A Tweet to Ponder: II
10 months ago
Liberal genius and NY Times propagandist Paul Krugman was slated to speak today at Netroots 2012, Unfortunately, he wasn’t quite the draw they were hoping for.
The room was empty.
29 June 2012
23 June 2012
22 June 2012
21 June 2012
16 June 2012
13 June 2012
Should Women Be Pastors and Elders?
In a social climate of complete equality in all things, the biblical teaching of only allowing men to be pastors and elders is not popular. Many feminist organizations denounce this position as antiquated and chauvinistic. In addition, many Christian churches have adopted the "politically correct" social standard and have allowed women pastors and elders in the church. But the question remains, is this biblical?
My answer to this question is, "No, women are not to be pastors and elders." Many may not like that answer, but it is, I believe, an accurate representation of the biblical standard. You make the decision after reading this paper.
First of all, women are under-appreciated and under-utilized in the church. There are many gifted women who might very well do a better job at preaching and teaching than many men. However, it isn't gifting that is the issue, but God's order and calling. What does the Bible say? We cannot come to God's word with a social agenda and make it fit our wants. Instead, we must change and adapt to what it says.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth, the garden of Eden, and Adam and Eve. He put Adam in the garden and gave him the authority to name all the animals. Afterwards, God made Eve as a helper to Adam.1 This is an important concept because Paul refers to the order of creation in his epistle to Timothy when he discusses the relationship between men and women in the church context. Let's take a look.
"But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but remain quiet. For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve. And it was not Adam who was deceived, but the woman being quite deceived, fell into transgression," (1 Tim. 2:12-14 -- all quotes from the Bible are from the NASB).
This passage has several interesting areas of discussion, but for our purpose we will focus on authority. At the very least, there is an authority structure set up by God. The woman is not to have authority over the man in the church context. But this does not extend to the political/economic world. In the Old Testament Deborah was a judge in Israel over men. Also, in the New Testament, Phoebe played an important role in the church at Cenchrea (Romans 16). There is no doubt that women supported Paul in many areas and were great helpers in the church (Acts 2:17; 18:24; 21:8). But what Paul is speaking of in 1 Tim. 2 is the relationship between men and women in the church structure, not in a social or political context.
When we look further at Paul's teachings we see that the bishop/overseer is to be the husband of one wife (1 Tim. 3:2) who manages his household well and has a good reputation (1 Tim. 3:4-5, 7). Deacons must be "men of dignity" (1 Tim. 3:8). Paul then speaks of women in verse 11 and their obligation to receive instruction. Then in verse 12, Paul says "Let deacons be husbands of one wife..." Again, in Titus 1:5-7, Paul says, "For this reason I left you in Crete, that you might set in order what remains, and appoint elders in every city as I directed you, namely, if any man be above reproach, the husband of one wife, having children who believe, not accused of dissipation or rebellion. For the overseer must be above reproach as God's steward..." Notice that Paul interchanges the word 'elder' and 'overseer'.
In each case, the one who is an elder, deacon, bishop, or overseer is instructed to be male (See article There were deaconesses, so there can be female elders and pastors). He is the husband of one wife, responsible, able to "exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict" (Titus 1:9). We see no command for the overseers to be women. On the contrary, women are told to be "dignified, not malicious gossips, but temperate, faithful in all things" (1 Tim. 3:11). Why is it that it is the men who are singled out as the overseers? It is because of the created order of God that Paul references (Gen. 1-2; 1 Tim. 2:12-14). This is not merely a social custom that fell away with ancient Israel.
Additionally, in the Old Testament in over 700 mentions of priests, every single one was a male. There is not one instance of a female priest. This is significant because priests were ordained by God to hold a very important office of ministering the sacrifices. This was not the job of women. Therefore, from what I see in Genesis 1-2, 1 Timothy 2, and Titus 1, the normal and proper person to hold the office of elder/pastor is to be a man.
What About Galatians 3:28?
"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus," (Gal. 3:28).
This verse is often used to support the idea that women can hold the offices of elder and pastor because there is neither male nor female in Christ. The argument states that if we are all equal, then women can be pastors.
Unfortunately, those who use this verse this way have failed to read the context. Verse 23 talks about being under the Law "before faith came" and how we are brought closer to Jesus and have become sons of God by faith. We are no longer under law, but grace and we are "Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise," (v. 29).2 The point of this passage is that we are all saved by God's grace according to the promise of God and that it doesn't matter who you are, Jew, Greek, slave, free, male, or female. All are saved the same way, by grace. In that, there is neither male nor female.
This verse is not talking about church structure. It is talking about salvation "in Christ." It cannot be used to support women as pastors because that isn't what it is talking about. Instead, to find out about church structure and leadership, you need to go to those passages that talk about it: 1 Timothy 2 and Titus 1.
Being a Pastor or Elder is to be in Authority
God is a God of order and balance. He has established order within the family (Gen. 3:16; 1 Cor. 11:3; Eph. 5:22-33; Col. 3:18-21 ) and the church (1 Tim. 2:11-14; 1 Cor. 11:8-9). Even within the Trinity there is an order, a hierarchy. The Father sent the Son (John 6:38) and both the Father and the Son sent the Holy Spirit (John 14:26; 15:26). Jesus said, "For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me," (John 6:38). It is clear that God is a God of order and structure.
