My school hell: Horace Mann abuse victim speaks out

[The Bobster]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/bronx/my_school_hell_tqbKwV4E7UEY4XukvutRKP

My school hell: Horace Mann abuse victim speaks out
By JULIA MARSH and AMBER SUTHERLAND
Last Updated: 7:54 AM, April 23, 2013
Posted: 1:32 AM, April 23, 2013

Stefan Jeremiah

PEACE: Horace Mann alum Ron Klepper appears with a photo of himself yesterday to urge lawmakers to lift the statute of limitations on abuse claims.


A Manhattan man haunted by the repeated sexual abuse he says he endured as a 13-year-old student at the elite Horace Mann School spoke publicly about the violations for the first time yesterday.

“The effects of that abuse on my life have been profound,” Ron Klepper, 48, said. “School was no longer a safe place to learn, but turned into a frightening place where a predator lurked.”

Klepper joined attorney Gloria Allred and five other victims at a press conference to call on the state Legislature to pass a bill to allow them to bring civil lawsuits against the Bronx prep school.

The victims, now in their 40s and 50s, want lawmakers to approve the Child Victims Act bill, sponsored by Assemblywoman Margaret Markey (D-Queens).

It would provide a one-year window in the statute of limitations that now prevents adults who were sexually abused as kids from filing claims after they turn 23.

The NYPD cut off its Horace Mann investigation because, under state law, the incidents happened too long ago to prosecute.

Another victim Jon Seiger, 51, described how eight faculty members used him as a “sex object and personal plaything.” He called for an investigation by the school.

“Instead of a safe, nurturing place that would educate me, Horace Mann ended up providing a perfect storm of childhood sexual abuse,” he said, claiming he was first raped and forced to give oral sex to headmaster Inky Clark at age 14.

All the abusers named by the victims yesterday are dead.

A group of alumni recently hired former sex-crimes prosecutor Leslie Crocker Snyder to lead an independent probe into the abuse. The Bronx DA is also investigating.

Allred said the school itself must investigate because “they’re the only ones that have the records.”

Another victim, Daniel Shapiro, 57, an attorney for New Jersey, demanded the school apologize.

“Talking today is very difficult for me,” he said in his first public statements. “More must be done to remove the shame and stigma of childhood sexual abuse.”

Shapiro was first molested at age 15, and he buried his secret for more than 35 years.

The private school is accused of turning a blind eye to the abuse, which targeted some 30 students from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Horace Mann has reached confidential settlements with about 20 victims. School reps didn’t immediately return calls for comment.

 

[The Bobster]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/horace_blocks_prober_6gCez8Bj1a7aAp0w0dV7HN

Investigator accuses tony Horace Mann School of stonewalling in sex-abuse probe
Abuse ‘stonewall’
By TARA PALMERI
Last Updated: 8:52 AM, August 26, 2013
Posted: 1:30 AM, August 26, 2013

Horace Mann officials are hiding behind attorneys and school policy to stonewall an independent probe into sexual abuses at the school from the 1970s to the 1990s, the lead investigator has alleged.

In a letter to the Bronx school’s attorney, a copy of which was obtained by The Post, former prosecutor and judge Leslie Crocker Snyder blasts the lawyer for barring her from speaking freely with Horace Mann Chairman Steven Friedman and Principal Thomas Kelly or any other employees.

“I do not understand why the Horace Mann School cannot voluntarily choose to cooperate with the independent investigation,” she wrote to Michael Swartz in the July 19 letter.

“You also apparently asked me not to speak to Mr. Kelly and Mr. Friedman and possibly to any of the employees of the Horace Mann School without your permission.”

Snyder was hired by the Horace Mann Action Coalition, an alumni group, to find out how the abuse was concealed. School lawyers revealed in court papers this month that it paid a $1 million settlement to two victims, but officials said the school would not conduct an internal investigation.

Horace Mann “has made every effort to obfuscate facts and prevent public knowledge,” Snyder told The Post, “especially as to the conditions that made systemic decades-long sexual abuse possible.”

The action coalition has raised nearly $100,000 to fund her investigation.

“It speaks volumes that not only will they not perform an investigation on their own . . . but that they won’t even make themselves available to an investigation funded by well-intentioned alumni and a very distinguished judge,” said Robert Boynton, a coalition spokesman and 1981 grad.

