the largest such settlements involving the Catholic Church in the United States."

2022 MAY 22: REPORT SLAMS SBC FOR SECRECY AND COVER-UP IN SEX ABUSE CASES

Washington Post: Southern Baptist leaders covered up sex abuse, lied about secret database, report says: Among the findings was a previously unknown case of a pastor who was credibly accused of assaulting a woman a month after leaving the presidency of the Southern Baptist Convention

"Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday released a major third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors were often ignored, minimized and 'even vilified' by top clergy in the nation's largest Protestant denomination."

2022 MAY 24: SETTLEMENTS IN SEX ABUSE CASES INVOLVING UCLA GYNECOLOGIST

Washington Post: Settlements in UCLA sex abuse cases reach nearly $700 million: New $374.4 million payout announced Tuesday to resolve claims related to former UCLA gynecologist James Heaps

"The University of California has agreed to another massive round of settlements in response to sex abuse claims from hundreds of patients of former UCLA gynecologist-oncologist James Heaps, officials said Tuesday, raising the university's total payouts in the case to nearly $700 million."

2022 MAY 25: PREDATORY TENNIS COACH GROOMED AND ABUSED A TEENAGER

New York Times: Her Tennis Coach Abused Her. Could the Sport Have Prevented It? Adrienne Jensen does not know Pam Shriver, the 22-time Grand Slam doubles champion, but both believe tennis needs to change its approach toward predatory coaches.

"The grooming of Adrienne Jensen began with an invitation to train with a top junior tennis coach at a well-regarded tennis academy in suburban Kansas City in 2009."

2022 JUNE 7: PROMINENT NEW YORK PHYSICIAN GROOMED AND ASSAULTED PATIENTS

New York Times: A Prominent Manhattan Doctor Is Accused of Sexual Assault: Dr. Kevin M. Cahill performed abusive and unnecessary examinations, a former patient claims in a lawsuit, and pursued her romantically for years. His lawyer says the exams were appropriate.

"The patient's lawsuit claims that Dr. Cahill sexually assaulted her during medical exams, ripping open her paper gown, fondling her breasts, penetrating her anus with his finger or an object, forcefully kissing her and telling her that he loved her."

2022 JUNE 8: NASSAR SURVIVORS FILE MASSIVE LAWSUIT AGAINST FBI

Washington Post: Gymnasts sue FBI for $1 billion over mishandling of Larry Nassar case

"A group of 90 women that includes former U.S. Olympic team gymnasts Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney and Aly Raisman has filed a lawsuit against the FBI, alleging it mishandled its investigation of former Team USA doctor Larry Nassar, allowing him to continue to sexually abuse them even after they had reported him to the bureau in 2015."

2022 JULY 29: PHYSICIAN GUILTY OF DRUGGING AND ASSAULTING PATIENTS

New York Times: Pain Doctor Found Guilty of Sexually Assaulting Patients: Ricardo Cruciani was known as a gifted neurologist. But Manhattan prosecutors said he took advantage of his patients' chronic pain.

"For more than a decade, Ricardo Cruciani built a reputation as a gifted and esteemed physician who could relieve chronic pain when other doctors could not."

"But then a string of alarming claims began to surface: Dozens of patients accused him of sexually abusing them during exams after he offered sometimes dangerously high amounts of medication to maintain control over them, prosecutors in the Manhattan district attorney's office said during a trial this month. When they resisted, he would withhold their prescriptions."

2022 AUGUST 15: CONVICTED PHYSICIAN FOUND DEAD OF APPARENT SUICIDE

New York Times: Pain Doctor Who Sexually Assaulted Patients Found Dead at Rikers: Ricardo Cruciani's death, just weeks after his conviction, was a suspected suicide.

"A doctor found guilty last month of sexually assaulting patients was found dead at the Rikers Island jail complex Monday even though his lawyer had called for him to be put on suicide watch just minutes after he was convicted."