In creation, God made Adam first and then Eve to be his helper. This is the order of creation. It is this order that Paul mentions in 1 Tim. 2:11-14 when speaking of authority. Being a pastor or an elder is to be in the place of authority. Therefore, within the church, for a woman to be a pastor or elder, she would be in authority of men in the church which contradicts what Paul says in 1 Tim. 2:11-14.
But Doesn't This Teaching Belittle Women?
No, male leadership does not belittle women. Jesus was given his authority by God the Father (Matt. 28:18). He was sent by God (John 6:38). He said the Father was greater than He (John 14:28). Did this belittle Jesus? Of course not. Women are of great value in the church and need to be used more and more according to the gifts given them.
Does the wife's submission to the husband mean that she is less than the husband, less important, or belittled? Again, not at all. Not having a place of leadership in the church does not mean a woman is less of a person, less important to God, or inferior. All are equal before God whether it be Jew, Gentile, free, slave, male, or female. But in the church, God has set up an order the same way he set one up in the family. The chain of command is Jesus, the man, the wife, and the children.
What About Women Who Say They are Called By God to Be Pastors?
There are women pastors in the world who love their congregations and have stated that they are called by God to be pastors. Of course, I cannot agree with this considering the previous analysis of the biblical position. Instead, I believe they have usurped the position of men and gone against the norm of scriptural revelation. Additionally, those who state that they are called by God because of the great job they are doing and the gifting they have received are basing their theology upon experience and not scripture.
The issue is simple: are they submitting to the word of God or are they making the word of God submit to their desires?
What About a Missionary Woman Who Establishes a Church?
Scripture establishes the norm. As Christians we apply what we learn from the word, to the situations at hand. So, what about the situation where a woman missionary has converted a group of people, say in the jungle somewhere, and she has established a church? In that church, she is then functioning as a pastor and teacher having authority over men in the church. Should she not do this?
First of all, she should not be out there alone. She should be with her husband or, at the very least, under the oversight of a church body in the presence of other women and men. Missionary work is not a lone endeavor to be handled by single women.
Second, if in some highly unusual set of circumstances there is a woman in a lone situation, it is far more important that the word of God be preached and the gospel of salvation go forth to the lost than not. Whether it be male or female, let the gospel be spoken. However, I would say that as soon as there is/are males mature enough to handle eldership, that she should then establish the proper order of the church as revealed in scripture and thereby, show her submission to it.
Does this also mean that women shouldn't wear jewelry?
"Likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments; 10 but rather by means of good works, as befits women making a claim to godliness. 11 Let a woman quietly receive instruction with entire submissiveness. 12 But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve," (1 Tim. 2:9-13).
Some argue that if we are to forbid women to be elders then the context of 1 Tim. 2:9-13 demands that we require women to no have braided hair, wear gold, or have costly garments. Since no one wants to put that sort of a demand on a woman (since it is cultural), then why should we also demand that they not be elders since it would logically follow that it was also a culturally based admonition?
The problem here is that multifaceted. First, the objection ignores what the scriptures plainly teach about the elder being the husband of one wife. Second, it fails to address the real issue of biblical headship residing in the male. Third, it fails to properly exegete the scripture in question.
In 1 Tim. 2:9-13 Paul tells us that women should be modestly dressed. He uses the example of the then present day adornment as an example of what not to do. This is a culturally based assessment by Paul. Notice that Paul emphasizes good works and godliness as a qualifier (as does Peter, see 1 Pet. 3:2). This is not a doctrinal statement tied to anything other than being a godly woman in appearance as well as attitude.
In verse 11, Paul says that a woman should quietly receive instruction. Please note that "The word, heµsychia, translated “quietness” in 1 Timothy 2:11 and silent in verse 12, does not mean complete silence or no talking. It is clearly used elsewhere (Acts 22:2; 2 Thes. 3:12) to mean “settled down, undisturbed, not unruly. A different word (sigaoµ) means “to be silent, to say nothing” (cf. Luke 18:39; 1 Cor. 14:34).”3 Paul is advocating orderliness in this verse.
Then in verse 12-13, Paul says, "But I do not allow a woman to teach or exercise authority over a man, but to remain quiet. 13 For it was Adam who was first created, and then Eve." Notice that Paul directly relates the authority issue with the created order. He does not do this with the woman's dress code. Therefore, the dress code is cultural and the authority issue as doctrinal since the latter is tied to the creation order and the dress code and authority issue are not.
Conclusion
God's word clearly tells us that the elder is to be the husband of one wife. A woman cannot qualify for this position by virtue of her being female. Whether anyone likes it or not is irrelevant to the fact that this is what the Bible teaches.
Please click here: More information on "Women in Ministry"
Is Gay Parenting Bad for the Kids?
Is Gay Parenting Bad for the Kids?
In his new Social Science Journal study, Mark Regnerus poses a question: “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships?” The answer to this — in both the academic literature and the imagination of the American public — has changed dramatically in less than a generation. “Fifteen years ago,” Regnerus explained at an event at the nonpartisan Institute for American Values, biological, heterosexual families were “reflexively regarded as the best environment for children.”