“That crosses the line of ‘We don’t want to expose the school to a liability’ to ‘We want to bury the truth.’ ”

Citing school policy, Swartz flatly refused to provide information to Snyder.

“The School does not share confidential school information as it relates to current and past faculty, staff and students, with individuals or entities unaffiliated with the School,” he said in Aug. 2 e-mail to her.

He said allegations that the school is stonewalling are “false and unfair” given its “extensive cooperation with law enforcement” and “consensual resolution of substantially all the claims of past sexual abuse.”

 

[The Bobster]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/mann_on_boy_abuse_IMtOfoXJ0BvqLGW65Kbs8O

Horace Mann bosses ignored four of my sex abuse pleas: grad
School bosses ignored my pleas, grad says
By JOSH SAUL and JULIA MARSH
Last Updated: 7:17 AM, September 3, 2013
Posted: 1:58 AM, September 3, 2013

A Horace Mann sex-abuse victim who received a higher than average settlement from the elite private school because he complained four times that he was being molested says administrators gave offenders “a license to abuse” by ignoring his pleas for help.

Stephen Fife, a writer living in Los Angeles, claims he had one of the strongest legal claims against the school for sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of English teacher Robert J. Berman.

“Going back to Watergate, it’s the coverup, not the crime, that is unforgivable,” Fife, 60, said.

Berman is accused of abusing at least five victims.

STEPHEN FIFE - Big settlement from school.


Fife couldn’t disclose the amount of his settlement because he signed a confidentiality agreement.

The school has refused to allow an internal investigation into the widespread scandal that enveloped about 50 students and 20 teachers from the 1970s through the 1990s, despite demands by survivors.

Instead, the Bronx institution has paid out $4 million to $5 million to 27 former students, who had to agree to a gag order in return.

The average payout was about $150,000.

Fife’s attorney, Gloria Allred, believed she had a solid challenge to the statute of limitations because Fife had lodged so many complaints.

Berman allegedly tried to convince Fife to sleep with him by saying that the Greeks did it, Socrates slept with Plato and Plato slept with his students.

“I’d say, ‘Well that was then and this is now,’ ” Fife said.

Berman never succeeded in raping Fife, but did accost him in a hotel room during a trip to DC, shoving his tongue into Fife’s mouth and pushing him onto a bed.

Fife reported the encounter to the head of the school, Philip Leeworth, in 1970. Leeworth is now deceased.

He referred Fife to guidance counselor William Clinton, who Fife says warned him that “I would only hurt myself and my chance of getting into a good college if I made any public declaration against Berman.”

Fife went back to Clinton — who has since died — in 1994 and asked him why he protected Berman.

“He told me he now was forced to believe that, in fact, Berman had been molesting students, but he thought Berman was the most brilliant person he had ever met. He felt students were lucky to have a chance to study with him,” Fife said.

Berman, who lives in upstate New York, has denied having sex with his students.

 

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2013/10/07/horace-mann-alums-target-head-trustee-over-sex-scandal/

Horace Mann alums target head trustee over sex scandal
By Tara Palmeri and Julia Marsh
October 7, 2013 | 2:38am

Several members of a Horace Mann alumni group are clamoring for the ouster of the Wall Street exec who heads the school’s board of trustees, charging he’s trying to block an independent probe into sexual abuses at the elite Bronx academy from the 1970s to the 1990s.

In a September e-mail to Alumni Council President Justin Lerer obtained by The Post, alumnus Herbert Nass pushed to get rid of Steven Friedman, who works for a hedge fund at EOS Capitol.

“It is crystal clear to me that the serious problems facing HM have been horribly mishandled by the powers that be at the school,” wrote Nass, an attorney.

The Horace Mann Alumni Council, known for its fundraising prowess, met last month. Members wanted to vote to oust Friedman, who has been chairman for at least seven years, but there were not enough people present for a vote.

In a follow-up e-mail, alum Peter Brown said, “It’s time for a change.”

But Lerer said he still supports Friedman.

“I do not plan to lobby for Steve Friedman’s impeachment and, in fact, as a trustee, I fully support Steve and my fellow trustees,” Lerer told The Post.

Many alumni were disenchanted when school officials announced last month that they would not conduct an investigation of sexual predators who worked at the school for decades.

