WhatFinger


Horace Mann School in the Bronx, New York

Homosexuals and the elite private school sex scandal



The sex scandal is ever with us: Catholic priests; Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker; Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky; Coach Sandusky and Penn State. The list could and does go on and on. In America, sex sells beer, cars, deodorant, and everything else. We have become a highly-sexualized society compared to our Puritan and Pilgrim roots.
A particularly new fascination, though, is teacher-student sex in high schools. One high school in New York where this type of behavior is prevalent has been renamed “Horndog High” by one tabloid newspaper. Along these lines, the New York Times recently reported that during the late 1970s and early 1980s, students, primarily male students, were sexually abused by male faculty and administrators at the prestigious Horace Mann School in the Bronx, New York. Horace Mann for better or for worse is considered an “elite” private high school with tuition reportedly more than $37,000 per school year. Today it is ranked as one of the top private high schools in the United States. According to the lengthy Times Sunday Magazine piece, there were incidents of improper sexual touching and maybe up to and including homosexual rape as well as attempts by faculty and staff to seduce pubescent boys by secluding them from parental supervision either on school trips or by taking them to restaurants and even offering them alcoholic drinks in the headmaster’s home, as the headmaster at that time is one of the accused of improper conduct by the still as-of-yet unnamed alleged victims.

Support Canada Free Press


Normally, this would be the kind of event to ignore to protect one’s own personal spiritual well-being. Except in this instance, we can see some pernicious acts associated with the breakdown of society at that time. In addition, in this particular case, I was a student at Horace Mann at that time, and I am personally familiar with the alleged perpetrators. These revelatory remembrances have created a virtual firestorm among my classmates and generations of alumni who are wondering how this could have happened at our “noble Horace Mann,” as it is called in the alma mater. Horace Mann sits atop a hill in the dignified Riverdale neighborhood in the otherwise hardscrabble Bronx. The multi-acre, two-campus site includes an upper division and an elementary school. Teen-agers and children travel by car or bus or by public transportation from Manhattan as well as from prosperous suburbs in New Jersey and Westchester. In recent years, more Chinese and Indians have matriculated as they have climbed the ladder of success in the United States. Horace Mann remains a school of choice for secular Jews who do not send their children to Jewish-oriented day schools. The Horace Mann ethos, as one person wrote recently on Facebook, is to “separate the winners from the losers.” Knowledge and achievement are worshiped as is getting into Ivy League schools or equally elite private, liberal arts colleges. It’s a preparatory school for children of parents who are not inclined to send their progeny to New England’s elite boarding schools. Nevertheless, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, the “Times Were A Changin’” when all-boy Horace Mann allowed girls to enter in the early 1970s. In my first year in the upper division, six veteran faculty members passed away and a new generation of educators was arriving. The newcomers included R. Inslee Clark, Jr., the flamboyant headmaster, who as another HM graduate described him: a bachelor, baseball coach of a very successful team, dressed in bright pants and sports coat looking like he had just left a yacht party hosted by the Kennedy clan. For good measure,Clark drove a bright orange, late-model Cadillac convertible. The article alleges that Clark and (quirky) history teacher Stanley Kops made plays for high school boys, including in the headmaster’s residence, where Kops was sitting, swirling a drink when the boys arrived and then allegedly asking them if they wanted an alcoholic beverage, too, in order to relax. A third individual, Mark Wright, who was black and a football coach as well as an art instructor, and who similar to Kops was an HM graduate, allegedly invited another student to a drawing studio, where the boy allegedly stripped to his skivvies thinking he was going to be taking part in a nude modeling session, but later learned that he would be the subject of apparently unwanted sex play by the charismatic Wright. The final bad actor at Horace Mann, according to the report, was Mr. Johannes Somary, the head of the music department, who allegedly had his boy favorite each year handpicked for special company on Glee Club trips that traveled the world. Interestingly, Messrs. Clark, Kops, Wright and Somary are now all deceased. Mr. Kops killed himself after being discovered of his unwanted