Elite Bronx prep school Horace Mann, rocked by claims of sexual abuse by teachers decades ago, is now facing a lawsuit by one alleged victim in New Jersey — a week after the school started mediation talks with more than two dozen other alleged victims, the Daily News has learned.
The suit filed Thursday in New Jersey state court charges that a male student was carefully groomed by a predatory music teacher at the Horace Mann School in Riverdale and then molested about 450 times between 1973 to 1977.
Several sources told The News the school started settlement talks with 32 alleged victims last week that are continuing this week – with Horace Mann playing hardball. Six have already settled.
“They are low-balling the victims. They are offering 1% or 2% of the victims’ original offers,” said one source who claims to have been abused as a student at the school.
“People who were abused for years are being offered four-digit figures. People who were raped 30, 40, 50 times are being offered $1,000 when you subtract their attorney’s fees. All that matters to Horace Mann is that they get away with paying as little as possible,” said the alleged victim.
“My client was subject to the most egregious conduct I have ever heard of and he will not be bought off for a pittance to protect the reputation of Horace Mann,” said Rosemarie Arnold, the lawyer who submitted the New Jersey suit.
The lawsuit claims teacher Johannes Somary molested the plaintiff on and off campus and plied him with wine before sex, a practice that later led the plaintiff to take an assortment of hard drugs.
Somary, a celebrated musician, convinced the plaintiff’s star-struck parents that their son had musical talent – and told the victim they were “soul mates,” the suit said.
The first act of sexual abuse involved mutual masturbation, according to the lawsuit, and then escalated to oral and eventually anal sex, with Somary telling the plaintiff that in his native Switzerland, “this is how people showed each other their love,” the court papers said.
The New Jersey victim was unaware that other Horace Mann students had accused Somary and others at the school of similar molestation until last June, the lawsuit said.
That’s when the New York Times Magazine ran a story detailing widespread sexual abuse by teachers and coaches at the storied co-ed prep school in the 1990s and earlier.
The allegations sent shockwaves through the Horace Mann community and caused consternation among alumni of the swank private school.
Headmaster Tom Kelly called the accusations “highly disturbing and absolutely abhorrent,” in a statement sent to parents when the story broke.
Kelly and other Horace Mann officials didn’t return calls for comment Thursday.
Sources familiar with the settlement negotiations said it’s all about money.
“The message they are sending us is that we are not only OK with the fact that you were abused but we will abuse you again,” said the former student.
Another source familiar said “It’s a bunch of Wall Street guys who look at you like you’re a piece of meat and assess what you are worth and what it will take to make this go away.”
Victims believe Horace Mann is worried about an investigative article coming soon from the New Yorker magazine. The school wants to say it’s settled all the allegations before it comes out, sources said.
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Music director Johannes Somary with then New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani |
The school is also anxious to nail down settlements before the state Legislature has a chance to pass the Child Victims Act, sponsored by Assemblywoman Margaret Markey, a Queens Democrat, sources said.
That bill would eliminate the statute of limitations on civil and criminal sex abuse cases, and would give victims previously barred by the statute of limitations one year to file civil litigation.
Former Horace Mann students alleging molestation would have trouble taking their cases to court in New York as the law stands now, thanks to strict statute of limitations for child sexual abuse.
Six victims have already settled with Horace Mann, sources said, agreeing to take small sums to avoid lengthy and painful litigation.
Another 26 alleged abuse victims have hired attorney Gloria Allred and continue to negotiate with Horace Mann. Allred did not return calls for comment.
“They know that technically and legally things are stacked their way. They are happy to be on the side of evil,” the victim source said, referring to Horace Mann’s representatives.
The unnamed plaintiff in New Jersey hopes his suit will get through the Garden State’s looser statute of limitations, said his attorney.
New Jersey allows civil actions within two years of a claimant discovering his or her injury and its connection to the alleged abuse, Arnold said.
The suit filed Thursday contends that the unnamed plaintiff, who first attended Horace Mann in seventh grade, was molested from 1973 to 1977, with some of the abuse occurring during hiking trips the pair took in Englewood, N.J.
The suit, which names Somary’s estate, the school and several former administrators as defendants, alleges that the plaintiff realized he had been abused only after Somary died in 2011, and after the publication of the Times report, which reported other alumni accusing Somary.
The plaintiff previously believed Somary had loved him and him alone, the suit states.
The plaintiff – a current New Jersey resident – is seeking damages and a jury trial, and his suit accuses Horace Mann of a years-long cover-up operation.
At least one school official got a “very graphic” description of Somary’s abuse as early as 1970, the suit claims. A student identified in court papers as “DoXX” reported abuse by Somary to a defendant named “Mr. Allison,” who was the headmaster of Horace Mann Lower School at the time, the suit says.
According to the court documents, Allison told the student to disregard such “rumors.”
The complaint – made three years before Somary allegedly began abusing her client – was never investigated or made public, Arnold contends in her court filings.
Somary, whose wealthy banker father was an economic adviser to the U.S. Defense Department in the 1940s, groomed the plaintiff by lavishing attention on him, playing tennis with him and treating him to fancy dinners, the suit alleges.
Their first sexual encounter occurred in October 1973, when Somary drove the boy in his red Volvo to train tracks near a country club in Riverdale, according to the suit.
Somary allegedly touched and rubbed the boy intimately, telling him, “I love you, and when people love each other this is a way to show it,” the suit claims.
Within weeks of that first act of sexual abuse, the mutual masturbation turned into oral sex, and from there Somary led the “naive and inexperienced” victim into anal sex, the suit said.
Somary, who was married and had two sons and a daughter, retired from Horace Mann in 2002. He died of complications from a stroke in 2011.
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