More than 20 teachers and administrators have been accused of molesting almost 50 students.

Other alumni said they’re appalled the school — in the midst of a fund-raising push for $50 million — offered settlements as low as $20,000 to some of the 27 victims.

Horace Mann is estimated to have paid out between $4 million and $5 million in settlements.

School spokesman Jon Elsen denied there was a push to oust Friedman, saying it’s “part of a campaign by a small number of Horace Mann . . . alumni who are unhappy about how [the school] has responded to evidence of sexual abuse in the past.”

Nine board members worth billions resigned in the past year when Friedman reversed a tentative agreement to “do right by the victims” by conducting an internal investigation, sources told The Post.

The scandal has put a damper on fund-raising, the school has acknowledged.

The Horace Mann Action Coalition is funding an independent investigation, led by former state Supreme Court Justice Leslie Crocker Snyder. She has accused the school’s lawyers of not allowing her to speak freely with Principal Thomas Kelly or Friedman.

 

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2014/01/10/horace-mann-insurers-fighting-payout-for-sex-abuse-victims/

Horace Mann insurers fighting payout for sex abuse victims
By Julia Marsh
January 10, 2014 | 11:58am

Insurance companies for Horace Mann are refusing to pay to protect the tony New York private school’s good name from allegations of sex abuse by teachers when the institution could have defeated the victims in court.

The school’s “chosen strategy was to preserve its reputation by quickly settling all purported claims regardless of viability and then foisting responsibility for payment onto its insurers,” the companies say in a lawsuit over $1 million in payouts to two students who claim to have been molested in the 1990s.

“Neither of the asserted claims was legally viable and should have been vigorously defended rather than settled,” the insurers– including Granite State Insurance Company, New Hampshire Insurance Company and Chartis Claims Inc.– say.

They add that a lawsuit would have been easily defeated given the state’s three-year statue of limitations on sexual abuse allegations.

In a stunning expose published in 2012, former student Amos Kamil revealed that his alma mater harbored employees who were sexual predators for decades from the 1970s through the 1990s. Kamil and other victims’ advocates believe up to 50 students were molested by at least 20 teachers.

Following the revelations, the school chose to avoid any “adverse publicity” at all costs, according to a motion filed in Manhattan Supreme Court on Wednesday by the insurers asking a judge to dismiss the case.

The AIG divisions, who are refusing to compensate the Bronx school for the payments, say they “are not guarantors of Horace Mann’s reputation.”

They further allege in court papers that even after the victims’ attorneys allowed them to use documents from the March 2013 mediation for insurance-coverage purposes, Horace Mann insisted on “cloaking the basic facts” of the victims’ stories “in perpetual secrecy.”

One victim, Ben Balter, did not live long enough to benefit from the settlements. He committed suicide in 2009 at age 32 after suffering years of abuse by the late music teacher Johannes Somary.

His mother, retired Horace Mann science teacher Dr. Kathleen Howard, was a recipient of the one of the two payouts at issue in the suit with insurers.

“I realize that it could be millions and millions of dollars, and it would never have made any difference,’’ she told The Post in an interview last summer.

The suit says the insurers requested information “about the extent of Horace Mann’s knowledge of such claims in order to evaluate coverage.”

Administrators even allegedly barred the insurers from attending mediation talks with the victims and tried to force them to sign “sweeping” and “overbroad” secrecy agreements that required destroying documents immediately after the negotiation.

Horace Mann ultimately paid out between $4 and $5 million to 27 former students, sources have told The Post.

The insurers accuse the tony private school of using “willful and avowed obstruction” to prevent them from learning the truth about its dark past.

Jason King, an attorney for the companies, declined to comment.

A Horace Mann spokesman did not immediately return messages for comment.

 

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2014/01/24/mann-junior-holds-clothing-drive-for-sex-abuse-victims/

Mann junior holds clothing drive for sex abuse victims
By Julia Marsh and Tara Palmeri
January 24, 2014 | 3:13am

Horace Mann junior Lucy Golub is running a clothing drive to help donate to sex abuse victims at her school.
Photo: AP, Patrick McMullan


A wealthy Horace Mann jewnior thinks a creative twist on “retail therapy” will help bring comfort to former students who were molested at the elite private school.