This subsequently gave way to the notion that there were “no meaningful differences” in outcomes for children raised in non-traditional arrangements. Finally it was suggested that children “might actually be better off being raised by a gay couple.”
Although there is little hard evidence to support such a conclusion, advocates of same-sex marriage and gay adoption have declared the science to be settled. Most famous, perhaps, of such declarations is the 2010 paper by social scientists Judith Stacey and Timothy Biblarz, who contended that “based strictly on the published science, one could argue that two women parent better on average than a woman and a man, or at least than a woman and man with a traditional division of family labor.”
This contention — that homosexual parenting is either neutral or better than traditional family structures — has found its way into our academic, legal, and cultural conversation and is rarely questioned. Hence the Ninth Circuit’s declaration: “Children raised by gay or lesbian parents are as likely as children raised by heterosexual parents to be healthy, successful, and well-adjusted.
The research supporting this conclusion is accepted beyond serious debate in the field of developmental psychology.”
Regnerus’s study was designed to reexamine this question — a difficult task, to say the least — by expanding the sample size and improving upon the methodology of previous surveys. The U.S. Census, for example, collects a lot of useful information but, because it does not ask questions about sexual orientation, much of its contribution to the topic must be inferred. Conversely, many academic studies that use the small-sample-size “snowball technique” — a process by which current subjects of a study recruit others from among their acquaintances to take part in it — can be misleading.
One such study, discussed in Regnerus’s paper, sampled women who frequented lesbian bookstores, events, and newspapers; the problem with this popular approach is that it narrowed down the samples to the educated, probably affluent, and socially similar, and it produced a limited understanding as a result. Such studies have proliferated in recent years.
In search of his answers, Regnerus screened 15,088 people. From these, researchers found 175 people who had been raised for some of their childhood by a mother who was in a lesbian relationship, and 73 people who had been raised for some of their childhood by a father who was in a gay relationship — still a relatively small group.
The first thing that Regnerus found is that gay households with children are located in the same geographical areas as the households of straight couples raising kids. Contrary to stereotypes, there is no real concentration of children where gays tend to live en masse. For example, as there are few children in San Francisco’s households overall, there are also few children living with gays in San Francisco.
In fact, Georgia is the state that has the most children living with same-sex couples. Despite being allegedly less gay-friendly, Middle America is very well represented in the gay-couple-with-child demographic. And consistent with general trends, Latino gay couples have more children than do white gay couples.
Regnerus found that children in the study rarely spent their entire childhoods in the households of their gay parent and partner. Only two of the 175 subjects who reported having a mother in a lesbian relationship spent their whole childhood with the couple, and no children studied spent their entire childhood with two gay males.
The numbers drop off pretty sharply as time progressed, too: For example, 57 percent of children spent more than four months with lesbian parents, but only 23 percent spent more than three years. This is interesting in and of itself, but it has serious implications for the study — implications to which I will later return.
Ultimately, Mark Regnerus set out to answer the question of whether children who have parents in a same-sex relationship experience disadvantages when compared with children raised by their biological, married parents. The answer, contra the zeitgeist, appears to be a resounding yes.
Children with a parent in a same-sex relationship “underperform” in almost every category. Some of these differences may be relatively benign — whether one voted in the last presidential election, for example — but most are decidedly not. One deficit is particularly worrying: Less than 2 percent of children from intact, biological families reported experiencing sexual abuse of some nature, but that figure for children of same-sex couples is 23 percent.
Similarly disturbing is that 14 percent of children from same-sex couples have spent some time in foster care, compared with around 2 percent of the American population at large. Arrest, drug experimentation, and unemployment rates were all higher among children from same-sex families.
What should we take away from this? Well, this is where it gets tricky. To compare children raised by same-sex parents with the “gold standard” — i.e., biological parents who remained married and alive — is problematic. Given the way the study is set up, one could fairly ask whether this is not so much an analysis of homosexual parenting versus heterosexual parenting, but of childhood stability versus instability.
By definition, any child raised by two members of the same sex is going to be missing at least one of their biological parents and will probably have experienced some instability in moving from the biological dyad to whatever arrangement replaced it.
And, as explained above, most of the children studied spent only a few years with their same-sex parents, which makes it likely that their family arrangement changed more than once and, thus, that their childhood was unstable.
Moreover, given that the study is a snapshot of a time period that predated legalization of gay marriage (in some states), one might speculate that social stigma played a role in Regnerus’s data, and that such stigma will have a smaller effect in future surveys.
Indeed, one should concede that people could legitimately employ Regnerus’s study to justify gay marriage on the grounds that societal disapproval of unmarried gay parents leads to the very instability that causes their children to experience negative outcomes: Marriage between gay partners will enhance the family’s stability and therefore be good for the children. I consider this to be a step too far — the high rate of divorce among gays does not suggest that same-sex households will soon be a model of stability — but it is worth consideration.
Regnerus’s study is a success insofar as it answers the fundamental question of whether children raised by same-sex couples end up differently: Clearly they do, and it does not require a conservative viewpoint to see that “differently” very often means “worse.” It is debatable, though, whether this is an indictment of same-sex households or of instability.
Indeed, the major takeaway from the report is less an indictment that same-sex households are a negative thing and more an affirmation that intact, biological households are a positive thing.
