Great Is the Truth: Secrecy, Scandal, and the Quest for Justice at the Horace Mann School

by Amos Kamil, Sean Elder

Overview

A shocking exposé of sexual abuse and the struggle for justice at one of America's most prestigious schools

In June 2012, Amos Kamil's New York Times Magazine cover story, "Prep-School Predators," caused a shock wave that is still rippling. In his piece, he detailed a decades-long pattern of sexual abuse at the highly prestigious Horace Mann School in the Bronx. After the article appeared, Kamil closely observed the fallout. While the article revealed the misdeeds of three teachers, this was just the beginning: An extraordinary twenty-two former Horace Mann teachers and administrators have since been accused of abuse.

In Great Is the Truth, Kamil and his coauthor, Sean Elder, tell the riveting story of how one of the country's leading schools was beset by scandal. They relate what happened as survivors of abuse came forward and sought redress. We see the school and its influential backers circle the wagons. We meet Horace Mann alumni who work to change New York State's sexual abuse laws. And we encounter a former teacher who candidly recalls his inappropriate relationships with students.

"Great is the truth and it prevails" may be the motto of Horace Mann, but for many alumni the truth remains all too hard to come by. This book is essential reading for anyone trying to understand how an elite institution can fail those in its charge, and what can be done about it.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780374536503
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	11/15/2016
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	256
Sales rank:	788,187
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Amos Kamil is a playwright, screenwriter, and investigative reporter. His 2012 cover story in The New York Times Magazine brought the Horace Mann scandal to light.

Sean Elder has written for Newsweek; New York; National Geographic; O, The Oprah Magazine; and numerous other publications. He lives in Mill Valley, California.

Editorial Reviews

To Kamil’s credit, he never attacks his alma mater for its handling of the sex scandal, but he uses his narrative to bring truth out of darkness and let it prevail, just as it does in the words of Horace Mann’s school song. A disturbing but necessary book.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Kamil's deep roots in the Horace Mann community allowed him to draw on numerous interviews with alumni and teachers. Essential for academic and public libraries.” —Seth Kershner, Library Journal

“Yes, Amos Kamil and Sean Elder's Great Is the Truth is shocking, riveting, and appalling, but it is also much more: a cautionary tale of how an elite, privileged institution can lose its way, not realize it, and, even after the corruption is revealed, still be incapable of doing the right thing. A must-read!” —William D. Cohan, author of The Price of Silence: The Duke Lacrosse Scandal, the Power of the Elite, and the Corruption of Our Great Universities

“Great Is the Truth is a terrific, probing tale of an important subject. In the best journalistic tradition, Amos Kamil and Sean Elder have combined a penetrating investigation with a moving and intimate narrative. They have revealed the previously hidden culture of sexual predation at one of our leading private schools, and, more frightening still, the culture of complicity of what seems at times the school's entire professional community. This is a powerful, harrowing book. Everyone should pay attention.” —Steve Fishman, writer at New York magazine

“There is something inexhaustibly mysterious about our infamous pedophilia contagions. How exactly did so very many Catholic priests get away with it? Does the serial molester Jerry Sandusky really believe he was framed for forty-five guilty counts, as he insists to this day? And when Amos Kamil's New York Times Magazine story about teachers molesting students at the elite New York prep school Horace Mann appeared, it was as if a many-roomed mansion bright with sunlight went suddenly dark, moldy, and rotten. Great Is the Truth reopens each shrouded room and every last closet. Kamil and Sean Elder have walked straight into the darkness and come back with a fearless, revelatory book.” —Lorraine Adams, author of Harbor

“Amos Kamil made headlines when he broke three decades of silence surrounding the sexual abuse of students at one of the nation's top prep schools. Now, with a rigorous passion for the truth, he and Sean Elder explore why the school he loved has refused to look into its shocking past. This book, brimming with empathy for schoolmates who were betrayed by the teachers they trusted, is a righteous demonstration that the truth is great-if only we have the courage to tell it.” —Marc Fisher, senior editor at The Washington Post

“Part memoir, part investigative reporting, Great Is the Truth is a richly layered and ultimately balanced account of the decades-long trend of sexual abuse at Horace Mann. Kamil's deeply personal perspective and his and Elder's dogged research enhance each other, conflicting emotion and comprehensive information blending to create a compelling narrative.” —Sarah Saffian, author of Ithaka: A Daughter’s Memoir of Being Found

“Predators. Pedophiles. Rapists. No sum of money, no apology, can right the wrongs that were committed against the students of Horace Mann. But Great Is the Truth is the next best thing: a clear-eyed account of the institutional corruption that made the abuse possible.” —James S. Hirsch, author of Willie Mays: The Life, the Legend and Hurricane: The Miraculous Journey of Rubin Carter

From the Publisher

…a cleareyed account of how money, power and prestige collude both to enable absolutely monstrous behavior and to prevent those most deserving of justice from getting it.