Lucy Golub, whose parents are worth more than $100 million, wants to raise money for their pricey therapy sessions by asking students to give from their Gucci- and Prada-filled closets so the items can be sold off.

“She will ask Horace Mann students to collect gently used designer clothing and accessories,” said a spokesperson for Hilltop Cares Foundation, an organization that helps molested alumni of the elite Bronx prep school, according to an e-mail obtained by The Post.

The 16-year-old calls her haute-couture clothing drive “Designer Collections.”

“Lucy feels that current students want to help the survivors, who were once HM students just like them, and not stand by as observers,” the e-mail says.

The Riverdale school Mann was rocked by a molestation scandal in 2012, when it was revealed that some 50 students were sexually abused from the 1970s through the 1990s.

Many of the victims have sued, with some receiving settlements.

With enough money from the fund-raiser, The Hilltop Cares Foundation will be able to send victims to therapy sessions with top psychiatrists, whose treatment can cost up to $2,000 per hour.

To raise that kind of cash, the concerned silver-spooners will need to trade in at least two of last season’s Céline bags — which can go for at $1,000 a pop — per person.

Horace Mann Chairman Joe Rose also is “going to shake some money out of the Trustees,” according to the e-mail.

Golub is the daughter of hedge-fund queen Karen Finerman and private-equity titan Lawrence Golub.

“Horace Mann students care about the survivors,” Lucy Golub told The Post. “And we are proud to be helping in our own small way.”

Despite the teen’s good intentions, not everyone thinks the path to healing heads down the heart of Fifth Avenue.

“Is this the tone-deaf way that Horace Mann can begin to take responsibility for what has happened there?” asked alumnus Robert Boynton, a spokesman for the Horace Mann Action Coalition, which is calling for a major investigation into the sex crimes.

 

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2014/02/14/horace-mann-overboard/

Horace Mann overboard
By Andrea Peyser
February 14, 2014 | 1:14am

Since 1887, the insanely expensive Horace Mann School in The Bronx has educated rich and fabulous budding masters of the universe, from future Pulitzer Prize winners to the boy who grew up to be known as former Love Gov Eliot Spitzer.

But after a sex-abuse scandal plus a series of outrages, from sex parties thrown by kids to the arrest of an employee for allegedly threatening his ex-girlfriend, Horace Mann is losing its mojo. Many parents want nothing to do with the school.

Two years ago, a top Manhattan firm that guides parents through the indigestion-provoking private-school application process steered about 500 hopefuls to Mann. But for the 2014-15 school year, the company has seen the number of Mann applicants dwindle to one. And that kid’s parents, from Taiwan, decided to send their kid to another school.

How did one of the country’s premiere educational institutions wind up scrounging for attendees like a cut-rate strip club?

“No parent wants to deal with a school that has this much weird stuff going on,’’ Amanda Uhry, owner of Manhattan Private School Advisors, which helps place kids in hard-to-get-into schools, told me.

“It’s more than just the sex-abuse scandal,’’ said Uhry. In that infamous episode, dozens of students who attended Mann, possibly from the 1960s to the 1990s, have said they were molested by teachers and staffers who were protected from punishment by the administration, a pattern of horror first revealed by The New York Times magazine in 2012. Some victims have received cash settlements from the school.

Lately, Mann has gone out of control.

In November, The Post reported that kids threw wild parties in which boys tried to have sex with “randos’’ — a code word for unattractive, drunken girls.

Efforts by Mann administrators to convince rabidly social parents to stop their darlings from attending these sick soirées fell on deaf ears. Apparently to some adults, having a kid fit in is more important than schoolwork.

Last month, a 16-year-old whose parents are worth more than $100 million asked her peers to empty their closets of used Gucci and Prada clothes and accessories, and sell them to raise money for the therapy sessions of sexually abused Mann alumni.

“Is this the tone-deaf way that Horace Mann can begin to take responsibility for what has happened there?” alumnus Robert Boynton, a spokesman for the Horace Mann Action Coalition, said to The Post. The coalition wants a major investigation into sex crimes rather than the services of shrinks.

Then last week, Mann’s head of college counseling, Canh Oxelson, 42, who also performs as an impersonator of golfer Tiger Woods, was arrested after he allegedly threatened to ruin the life of a nurse who dumped him by sending her naked pictures to the woman’s bosses, The Post’s Tara Palmeri reported.