Put simply, if you want to give your children the best start in life, you should have children inside of wedlock and stay together for the duration. But then, we already knew that.
— Charles C. W. Cooke is an editorial associate for National Review.
11 June 2012
Reagan’s Advice Wins Again--Romney Should Pay Attention
By Richard A. Viguerie
In the wake of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's overwhelming victory in the Wisconsin recall election I shared the following comments with various media outlets:
Gov. Scott Walker“The real reason Governor Scott Walker won is simple and something that Mitt Romney and his presidential campaign team should take to heart. Walker won because he ran and governed as an unabashed principled, small government, constitutional conservative.
“The power of Walker’s win could contribute greatly to a Romney victory in November if Mitt’s campaign team can shake-off their moderate establishment Republican instincts and absorb its real lesson.
“Just as Ronald Reagan once described his vision of the Republican Party, Governor Walker’s campaign was a campaign, not of pale pastels, but of bold conservative colors --encouraging jobs and economic development, balancing the budget, reducing taxes, and streamlining the state’s bureaucracy.
“By standing for conservative principles, Scott Walker traveled the trail Reagan blazed to victory in 1980 and 1984, that Newt Gingrich followed to the Contract with America victory in 1994, and the Tea Party took to win the wave election in 2010. These were big agenda-changing victories--not skin of your teeth wins, such as Bush’s in 2000 and 2004, where we traded one set of establishment players for another.
“Victory always has 1,000 fathers, but no amount of money or organization could have helped Scott Walker if he had not stuck with his conservative principles.
“Governor Walker’s victory proves once again the lesson Republicans should have learned in 1980: Reagan’s bold colors win elections. If Mitt Romney will adopt those bold conservative colors for his campaign and his administration, he will win, even in traditionally Democratic-leaning states like Wisconsin.”
SOURCE
In the wake of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's overwhelming victory in the Wisconsin recall election I shared the following comments with various media outlets:
Gov. Scott Walker“The real reason Governor Scott Walker won is simple and something that Mitt Romney and his presidential campaign team should take to heart. Walker won because he ran and governed as an unabashed principled, small government, constitutional conservative.
“The power of Walker’s win could contribute greatly to a Romney victory in November if Mitt’s campaign team can shake-off their moderate establishment Republican instincts and absorb its real lesson.
“Just as Ronald Reagan once described his vision of the Republican Party, Governor Walker’s campaign was a campaign, not of pale pastels, but of bold conservative colors --encouraging jobs and economic development, balancing the budget, reducing taxes, and streamlining the state’s bureaucracy.
“By standing for conservative principles, Scott Walker traveled the trail Reagan blazed to victory in 1980 and 1984, that Newt Gingrich followed to the Contract with America victory in 1994, and the Tea Party took to win the wave election in 2010. These were big agenda-changing victories--not skin of your teeth wins, such as Bush’s in 2000 and 2004, where we traded one set of establishment players for another.
“Victory always has 1,000 fathers, but no amount of money or organization could have helped Scott Walker if he had not stuck with his conservative principles.
“Governor Walker’s victory proves once again the lesson Republicans should have learned in 1980: Reagan’s bold colors win elections. If Mitt Romney will adopt those bold conservative colors for his campaign and his administration, he will win, even in traditionally Democratic-leaning states like Wisconsin.”
SOURCE
10 June 2012
How to spot a sociopath
Link
One of the more offensive duties of being an investigative journalist is taking out the trash – exposing liars, fraudsters, con artists and scammers for the people they truly are. Each time we investigate a sociopath, we find that they always have a little cult group following of spellbound worshippers who consider that particular sociopath to be a “guru” or “prophet.”
Sociopaths are masters at influence and deception. Very little of what they say actually checks out in terms of facts or reality, but they’re extremely skillful at making the things they say sound believable, even if they’re just making them up out of thin air. Here, I’m going to present quotes and videos of some legendary sociopaths who convinced everyday people to participate in mass suicides. And then I’m going to demonstrate how and why similar sociopaths are operating right now… today.
Why cover this subject? I’ve seen a lot of people get hoodwinked, scammed or even harmed by sociopaths, and it bewilders me that people are so easily sucked into their destructive influence. I want to share with NaturalNews readers the warning signs of sociopaths so that you can spot them, avoid them, and save yourself the trouble of being unduly influenced by them.
Much of this information is derived from the fascinating book, The Sociopath Next Door (http://www.amazon.com/Sociopath-Next-Door-Martha-Stout/dp/0767915828), which says that 4% of the population are sociopaths. The book is a fascinating read.
10 signs for spotting a sociopath
#1) Sociopaths are charming. Sociopaths have high charisma and tend to attract a following just because people want to be around them. They have a “glow” about them that attracts people who typically seek guidance or direction. They often appear to be sexy or have a strong sexual attraction. Not all sexy people are sociopaths, obviously, but watch out for over-the-top sexual appetites and weird fetishes.
#2) Sociopaths are more spontaneous and intense than other people. They tend to do bizarre, sometimes erratic things that most regular people wouldn’t do. They are unbound by normal social contracts. Their behavior often seems irrational or extremely risky.
#3) Sociopaths are incapable of feeling shame, guilt or remorse. Their brains simply lack the circuitry to process such emotions. This allows them to betray people, threaten people or harm people without giving it a second thought. They pursue any action that serves their own self interest even if it seriously harms others.