"The doctor, Ricardo Cruciani, a 68-year-old neurologist, was found early Monday morning sitting in a shower area of the jail with a sheet around his neck, according to documents obtained by The New York Times. Shortly afterward, medical staff arrived to attend to him. He died about an hour after he was discovered, the documents show."

2022 OCTOBER 3: SOCCER COACHES ALLOWED TO CONTINUE COACHING AFTER REPORTS OF ABUSE

New York Times: Report Details 'Systemic' Abuse of Players in Women's Soccer: A yearlong investigation found U.S. Soccer executives, N.W.S.L. owners and coaches at all levels of American soccer had turned a blind eye toward years of reports of abuse from players.

"One coach called in a player to review game film and showed her pornography instead. Another was notorious at the highest levels of women's soccer for alternately berating his players and then quizzing them about their sex lives."

"A third coach coerced multiple players into sexual relationships, behavior that one top team found so disturbing that it fired him. But when he was hired by a rival team only a few months later, the original club, which had documented his behavior in an internal investigation, said nothing. Instead, it publicly wished him well in his new post."

2022 OCTOBER 20: PHYSICIAN AT UCLA GUILTY OF SEXUALLY ASSAULTING PATIENTS

New York Times: Former U.C.L.A. Gynecologist Is Convicted of Sexually Abusing Patients: Dr. James Heaps faces up to 21 years in prison after he was convicted of five criminal counts, prosecutors said.

"An obstetrician-gynecologist who worked for years at the University of California, Los Angeles, was convicted on Thursday of sexually abusing patients in a case that cost the university hundreds of millions of dollars in settlements and came amid similar accusations against doctors at other universities."

2022 DECEMBER 31: MAN SUES AFTER A PRIEST SEXUALLY ABUSED HIM

San Francisco Chronicle: How one Bay Area man tracked down the priest who allegedly abused him after 55 years

"For more than a decade, Ernie Cox went online to search the faces of priests who had been accused of child sexual abuse, looking for one man."

"He'd only seen the priest one day in the late 1960s when, the former altar boy alleges, the priest sexually abused him before and after mass at a Contra Costa County church. The boy was 12. The priest was visiting Immaculate Heart of Mary from another parish, and Cox, now 67, didn't remember his name."

2023 JANUARY 19: REGENTS FIRE PROFESSOR WHO ASSAULTED HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT

San Francisco Chronicle: UC regents fire tenured professor after finding he sexually assaulted high school student

"The University of California Board of Regents on Thursday fired a tenured UC Davis professor for the first time in the school's history after an investigation found that the professor sexually assaulted an 18-year-old high school student he had mentored more than a decade ago."

"'The regents made their decision at the request of UC Davis Chancellor Gary S. May and on the recommendation of UC President Michael Drake, in accordance with university policy,' said a UC Davis spokesperson in an email to The Chronicle."

2023 JANUARY 24: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY GYNECOLOGIST CONVICTED

New York Times: Former Gynecologist Convicted of Luring Women to His Office for Abuse: Robert A. Hadden had previously admitted to sexual abuse in a 2016 plea deal that required no prison time.

"A former Manhattan gynecologist who was accused of sexual abuse by dozens of women was convicted on Tuesday of inducing patients to cross state lines for what they believed were routine examinations during which he sexually assaulted them."

"The federal charges against Robert A. Hadden, who has not worked as a doctor since 2012, stemmed from assaults against four patients who traveled from and through New Jersey, Nevada and Pennsylvania for gynecological and obstetrics appointments."

2023 JANUARY 27: WATER POLO COACH SENTENCED AFTER SEXUALLY ASSAULTING TEENAGERS

Orange County Register: Orange County water polo coach gets more than 18 years in prison for sexually abusing teenagers

"A prominent Orange County water polo coach was sentenced Friday to 18 years and four months in prison for nearly two-dozen felonies after several women accused him of taking advantage of their trust and sexually assaulting them during one-on-one sessions in public practices while they were teenagers."

"Seventeen former players and parents spoke out against Bahram Hojreh during an often-emotional hearing Friday, describing him as an arrogant and manipulative man whose larger-than-life persona and revered status within the sport of water polo masked years of sexual abuse."