With a student body of about 1,800, Mann charged an eye-popping $41,150 for tuition this school year. All that to educate kids as young as 3 who attend Mann’s full-day program in Manhattan, all the way up to educating 12th-graders who take classes on the leafy campus in the affluent Riverdale neighborhood in The Bronx.

Each year, parents go positively cuckoo trying to install their kids in a top-tier New York private school. Manhattan Private School Advisors charges from $15,000 to $30,000 to increase a young one’s odds of getting accepted, starting from the time a kid is age 1. “One client came to see us at six weeks pregnant. Can you imagine?’’ said Uhry.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the serial crises are taking a toll. One mom who’s looking for a place to park her baby girl told me she’s not considering the school.

“It seems like every day, we hear about something new,’’ she said. “I don’t need the aggravation.’’

Mann’s administrators won’t say what’s going on. The director of admissions told me he doesn’t talk to the press. Thomas Kelly, the head of school, did not return a call.

And still, Uhry tries to get her clients to apply there.

“It’s really a great school,’’ she said. “But parents won’t hear about it.’’

It’s time for Horace Mann to clean up its act.

 

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2014/03/24/alum-hijacks-horace-mann-reunion-urges-action-on-sex-scandal/

Alum hijacks Horace Mann reunion, urges action on sex scandal
By Julia Marsh
March 24, 2014 | 3:58pm

An award-winning playwright and alumnus of the Horace Mann prep school interrupted a school reunion held in San Francisco with an impromptu speech blasting the elite Bronx institution’s handling of the sex abuse scandal and urging guests to freeze donations in protest.

Performer Charlie Varon, who graduated from the Bronx private school in 1976, reminded about 50 fellow graduates of the school’s motto: “Great is the truth and it prevails.”

He then went on to tell the guests, including current head of school Thomas Kelly, “Horace Mann’s board of trustees has failed to be courageous or even decent in the wake of the sexual abuse scandal.”

He urged alumni to give money to the Horace Mann Action Coalition to fund an independent investigation into abuse of almost 50 students at the hands of over 20 teachers from the 1970s through the 1990s — instead of donating to the school.

The board has repeatedly refused to conduct an independent investigation.

The school acknowledged last year that the scandal has put a damper on its $50 million fundraising campaign.

The indie playwright/comedian’s “toast” to his alma mater ended with an awkward silence. In a video of the performance, one guest can be heard saying, “Wow,” another asks, “What?” and then a few people applaud.

Varon said he hadn’t planned to interrupt the March 20 gathering, but was shocked that Horace Mann officials were “going merrily about their fundraising as if nothing has happened — no sexual abuse scandal, no shameful behavior on the part of the board of trustees.

“I couldn’t let this go unchallenged,” he wrote in an email to classmates on Monday.

“I was not the only one who spoke out,” Varon said in the email. “After my toast, at least five people (including me) spoke to Mr. Kelly individually, challenging him about HM’s handling of the scandal.”

In Kelly’s address to the alumni, he was “defensive” about the scandal, Varon said.

In “a strange ironic twist,” the school gave out party favors that seemed to complement Varon’s speech.

“I had no idea that each alumnus would be given, on entering the event, a Horace Mann bookmark with 24-carat gold plated HM insignia on the front including the school’s motto: Great is the truth and it prevails.”

The native New Yorker’s plays include “Feisty Old Jew” and “Rabbi Sam.”

A rep for Horace Mann did not immediately comment.

 

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2014/09/15/pedophile-professor-boasted-of-student-suicides-ex-student/

‘Pedophile’ professor boasted of student suicides: ex-student
By Julia Marsh
September 15, 2014 | 7:38am

Stephen Fife (pictured) alleges that Robert Berman — his professor at Horace Mann — sexually abused him.
Photo: John Chapple


A former student at the elite Horace Mann School in The Bronx says his pedophile English teacher bragged about driving 12 kids suicide — and vowed to make him the 13th.

“You will join a long list of willful children who lashed out and then couldn’t make it on their own,” Robert Berman told one of his teen victims, Stephen Fife, according to Fife’s upcoming memoir, “The 13th Boy: A Memoir of Education and Abuse.”

“Suddenly, Mr. Berman was rattling off a long list of 12 names with sardonic glee,” writes Fife, now 61.