#4) Sociopaths invent outrageous lies about their experiences. They wildly exaggerate things to the point of absurdity, but when they describe it to you in a storytelling format, for some reason it sounds believable at the time.
#5) Sociopaths seek to dominate others and “win” at all costs. They hate to lose any argument or fight and will viciously defend their web of lies, even to the point of logical absurdity.
#6) Sociopaths tend to be highly intelligent, but they use their brainpower to deceive others rather than empower them. Their high IQs often makes them dangerous. This is why many of the best-known serial killers who successfully evaded law enforcement were sociopaths.
#7) Sociopaths are incapable of love and are entirely self-serving. They may feign love or compassion in order to get what they want, but they don’t actually FEEL love in the way that you or I do.
#8) Sociopaths speak poetically. They are master wordsmiths, able to deliver a running “stream of consciousness” monologue that is both intriguing and hypnotic. They are expert storytellers and even poets. As a great example of this in action, watch this interview of Charles Manson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIfGj_55FHI
#9) Sociopaths never apologize. They are never wrong. They never feel guilt. They can never apologize. Even if shown proof that they were wrong, they will refuse to apologize and instead go on the attack.
#10) Sociopaths are delusional and literally believe that what they say becomes truth merely because they say it! Charles Manson, the sociopathic murderer, is famous for saying, “I’ve never killed anyone! I don’t need to kill anyone! I THINK it! I have it HERE! (Pointing to his temple.) I don’t need to live in this physical realm…”
Watch Charles Manson saying this at the 3:05 mark of this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aIfGj_55FHI
How to dispel illusion and get to the truth
Sociopaths are masters at weaving elaborate fictional explanations to justify their actions. When caught red-handed, they respond with anger and threats, then weave new fabrications to explain away whatever they were caught doing.
A sociopath caught red-handed with a suitcase full of cash he just stole, for example, might declare he had actually rescued the money from being stolen by someone else, and that he was attempting to find its rightful owner. He’s the hero, see? And yet, in reality, he will simply pocket the money and keep it. If you question him about the money, he will attack you for questioning his honesty.
Sociopaths are masters are presenting themselves as heroes with high morals and philosophy, yet underneath it they are the true criminal minds in society who steal, undermine, deceive, and often incite emotional chaos among entire communities. They are masters at turning one group of people against another group while proclaiming themselves to be the one true savior. Wherever they go, they create strife, argument and hatred, yet they utterly fail to see their own role in creating it. They are delusional at so many levels that their brains defy logical reasoning. You cannot reason with a sociopath. Attempting to do so only wastes your time and annoys the sociopath.
Tip for exposing sociopaths: Start fact-checking something they claim
One simple method for dispelling sociopathic delusion is to start fact checking their claims. Do any of their claims actually check out? If you start digging, you will usually find an inconsistency. Confront the suspected sociopath with the inconsistency and see what happens: Most sociopaths will become angry or aggressive when their integrity is questioned, whereas a sane person would simply be happy to help clear up any misinformation or misunderstanding.
Beware of fact-checking the sociopath by asking other people under his or her influence. A sociopath will usually have a small group of cult-like followers who not only believe their fictional tales, but who actually internalize those fictions to the point where they rewrite their own memories to be consistent with them. If a guru-style sociopath talks about his “levitation sessions” over and over again, some of his believers will sooner or later start to form false memories in which they imagine seeing him levitate off the floor. So if you ask those people, “Did you actually ever see this person levitate?” They will enthusiastically say, “Yes!” Because in their own minds, that illusion has become something indistinguishable from a vivid memory.
That’s why fact-checking a sociopath requires evidence from outside his circle of influence. Does anything he say actually check out in the real world, outside his sphere of direct control? If not, you’ve probably spotted a sociopath.
Sociopaths never answer facts; they always attack the messenger
Another very valuable red flag to recognize when trying to spot a sociopath is to see how they deal with attacks on their own integrity. If a sociopath is presented with a collection of facts, documents and evidence showing that he lied or deceived, he will refuse to address the evidence and, instead, attack the messenger!
As an investigative journalist who exposes some of the most despicable sociopaths on the planet, I’ve been attacked on every front imaginable: I’m a secret government agent, they say. Or I’m an alien from planet Zorg. I’ve heard it all, and while the accusations vary wildly, the pattern is the same: Attack the messenger but refuse to answer the documented allegations.
If you really try to nail a sociopath down to answering a documented allegation, they will quickly turn on you, denounce you, and declare that you too are secretly plotting against them. Anyone who does not fall for the brainwashing of the sociopath is sooner or later kicked out of the circle and then wildly disparaged by the remaining members of the cult group.
Inventing bizarre tales
One of the easiest signs to spot is how sociopaths exaggerate things to an irrational absurdity. In the sociopath’s world, every explanation is more intense and more heroic-sounding than the way it really went down. Where a normal person might say, “I vomited last night,” a sociopath would say, “I vomited up a 27-foot tapeworm!”
And a truly psychotic sociopath might even add details such as, “And then the tapeworm climbed up the wall and jumped on me and tried to strangle me!”
You might laugh at such an explanation, but I know lots of similar examples that have been believed by irrational cult followers.
