PACKET EDITORIAL, April 23
By: Packet Editorial
One cannot read The New York Times’ extensive report on the allegations of sexual abuse at the American Boychoir School without feeling a great deal of sympathy for the victims not only the boys who experienced the horrendous cases of reported abuse from the 1960s to the 1980s but the institution that has to live with this disgraceful legacy decades later.
We have little doubt based on court records as well as stories that have appeared over the years in many media, including this newspaper that incidents of sexual abuse such as those described in The Times’ article did, in fact, take place at the Boychoir School. While the details vary from case to case and story to story, acts of predation and molestation clearly occurred at the school over the span of two decades, inflicting great pain and, in some cases, a lifetime of suffering upon helpless, confused and innocent youngsters.
At the same time, the American Boychoir School itself, while it plainly could have done more during those 20 years to root out indecent behavior and punish its perpetrators, has taken significant steps recently to guard against a recurrence of such events from its ugly past. The question, particularly in light of today’s obsessive media pursuit of skeletons in the closet of the Roman Catholic Church, is whether the institution, regardless of what it does now, can withstand the assault.
After 2,000 years, Roman Catholicism undoubtedly can. After 65 years, the American Boychoir School would appear to be in a far more precarious position.
As The Packet reported Friday, the school now conducts rigorous background investigations of prospective employees, including fingerprint checks. It describes in the student handbook and in orientation sessions what students must do if they feel uncomfortable about the behavior of an adult or another boy. The school’s honor code requires students and parents to report even the perception of sexual contact involving students.
There’s no way of knowing, of course, whether these kinds of steps can eliminate all unwanted sexual activity that might take place in a school of boys between the fifth and eighth grades but the absence of any recent allegations along the lines of those lodged by former students who are now in their 30s and 40s suggests they have had a positive effect.
These steps also speak to the sincere desire of the Boychoir School to make amends for past practice. Unlike some quarters of the Roman Catholic Church, where denial of inappropriate behavior somehow manages to prevail over incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, the Boychoir School’s actions offer acknowledgment that a serious problem not only existed but required decisive remedial steps.
Regrettably, these steps cannot undo the damage that already has been done. And, just as regrettably, our system of jurisprudence, which has a way of reducing such matters to dollars and cents, requires students who attended the school 30 years ago and administrators who run the school today to be adversaries in litigation rather than partners in remediation. Thus, charges and countercharges fly, including disingenuous arguments about the statute of limitations and offensive assertions about what constitutes consensual sex.
The subject matter is tawdry. The legal battle is nasty. But mostly, the situation is, simply but profoundly, sad for everyone involved. It would be sadder still if the American Boychoir School, despite the strides it has taken toward a more enlightened future, were to be doomed by its dark past.