The names, Fife says, were Berman’s alleged victims who killed themselves.

“You will be the 13th boy, and you will have only yourself to blame,” Berman allegedly warned Fife.

Berman, accused of pedophilia before, has denied having sex with pupils. Attempts by The Post to reach him have been unsuccessful.

He now lives in a gated mansion upstate with one of his male former students.

In the book, Fife says Berman gained a hold over him and others amid what has been called a decades-long stretch of rampant sex abuse on campus involving scores of teachers and students.

Stephen Fife as a young student.
Photo: John Chapple


Fife, whose mom, Barbara, was a deputy mayor to David Dinkins, said he initially admired Berman, who called him “the next Dickens.”

But Berman sexually abused him about a half-dozen times, Fife writes in his book, which The Post got an advanced copy of. It hits stores Sept. 22.

Fife tells of one instance in Berman’s apartment on West 111th Street in 1970.

“He was on top of me on the sofa, holding my arms down, pressing his lips against mine,” he writes.

“I managed to throw him off and run for the door.”

Fife said he finally confronted Berman after graduation, saying, “You’re a terrible, destructive person.”

Berman replied with his suicide boast, Fife writes.

He says that he tried to report Berman to an administrator in April 1970, but that the official didn’t believe his sordid tale.

Fife is one of the 36 alums who reached monetary settlements with the school in 2013 over abuse allegations.

A spokesman for Horace Mann declined to comment.

 

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2015/04/03/horace-mann-settles-sex-abuse-suit/

Horace Mann settles sex-abuse suit
By Associated Press
April 3, 2015 | 10:36am

Horace Mann school in the Bronx
Photo: AP


HACKENSACK, N.J. — An elite New York City prep school has settled a sexual abuse lawsuit filed against it in New Jersey.

Plaintiff attorney Rosemarie Arnold confirmed with the Wall Street Journal that the settlement with the Horace Mann School had been reached. However, she declined to provide specifics.

The school wouldn’t comment.

Arnold represented a man who was in his 50s when he claimed a now-deceased music teacher had sexually abused him in the 1970s.

Nearly three dozen alumni have alleged they were abused, but they couldn’t sue under New York’s statute of limitations.

New Jersey’s limits are less restrictive.

Horace Mann publicly apologized for the abuse in 2013 and said it had reached settlements with nearly everyone, even though the school said they had no legal claim.

 

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2015/04/24/horace-mann-abuse-victim-made-death-threats-to-faculty-cops/

Horace Mann abuse victim made ‘death threats’ to faculty: cops
By Julia Marsh and Lia Eustachewich
April 24, 2015 | 12:58am

A Horace Mann alumnus who was sexually abused at the school has been arrested for allegedly posting threats against faculty online, sources told The Post.

In the expletive-filled rants, Daniel Gruber alludes to child sex abuse — referring to victims as “the innocent” — while threatening to kill certain administrators at the elite Bronx school, a criminal complaint says.

“I am a killer,” the Englewood, NJ, man allegedly wrote March 9 to a person identified only as “Victim 1,” “but only if was given the power to do so on behalf of the innocent. In another lifetime sir.”

Daniel Gruber


Gruber, 36, a convicted sex offender, wrote the hateful, often anti-Semitic diatribes between March and April on his public Google Plus account and in e-mails as “Daniel Wintour” and “Daniel Kaufman,” court papers say.

“You are an extraordinarily dangerous man . . . You owe your f- -king rabbi an apology. You owe me a f- -king apology, my mother and my brother and my sister,” Gruber allegedly said in a voice mail to Victim 1 on April 9.

That same day, he allegedly slammed the school on Google for its “fake devil worshiping pedophiles” and said it should be “burned to the ground.”

In March, Gruber warned Victim 1 to watch for the “red dot” on his forehead and boasted that he shoots “to kill,” court papers said.

Multiple sources confirmed that Gruber is one of dozens of students who were abused while attending Horace Mann between the 1970s and the 1990s.

He was charged Thursday with one count of stalking in Manhattan federal court after feds arrested him a day earlier. He was being held without bail and faces up to five years in prison.

His attorney Jonathan Marvinny didn’t return a call for comment.