Every story the sociopath weaves, often on the spur of the moment, is impossible to either confirm or deny. No one can prove him wrong, since they weren’t there, so he can spin whatever details into the story he wants. “After eating this, I had a three-hour ejaculation!” Or, “The Dalai Lama wanted to anoint me as a spiritual leader, but I declined, telling him that I only needed faith, not any official recognition.”
How can anyone disprove such a claim? They can’t. So the sociopaths relies on these un-provable, unsubstantiated claims to build up a false aura of authority, spirituality or knowledge. This creeps up on followers like a serpent, slithering into their brains and taking hold of their belief systems before they realize what has happened.
As a survivor of the Jim Jones “Jonestown” mass suicide says in a PBS documentary video (see link below), “Everything was plausible [at the time], except in retrospect the whole thing seems bizarre.”
That’s how sociopaths operate. As they’re speaking, they capture your imagination and sound reasonable, even authoritative. But in the clear light of day, what they are actually saying is absurd… even dangerous.
But no matter what fictions are presented by the sociopath, they always present him in the light of a hero – sometimes even a saint — who sacrifices his life for the good of others. He often talks of “healing” or “detoxification” or being “cleansed.” When he is exposed by truth-tellers, he merely accuses the truth-tellers of being secret undercover agents. When he is accused of sexual assault by one of his own followers (a common occurrence in these circles), he denounces her as an enemy or a spy.
The ultimate destination of a sociopath is to destroy himself and take as many willing victims with him as possible. This is the Jim Jones scenario: Drink the Kool-Aid laced with poison, and thereby prove your worth to your entire cult group.
A common theme of poison, sainthood, redemption
Interestingly, many sociopaths do indeed center their actions around a bizarre food or drink theme, often demanding their members eat or drink poisonous or highly offensive substances that no rational person would otherwise consume. The Heaven’s Gate cult, for example, was led by a classic sociopath named Marshall Applewhite. He managed to convince 38 followers to kill themselves by eating applesauce laced with phenobarbital.
Watch the fascinating video of Applewhite here and ask yourself: Would you follow this man to your own grave? (Other people did!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqSZhwu1Rwo
Notice how Applewhite speaks with authority, clarity and some level of charisma. Notice the intensity of his eyes? This is another common trait among sociopaths (including Manson, above). Remember, this man gained such influence over his followers that they voluntarily killed themselves in order to maintain his approval!
As Wikipedia explains: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_%28religious_group%29#Ma…)
On March 19–20, 1997, Marshall Applewhite taped himself speaking of mass suicide and asserted “it was the only way to evacuate this Earth.” The Heaven’s Gate group was against suicide but they believed they had no choice but to leave Earth as quickly as possible. After claiming that a space craft was trailing the comet Hale-Bopp, Applewhite convinced 38 followers to commit suicide so that their souls could board the supposed craft. Applewhite believed that after their deaths, a UFO would take their souls to another “level of existence above human,” which Applewhite described as being both physical and spiritual. This and other UFO-related beliefs held by the group have led some observers to characterize the group as a type of UFO religion. In October 1996, the group purchased alien abduction insurance to cover up to 50 members at a cost of $10,000.
The cult rented a 9,200-sq.-ft. mansion, located at 18241 Colina Norte (later changed to Paseo Victoria), in a gated community of upscale homes in the San Diego-area community of Rancho Santa Fe, California from Sam Koutchesfahani, paying $7,000 per month in cash. The thirty-eight Heaven’s Gate members, plus group leader Applewhite, were found dead in the home on March 26, 1997. In the heat of the California spring, many of the bodies had begun to decompose by the time they were discovered. The corpses underwent autopsies, where cyanide and arsenic were found. The bodies were later cremated.
The suicide was accomplished by ingestion of phenobarbital mixed with applesauce or pudding, washed down with vodka. Additionally, plastic bags were secured around their heads after ingesting the mix to induce asphyxiation. Authorities found the dead lying neatly in their own bunk beds, faces and torsos covered by a square, purple cloth. Each member carried a five-dollar bill and three quarters in their pockets. All 39 were dressed in identical black shirts and sweat pants, brand new black-and-white Nike Decades athletic shoes, and armband patches reading “Heaven’s Gate Away Team” (one of many instances of the group’s use of the Star Trek fictional universe’s nomenclature). The adherents, between the ages of 26 and 72, are believed to have died in three groups over three successive days, with remaining participants cleaning up after each prior group’s death.
This episode speaks directly to the mind-altering power of sociopaths. Their delusions can be so convincing that followers will even kill themselves in order to stay in alignment with the expectations of the group. I know of a fringe health sociopath operating right now who has killed several of his own followers, but of course he always blames them for their own deaths. It’s never his fault, you see.
Sadly, even when one sociopath kills himself (and takes a few of his followers with him), there is always another sociopath waiting to take his place, seeking power, influence, and sometimes fame. It is common for sociopaths to strongly desire to be on television shows or to desperately seek out opportunities for short-term fame, often from engaging in bizarre acts or staging strange events. This is one of the ways in which they recruit followers to join their cult.
Jim Jones and drinking the Kool-Aid
The most horrifying master of sociopathic delusion was, of course, Jim Jones who convinced 900+ people to kill themselves by drinking poisoned Kool-Aid.