The New York Times Book Review - Janet Reitman

08/24/2015
Kamil’s book-length treatment of the sexual abuse scandal at an elite New York City prep school tells the story behind his 2012 New York Times Magazine feature on the topic, and reports on the tumultuous aftermath of the feature’s publication. Following the Sandusky calamity at Penn State University, and long after a close friend and classmate confided in Kamil that he had been raped by one of their revered Horace Mann teachers, Kamil uncovers other stories of similar sexual abuse at the school. The incidents occurred over 30-plus years dating back to 1960s. After the story breaks, more alumni come forward claiming abuse, and the victims band together to demand accountability from the prestigious institution. In all, former students implicate 22 teachers on 63 charges of abuse and claim negligence on the part of multiple administrations. On Facebook and in a support group held in N.Y.C., factions debate what justice should look like and how best to seek it, especially in a state with such a conservative statute of limitations. Finally confronted (in a meeting at the Harvard Club), the school’s board of trustees refuses to submit to a full-scale, independent investigation, and individual parties mediate meager settlements. It’s tedious reading, but the story runs hot for Kamil, who learns firsthand—and seemingly for the first time—that a powerful institution might value its reputation over its ethical obligations. The cast of characters is unwieldy, and pages of Horace Mann reveries, complete with clinking glasses of Scotch, don’t exactly welcome readers to the rarified world of the N.Y.C. prep school and its alumni. Agent: Todd Schuster, Zachary Schuster Harmsworth. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

09/15/2015
While sex-abuse scandals continue to emerge at elite U.S. private schools, journalists and coauthors Kamil and Elder launch an investigation into one in particular: a scandal at the eminent Horace Mann School. Founded in 1887, Horace Mann has a long tradition of educating the scions of New York City's upper classes. Kamil is an unlikely alum, relating the story of how he went from playing stickball with his friends in the Bronx to attending the school on a baseball scholarship in the early 1980s. Much of the book will be familiar to those who read Kamil's 2012 cover story for the New York Times Magazine. It's all here, except in much richer detail: the chronology of events, the naming of faculty members alleged to have taken advantage of students, and the "wall of silence" that victims or their parents encountered when they tried to hold the school accountable. Villains clearly emerge in the second half of the book, when the image-conscious board of trustees tries to sweep the story under the rug. However, a group of victims organizes and eventually succeeds in forcing the school into mediation. VERDICT Although some readers may quibble with his reliance on anonymous sources, Kamil's deep roots in the Horace Mann community allowed him to draw on numerous interviews with alumni and teachers. Essential for academic and public libraries.—Seth Kershner, Northwestern Connecticut Community Coll. Lib., Winsted

Library Journal

2015-08-09
An investigative reporter sheds light on a shocking decadeslong sex scandal at a prestigious New York prep school. Kamil was a proud Horace Mann graduate. For him and the friends he made at the school, it was "a unique, life-forging experience…[that] had made [them] who [they] were." But when they reunited a few years after they graduated from college and began comparing notes about their experiences at Horace Mann, an unsettling pattern begin to emerge. Almost everyone in the group had endured some form of sexual harassment and/or abuse, including rape. At the time, no one thought to explore these stories further. But 20 years later, in the shadow of the 2011 Jerry Sandusky Penn State football sex scandal, Kamil realized that justice needed to be done. So he began reaching out to other Horace Mann graduates and eventually published an article called "Prep School Predators" in the New York Times Magazine on June 10, 2012. The piece received more than 1,000 online comments, many of which came from sex abuse survivors. Former students began demanding that Horace Mann take responsibility for the actions of the nearly two-dozen teachers implicated in a scandal that took place over more than 30 years. Despite credible testimonies, media exposure, and eventual legal action, the school, which boasted "some of the world's richest alumni," managed to settle with the plaintiffs involved in the lawsuit against it for "pennies on the dollar." Although two members of the Horace Mann board of directors went on to form a charity to help survivors pay for therapy services, the school itself never fully acknowledged it was at fault and never pursued the independent investigation to bring closure to a painful episode. To Kamil's credit, he never attacks his alma mater for its handling of the sex scandal, but he uses his narrative to bring truth out of darkness and let it prevail, just as it does in the words of Horace Mann's school song. A disturbing but necessary book.

Kirkus Reviews