2023 FEBRUARY 2: INVESTIGATION FINDS WIDESPREAD ABUSE BY OHIO DOCTORS

Columbus Dispatch: Even after Ohio State's sexual abuse scandal, much remains secretive and unchanged for patients who accuse doctors of misconduct

"Dr. Richard Strauss wasn't the only one."

"Strauss was accused of sexually abusing at least 177 patients during his time at Ohio State University. But he was just one of hundreds of Ohio physicians who sexually abused or harassed hundreds more patients throughout 42 years, a Dispatch investigation has found."

2023 FEBRUARY 24: LAWSUITS FILED AGAINST JUVENILE HALL PROBATION OFFICER

San Francisco Chronicle: Lawsuits allege decades of sexual abuse in San Mateo County juvenile hall

"A San Mateo County probation officer sexually assaulted boys who were under the county's supervision for years while employees in multiple departments failed to stop the abuse, according to a recent string of lawsuits."

"Ten civil complaints were filed in San Mateo County Superior Court earlier this month by unnamed plaintiffs, alleging that former Deputy Probation Officer John Domeniconi used his position of trust and authority to repeatedly sexually abuse boys who were being held in local detention facilities and camps, as well as those on probation."

2023 APRIL 5: REPORT REVEALS HORRIFIC ABUSE BY PRIESTS

Washington Post: Maryland AG releases report on alleged Catholic clergy sex abuse: Attorney General Anthony Brown said his office is also investigating two more dioceses, including the Archdiocese of Washington

"Maryland Attorney General Anthony G. Brown (D) released a report Wednesday detailing decades of alleged sex abuse by clergy within the Archdiocese of Baltimore."

"The investigation found that over 600 young people — from preschoolers to young adults — suffered sexual abuse and 'physical torture' by more than 150 clergy members from the mid-1940s to 2002. The attorney general's office had previewed some of its findings in a November court filing, but the report itself brought them to life in visceral and horrifying detail. 'Tests of torture' that involved chaining and whipping teenagers. Two sisters abused as grade-schoolers 'hundreds of times' by one priest. A deacon who admitted to molesting more than 100 minors over three decades. Clergy who preyed on children they met recovering at hospitals."

2023 AUGUST 4: ARCHDIOCESE TO FILE FOR BANKRUPTCY IN SEX ABUSE CASES

San Francisco Chronicle: S.F. Catholic Archdiocese, facing hundreds of sexual abuse claims, says bankruptcy is 'very likely'

"The San Francisco Archdiocese of the Roman Catholic Church is 'very likely' to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection due to the financial fallout following hundreds of sexual abuse lawsuits against the church, the archdiocese said Friday."

2023 AUGUST 11: SCHOOL PRINCIPAL PROMOTED AFTER ALLEGATIONS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT

Washington Post: Many teachers said a principal sexually harassed them. He was promoted. Educators and others reported Joel Beidleman to Montgomery County Public Schools 18 times in seven years. It made no difference.

"When six Farquhar Middle School educators gathered at a math teacher's house to keep the party going after a staff happy hour in 2020, they did not invite their principal. But Joel Beidleman showed up anyway, looking for the social studies teacher he had been sexually harassing, according to two witnesses and a complaint the teacher filed with Montgomery County Public Schools. When the door opened, he bellowed her name."

2023 OCTOBER 5: USC PHYSICIAN ACCUSED OF SEXUAL ASSAULTS IS FOUND DEAD

Washington Post: Ex-USC doctor accused of sex abuse by hundreds has died, attorney says

"George Tyndall, a former gynecologist at the University of Southern California who was awaiting trial after hundreds of women accused him of sexual abuse, was found dead Wednesday in Los Angeles, his defense attorney said. He was 76."

2023 OCTOBER 5: NEW YORK STATE OUTLAWS CHILD BATTERY IN ALL SCHOOLS

New York Times: Corporal Punishment in Private Schools Is Outlawed in New York: The measure was proposed in response to a New York Times investigation that revealed widespread use of such punishment in Hasidic Jewish private schools.