And people loved him for it! They felt inspired, excited, healed and guided. Jim Jones was their savior, their prophet. They believed his every word, and they paid for their foolish belief with their lives.
Watch this powerful PBD documentary video about Jonestown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7IxGGfpSWk
As Jim Jones proved, people can be easily swept up into an irrational belief in a guru or prophet who quite literally plans to murder them. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonestown)
This is the other dominant factor we see in dangerous sociopaths: An odd obsession with dead things, rotting things, putrid things… things that would cause a normal, mentally balanced person to shrink away in horror. Jim Jones, for example, was fascinated with death and would reportedly murder small animals and then hold funerals for them.
Jones was a master at invoking spiritual concepts and presenting himself as spiritually evolved. This is another common theme among sociopaths, and you see it among Applewhite, Manson, Jones and even present-day sociopaths who are operating in America right now.
Historically, perhaps the best example of a delusional sociopath was none other than Adolf Hitler. He showed all the classic signs: A brilliant orator, a congenital liar, a complete lack of compassion for others, a dominant, aggressive personality, and the invoking of spirituality to justify his actions. The Nazi Swastika symbol, in fact, is a derivation of the Flower of Life symbol derived from sacred geometry. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KMxmJVtp2Y)
The modern sociopath: A threat to us all
Sociopaths aren’t just a relic of history; I see their kind operating today, in 2012. A surprising number of people continue to fall for the delusional (but convincing) web of lies spun by wordsmithing sociopaths who may operate in almost any area of society: Science and physics, New Age circles, fringe health, self improvement and even “pop” spiritual development.
People from all walks of life allow themselves to be fooled by these sociopaths, buying into their false narratives, toxic products and destructive behavioral patterns, all driven into their heads through a complex web of social engineering, linguistics and emotional influence. Most people are completely unaware they have been mesmerized into these cult groups, just like the Jonestown people were completely unaware… or the Heaven’s Gate crowd.
There are people today, right now, who are zealous members of fringe cults that advocate drinking toxic metals dissolved in sulfuric acid, eating rotten meat festering with deadly bacteria, playing with poisonous snakes or even dehydrating yourself in a sweat lodge to the point where you suffer hallucinations that are then interpreted as “spiritual guidance.”
These cults are operating right here in America, and they are led by sociopaths who follow in the footsteps of monsters like Jim Jones and Marshall Applewhite. Some of today’s cult followers will pay for their misplaced faith with their lives. Others will eventually come to their senses and wonder how they could have been so completely blinded by a false prophet.
Seven rules for personal empowerment (without joining a cult)
The most shocking realization to take home from all this is that people who live under the spell of a sociopath almost never realize it until after the spell has been broken. Just as the worshippers of Jim Jones believed his organization to be based in love, life and light, people today who worship sociopathic, charismatic leaders usually have no idea they have already surrendered their will to someone who does not have their best interests at heart.
This is why, here at NaturalNews, I have always taught people the following authentic principles of responsibility and power:
#1) Think for yourself. Be skeptical of everything. Most people, corporations, governments and institutions are lying to you. There is much good in the world, but there is far more selfishness and greed which is falsely presented as that which is good.
#2) Follow your inner truth, not some external guru. Any guru who demands your obedience is a false prophet. A real teacher is one who empowers you and sets you free to explore your life experience with complete freedom tempered by a code of morals and personal responsibility.
#3) Serve in the protection of life, with or without a church or spiritual group. You can protect life every day in your own garden. Resist the seduction of profit and power that comes from serving darkness (i.e. working for Big Pharma). Seek to protect life, which is sacred and precious.
#4) Value all living things, including animals and plants. You are their shepherd. Protect the diversity of life and the integrity of the continuation of life. (For example, resist GMO and plant only non-hybrid seeds.)
#5) Live an authentic life. Practice what you teach. Walk your talk. Do not speak with one face and then secretly act out another. Spiritual strength comes from spiritual authenticity, and even if the world isn’t aware of what you do when no one is looking, God and the universe most certainly are. Karma counts.
#6) Defend the innocent. Stand your ground against bullies. Resist tyranny. Promote freedom, liberty and justice. Help others when you can, and seek to empower others with the skills and knowledge they can use to support themselves rather than creating dependency.
#7) Tell the truth. It is powerful… perhaps the most powerful thing in the universe. The truth unfailingly outshines lies and deceptions. And even when the people around you may not see the truth, the greater universe does. By telling the truth, you empower yourself in all areas of your life, and you bring yourself closer to true spiritual understanding.
09 June 2012
Horace Mann and Prep-School Predators
From the elevated platform of the No. 1 train’s last stop at 242nd Street, you can just about see the lush 18-acre campus of the Horace Mann School. The walk from the station is short, but it traverses worlds. Leaving the cluttered din of Broadway, you enter the leafy splendor of Fieldston, an enclave of mansions and flowering trees that feels more like a wealthy Westchester suburb than the Bronx. Head up the steep hill, turn left, then walk a bit farther, past the headmaster’s house. From the stone wall that runs along Tibbett Avenue, you can see practically the whole school: Pforzheimer Hall, Mullady Hall, the auditorium, the gymnasium and, right in the center, the manicured green expanse of the baseball field, home of the Lions, pride of the school.