On his Google Plus profile, Gruber also rants about Justin Bieber and President Obama and calls on CNN’s Anderson Cooper to “grow some balls and help rid Horace Mann of child killers.”

He was also busted last week in The Bronx for allegedly leaving vicious voice mails on a Horace Mann administrator’s phone.

“You f- -king f- - - -t, I’m going to f- -king kill you. Leave the school or I’m going to f- -king burn it down,” he said in one message, according to court papers.

He was charged with harassment.

In that case, his attorney Emil Piedra told a judge the threats were motivated by “deals related to the school over the past three years,” The Riverdale Press reported.

Piedra also did not return a message.

 

[The Bobster]

http://nypost.com/2015/05/27/over-60-students-sexually-abused-at-horace-mann-group/

Over 60 students sexually abused at Horace Mann: group
By David K. Li
May 27, 2015 | 10:38am

More than 60 students were sexually abused at Horace Mann School in the Bronx from the 1960s to 90s, double the number of victims than originally believed, according to a scathing report released Wednesday.

Those students were abused by 22 school employees, according to troubling findings detailed by the Horace Mann Action Coalition, a nonprofit group founded by alumni to tackle the sex-abuse scandal, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The report found that abuse came at the hands of both male and female school staffers, who worked as coaches, teachers and department heads.

The report also said a headmaster, school chaplain and dean of guidance were involved – although their names were not mentioned in the WSJ report on Wednesday.

A Bronx District Attorney probe in 2013 concluded that 25 students were abused by 12 perpetrators. No charges were ever filed because all those cases fell outside New York state statute of limitations.

“To me the report is important because people should know how horrible things could be,” said the report’s lead investigator, Leslie Crocker Snyder, a former sex-crimes prosecutor for the Manhattan DA. “But what’s really important is how we move forward.”

Bronx DA spokeswoman Terry Raskyn said her office can only act if report findings included illegal acts which happened in recent years.

“If there are cases they have and wish to refer to us – are within the statute of limitations – this office will investigate for possible criminal charges,” Raskyn said.

The school declined comment.

Joseph Cumming, who claimed he was abused by a Horace Mann teacher between 1975 and 1977, said the report shows a pattern of abuse.

“This report does make us feel we’ve been believed, we’ve been taken seriously and it uncovers as much of the truth as could be uncovered given the obstacles that the school has put in the way of those working on it,” Cumming, whose abuser has since passed away, told the Journal.

“But as the report acknowledges, it’s incomplete because of the school’s refusal to cooperate.”

 

[The Bobster]

https://nypost.com/2019/04/13/horac...orrifying-new-sexual-abuse-claims-in-lawsuit/

Horace Mann alum details horrifying new sexual abuse claims in lawsuit
By Kathianne Boniello
April 13, 2019 | 8:58pm

He wasn’t safe at school, and the church offered him even less sanctuary.

A Horace Mann alum who claims he was sexually abused as a student by multiple school staffers decades ago, now says his nightmare extended to two local churches, where a priest and a trio of monks raped and whipped him.

Jon Seiger, 57, was a young teen when his music teacher — identified only as “The Maestro” — brought him to the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in Manhattan, and forced him to join the choir.

He says he was left in the hands of a Jesuit priest, Father Charles Hoefner, who raped and assaulted him at least 30 times over the course of two years, according to newly filed Manhattan Supreme Court papers.

The twisted cleric would “compel” the 14-year-old to confess his “masturbatory habits,” then regularly abused him “under the pretext of providing ‘guidance and treatment’ for my ‘problem,’” Seiger says in court documents.

The Jesuits are “currently researching their records, but at the current time are not aware of any allegations against the late Father Charles Hoefner,” a Jesuit spokesman told The Post. Hoefner died in 1992.

The priest’s name was not included on a list of accused abusers published by the Jesuits in January but could be added later if Seiger’s allegations are deemed credible, the spokesman added.

“Soon after I joined the church’s choir, it became apparent that the real purpose for my participation was to provide sexual gratification to Father Hoefner,” said Seiger in the court documents.

The alleged weekly abuse was sometimes “enhanced” by Hoefner “violently spanking me and/or whipping my bare buttocks with a belt,” or watching as other men took turns violating Seiger, he charges.