"New York has banned the use of corporal punishment in all private schools, making it one of just a handful of states in the nation to bar teachers in all types of schools from hitting students."

2023 NOVEMBER 18: CATHOLIC PRIEST SENTENCED TO LIFE IN PRISON ON SEX CHARGES

New York Times: Ohio Priest Who Sexually Abused Boys Is Sentenced to Life in Prison: The priest, Michael Zacharias, had enabled the victims' drug addictions by paying them money in exchange for sexual acts, prosecutors said.

"An Ohio priest who coerced three boys into engaging in sexual acts as children and abused their addiction to opioids as teenagers and adults, paying them money that funded their drug habits in exchange for sex, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday, the Justice Department said."

2023 NOVEMBER 21: COLLEGE GYMNASTICS COACHES ACCUSED OF EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL ABUSE

Washington Post: Beneath NCAA gymnastics' glow, a familiar 'toxic' culture: Female gymnasts say college was supposed to offer a reprieve from intense club programs. Then they arrived on campus and found more of the same.

"After everything they went through as young gymnasts, college was supposed to be a safe haven."

2024 JANUARY 10: EX-CARDINAL AVOIDS CRIMINAL CHARGES IN ABUSE CASE INVOLVING TEENAGER

Washington Post: Ex-cardinal McCarrick declared incompetent in criminal assault case in Wisconsin

"The effort to try Theodore McCarrick on charges of criminal sex assault ended Wednesday in a Wisconsin courtroom when the former archbishop of Washington was deemed incompetent because of dementia."

2024 JANUARY 27: US ARMY INVESTIGATES PHYSICIAN IN SEX CRIMES CASE

Stars and Stripes: Army widens investigation into doctor charged in one of the largest sexual abuse cases in service history

"Army investigators are expanding their probe into allegations of sexual abuse by a doctor at Joint Base Lewis-McChord [near Tacoma, Washington] to include bases in Hawaii, Maryland and Iraq where he had been stationed, service officials said."

"Maj. Michael Stockin is scheduled to be arraigned Feb. 23 on charges of abusive sexual contact and indecent viewing of 42 male patients at Madigan Army Medical Center, the hospital at Lewis-McChord."

2024 MARCH 29: HOSPITALS SUED FOR IGNORING SEXUAL ASSAULTS BY GYNECOLOGIST

Washington Post: OB/GYN abused 300 patients as hospital failed to intervene, lawsuit alleges

"A Chicago-area health care system allowed an obstetrician-gynecologist to continue practicing medicine unsupervised for more than a year while police investigated reports he sexually assaulted two patients, a new lawsuit alleges. During that time, he allegedly abused at least six additional patients."

2024 APRIL 1: HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES TO REQUIRE PATIENT CONSENT FOR SENSITIVE EXAMS

New York Times: Hospitals Must Get Written Patient Consent for Pelvic Exams, H.H.S. Says: In a letter to teaching hospitals, the federal health agency said that institutions could lose Medicare funding if they didn't comply.

"The Department of Health and Human Services said on Monday that hospitals must obtain written informed consent from patients before they undergo sensitive examinations — like pelvis and prostate exams — especially if the patients will be under anesthesia."

2024 APRIL 23: JUSTICE DEPARTMENT ANNOUNCES SETTLEMENT IN NASSAR CASE

Washington Post: Justice Department settles with Larry Nassar victims for $138.7 million

"The Justice Department announced Tuesday it has agreed to pay nearly $139 million to victims of former Team USA gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar, settling legal claims brought over the department's failure to investigate allegations that could have brought the convicted child molester to justice sooner and prevented dozens of assaults."

"The settlement brings to a close the last major legal case over Nassar's prolific abuses, which occurred over a span of more than a decade at international sporting events including the Olympics, as well as at Michigan State University, where Nassar worked, and at local gymnastics centers in Michigan and around the country."