touching, which included him rubbing the shoulders of boys in class, which I personally witnessed. At least one other openly gay teacher is believed to have placed another student in compromising clothing and taking photographs of him. In a separate story printed by the Times in the last few days, that now 88-year-old teacher admitted to having sexual relations with at least three or four high school boys. What to do about these shenanigans or more than 30 years ago has spilled into social media. This being Horace Mann, there are lengthy essays on Facebook elaborating upon the nature of Western Civilization, Greek Tragedy, and even Pauline Christianity. Some alumni said they event felt this would not have happened had homosexuals been allowed to marry and come “out of the closet.” Others want HM to conduct a full investigation and to pay restitution to any alleged victims. Interest groups are being assembled, therapy is being recommended, and people are “lawyering up.” Incredibly, some of these people point to President Nixon and Vietnam and Kent State as somehow leading to this morass of woe. For these liberals, it’s forever 1968 and all about the Movement. My reaction is this: these incidents happened at a low point in American history. Jimmy Carter was president. It was the time of disco at Studio 54, streaking, rampant drug use, the near fiscal bankruptcy of New York City, the Iran hostage crisis, inflation, interest rates in high double digits, and the ignominy of defeat in Vietnam, which was basically won on the ground, but lost in the court of public opinion. In academia, Leftist teachers were destroying traditional curriculum, eradicating Latin language instruction and standards. Sexual experimentation was everywhere including the first reports of wife-swapping. Birth control pills created non-consequential sex and the later ravages of the sexually-transmitted disease epidemic and then ultimately AIDS. It’s wrong for teachers to have sex with students. However, everybody knows that a significant portion of teen-agers wouldn’t mind having sex with one of their teachers, and probably even fantasize about it. For those people who believe and assert that homosexuality is an acceptable lifestyle, isn’t it possible there was some degree of consent between these school personnel and students, as long as it was not a brutal instance of sodomy? Let’s state the obvious: the barriers crossed were by teachers having homosexual contact with students. Several of these alleged sex acts took place within a context of artistic expression and wouldn’t we agree that on average people in the Arts have different standards of morality compared to straights when it comes to sex? Think of it this way: If a 14 or 15 year old boy, heterosexual by all accounts, were propositioned by his (good-looking) woman teacher, isn’t it at least 80 to 90 percent likely that those male students would have willingly acquiesced? Hence the idea for the case of consent, even though I concede that the students were legally minors. What apparently happened at Horace Mann was homosexuals practicing their lifestyle, which includes breaking boundaries such as gay activists taking pictures of themselves giving the finger to a portrait of Ronald Reagan at the White House. I am neither defending nor denying anything, especially when discussing what Horace Mann should do or not do about all this. Already New York prosecutors have established a “tip line” for other alleged victims to phone and name more names or to make more allegations. Horace Mann is a private school and as I am not among the mega-wealthy on its board of trustees, nor an influential alumnus, nor a current parent, my opinions concerning its governance are fairly irrelevant. A Horace Mann education today is beyond my financial means even if I wanted to send my children there which I don’t. However, a lesson learned or at least a question worth asking is what can we do in this country to make a Horace Mann-type education available to more children? The answer is of course, obvious: give parents more resources to send their children to the schools of their choice. Tax dollars should be distributed to families like mine so that I can transfer it to the private school that I choose for my children, which indeed struggles financially. To my mind, this would be justice, rather than ruminating on sketchy happenings of more than 30 years ago allegedly perpetrated by people who are no longer alive to defend their reputations much less their actions.


View Comments

Daniel Wiseman -- Bio and Archives

Daniel Wiseman is an independent political commentator, who focuses on national and international affairs. He spent nine years as a professional journalist in Wyoming before working in fund-raising, non-profit management, and is now working in New York City. Wiseman focuses his writing on how to bring the United States back to its Constitutional moorings.  He writes exclusively for Canada Free Press.


Sponsored