The assaults always took place behind locked doors, and “on a number of occasions, other church officials and/or employees were aware that Father Hoefner was alone in a locked room with me, a minor child, after all other choir members had left the church,” Seiger said in court papers.

The “Maestro” also brought the boy to the Church of the Sacred Heart in Yonkers, where he was made to join the brass quartet, and introduced to three monks.

Jon Seiger pictured as a child
Stefan Jeremiah


The monks, whom the music teacher said were known as the monks “with the pink underwear,” also abused Seiger, he charges.

“I recall the faces of [the monks] with a considerable amount of detail — as the looks on their faces as each of them obtained sexual gratification at my suffering and expense is seared into my memory,” said Seiger, who is seeking a court order to get church records to help identify his abusers.

A spokesman for the Capuchin Franciscans, which oversees Sacred Heart, said the order had just received the court papers and had not yet been able to investigate.

The Franciscans “do not tolerate any sexual misconduct or inappropriate relationships by our members,” the spokesman said.

“No child should have what happened to Jon happen to him,” said Seiger’s lawyer, Kevin Mulhearn.

Seiger plans to file a lawsuit under the state’s recently passed Child Victims Act, which gives alleged victims previously blocked by the statute of limitations a one-year window to take legal action.

“This is a case that cries out for justice,” said Mulhearn, who added Seiger believes at least some of his accused abusers may still be alive.

Horace Mann reached confidential settlements with dozens of former students who said they were abused by staffers, and apologized for the scandal, in 2013.

Seiger and others had hired high profile attorney Gloria Allred as they fought for recognition and an investigation by the school; victims’ advocates believe up to 50 students were molested by at least 20 teachers, including late music teacher Johannes Somary.

 

[The Bobster]

Horace Mann student denounces progressive faculty, says conservative students self-censor

Senior Ryan Finlay blasted the tony school for allegedly being intolerant of conservative beliefs and accused students and faculty of “vilifying” those who voice more right-wing viewpoi…

nypost.com

Horace Mann student denounces progressive faculty, says conservative students self-censor​

By
Jon Levine


June 11, 2022 12:36pm
Updated

Senior Ryan Finlay blasted the school for allegedly being intolerant of conservative beliefs. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File

​

A Horace Mann student has denounced in the pages of the marquee New York City private school’s newspaper what he says is a culture of bullying from progressive faculty members.
Senior Ryan Finlay blasted the tony school for allegedly being intolerant of conservative beliefs and accused students and faculty of “vilifying” those who voice more right-wing viewpoints.
“[Horace Mann] like so many other academic institutions today, fosters a learning environment that I believe is hostile to those who do not subscribe to progressive politics,” wrote Finlay in The Record, the school’s student newspaper, adding there was “continuous pressure in the classroom to embrace visions of wholesale societal reform.”
“Casual and sanctioned attacks on non–progressive views are frequently integrated into classes,” Finlay continued in the June 7 Op-Ed.
Horace Mann is one of New York City’s ritziest private schools, with tuition running at more than $55,000 a year.
Like many city private schools, however, the institution has been gripped in a fever of wokeness. In the past the school has partnered with Pollyanna, a nonprofit, which has been widely criticized for pushing Critical Race Theory in academic curricula. Horace Mann’s head of school, Thomas Kelly, earned $1.27 million in compensation in 2020, tax records show.
Schools like Horace Mann have adopted progressive ideologies.ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images
Finlay, a senior and contributing writer for the paper, said students often censored themselves for fear of academic reprisal from out-of-control far-left faculty.
“Every classmate I know who is not progressive self-censors in class during discussions of current events and politics,” Finlay said, reporting that one classmate had told him it was better to just “lie about what you believe” in class because it was “not worth it” to potentially antagonize a teacher.

​

“Looming over HM’s conservative students, there is the fear of unknowable and arbitrary reprisal by those in power,” Finlay wrote, adding, in a Nixonion flourish, that the school contained “silent multitudes” of students who felt like him.
The piece ended with a plea from Finlay that school leaders redress the toxic school culture.

What do you think? Post a comment.

“I call upon the administration to clarify its policies on political expression; I call upon the administration to actively protect and sanctify diversity of thought; and I call upon the administration to disentangle itself from the progressive political agenda that has turned the school into an incubator of bias and intellectual intolerance,” he wrote.


Reps for Horace Mann did not respond to request for comment from The Post.