Amos Kamil wrote this era s cover story on sexual maltreat at the Horace Mann School in New York City. Kamil, a screenwriter, playwright and brandstrategist, graduated from Horace Mann in 1982. How did you first halt to do this story, and why now? When I was at Horace Mann, all of these stories were swirlingaround us. Some of it was rumor, some of it was conjecture, some ofit was covert homophobia.
Owing to I wrote in the article, about 10 yearsafter graduating some of my friends started coming out with theirstories and saying they had been abused. Thereupon more time went by, and they perhaps started thinking about it thanks to something thathappened to them because a kid, and forasmuch as the Penn State scandalhappened. And I realized that it wasn t one of the institutionsthat I have a harder time approximative to, like the Catholic Sanctuary orthe Boy Scouts, but instead football, Happy Valley and Joe Paterno. Penn State was the watershed moment for me personally. I reachedout to a friend of mine who had talked about being abused at HoraceMann just to ask him how he was doing. And he said he wasn t doingvery well because of it. t.
And he also said, I wish someone wouldwrite about what went on at Horace Mann. I found myself on thetrain the next day from New York to D. C., and I had my laptop, so Ijust wrote what I thought I knew the whole way down. And I lookedup at the end of the trip and had written 30 pages. How did you turn those 30 pages into a magazine article? It started pretty organically. I talked to the people who had toldme they had been abused.
To a certain extent maybe it had to dowith Penn State people were ready to talk. Many have kids nowwho are around the same age that they were when they were abused, and it s just bringing it back again. One person led to the next. They would say, You should talk to so - and - so. I had a rule thatI wouldn t call someone who had possibly been victimized out ofthe blue. Still, I would ask people what they knew about rumors rumors that maybe mentioned them by name and very quickly thestories started to come out.
Many of these rumored cases, it turnedout, had never happened. At the same time, many people who neverwere mentioned around school now said they ' d been abused. Insome cases these were people I d known for 30 years, and they saidthings like, I m about to tell you something I haven t eventold my wife. Word spread that I was working on this piece, andpeople started putting me in touch with others.
The document Icreated was like a monster. It just kept growing. Did anyone point - blank refuse to talk to you? A lot of people would say, Let sleeping dogs lie, or point outthat a lot of the perpetrators were now dead. And my response was, You re not hearing the stories I m hearing. It s brutal, Itold them.
Have you heard from anyone at Horace Mann since the article cameout? They won t talk to me. I have people who say they had been abusedwriting to me every day. I have alumni at the school who were neverabused but are outraged writing to me. Five or six people havecontacted me privately to say that they were also sexually abusedat Horace Mann. They have said that other teachers were involved. But I haven t heard from anyone at the school.
As I say in thearticle, they are all lawyering up. What has the general response to the article been? Overwhelmingly positive. As I said, people have been reaching outto me to tell their stories or thank me for writing the article. And not just people from Horace Mann, obviously; I ve been hearingfrom people from all over the world. I was bracing for a backlashagainst me, I really was, as can sometimes happen withwhistle - blowers.
But I have been overwhelmed and humbled by thetsunami of positivity. I hope that gives some measure of comfort tothe victims who hadn t wanted to speak out.
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