It was this field that drew me to Horace Mann 33 years ago, pulling me out of Junior High School 141 in the Bronx, with its gray-green walls and metal-caged windows. At 141, my friends’ résumés read like a crime blotter: Jimmy stole a pizza truck and dropped out after ninth grade; Eggy was done with 141 after he smashed the principal’s glasses with a right hook; Ish liked to pelt the Mister Softee truck with rocks; Bend-Over Bob OD’d and lived; Frankie was not so lucky. My future would have tracked swiftly in the same direction but for one factor: baseball. By 14, I had a sweet swing, with the arm, hands and game smarts to match.
That’s what brought me to the attention of R. Inslee Clark Jr., then headmaster of Horace Mann, a private school so elite that most students at 141 had never even heard of it. Inky Clark, a tireless scout of baseball talent, started showing up at my games, and he was not someone you could easily miss. He was a big guy with a powerful handshake, bright blue eyes and a booming voice. In his loud pink cardigans and madras pants, he always looked as if he came straight off the Kennedy compound or the bow of a yacht. He drove a bright orange Cadillac convertible, its rear bumper covered with Yankees stickers.
Clark was a legendary reformer. As dean of undergraduate admissions at Yale in the 1960s, he broke that institution’s habit of simply accepting students from fancy boarding schools, whatever their academic standing; instead, he started scouring the country for the most talented, highest-achieving students from any school and any background. “You will laugh,” William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in 1967, “but it is true that a Mexican-American from El Paso High with identical scores on the achievement test and identically ardent recommendations from the headmaster, has a better chance of being admitted to Yale than Jonathan Edwards the Sixteenth from Saint Paul’s School.” As more minorities started appearing in the freshman classes, the university’s alumni and trustees did not laugh. But the rest of the Ivy League followed Clark’s bold lead, forever altering the history of the American meritocracy.
He brought that same crusading spirit to Horace Mann, where he welcomed girls to what had long been a proudly all-boys school. And he used his passion for baseball, the sport he coached, as a Trojan horse to bring promising students from rough schools to a campus otherwise reserved for the city’s most privileged children.
Clark could work a room like a politician, zeroing in on whomever he was speaking to, making him feel like he was the most interesting person in the world. He started calling me “the Mouse,” as my friends at 141 did, and he suggested I might find a home at Horace Mann. Touched, as was everyone who met him, by his tremendous personal charisma, I took it as a thrilling compliment. My parents saw the bigger picture: the opportunities that a Horace Mann education could bring, the ways it could change a kid’s life.
So in September 1979, I stood in the glassed-in breezeway through which students entered campus, wearing the pink Lacoste shirt my brother had somewhat optimistically insisted would help me fit in. All around me, the natives swarmed past — to the classrooms, to the science labs, to the brilliant futures they had been born to assume.
I was an outsider, but I was one of Inky’s boys and, as I quickly learned, that counted for a lot. I gathered with my new teachers and classmates in the auditorium and proudly sang Horace Mann’s alma mater: “Great is the truth and it prevails; mighty the youth the morrow hails./Lives come and go; stars cease to glow; but great is the truth and it prevails.”
Shortly after my arrival, a new friend walked me around the school, pointing out teachers to avoid.
“What do you mean? Like, they’re hard graders?”
“No. Perverts. Stay away from them. Trust me.”
I heard about some teachers who supposedly had a habit of groping female students and others who had their eyes on the boys. I heard that Mark Wright, an assistant football coach, had recently left the school under mysterious circumstances. I was warned to avoid Stan Kops, the burly, bearded history teacher known widely as “the Bear,” who had some unusual pedagogical methods. Even Clark came in for some snickering: he had no family of his own, and he had a noticeably closer-than-average relationship to the Bear, another confirmed bachelor.
It was juicy gossip, of course, but not all that different from what already swirls around the minds of sex-obsessed high-school students. Certainly it wasn’t that different from what swirled around the hallways of typically homophobic high schools at the time, when anyone who was a bit different was suspected of being gay and any teacher who was gay was suspected of being a pedophile.
I didn’t pay much attention. I was more focused on the important teenage business of losing my Bronx accent and my virginity. Over the next few years I studied Spanish and calculus and took Clark’s class, urban studies; I went to parties in my classmates’ lavish apartments, drank their liquor and snorted their cocaine. And I played baseball. Junior year, the Lions went 22-1.
When I was a senior, a family emergency took my mother abroad for several weeks, and my siblings and I were left to take care of ourselves. Clark invited me and my 12-year-old brother out for dinner, along with my friend Eric. On the designated night, we walked up the steps to the headmaster’s house, where Inky greeted us at the door. Photos of Horace Mann athletes lined the walls of the foyer, as they did the walls of his office. In the living room, by the fire, sat Stan Kops — the Bear — nursing a cocktail.
“Can I offer you boys a drink?” Inky called out from behind the bar. This certainly didn’t happen every day, but the suggestion didn’t sound so jarring in 1982, when the state drinking age was just being changed from 18 to 19. Like any self-respecting 17-year-olds, Eric and I said sure, as we all kidded my little brother about being left out of the fun. Gin and tonics were poured, consumed and refilled. Talk loosened up. Still, something about sharing fireside cocktails with Stan Kops was making me uncomfortable. I pointedly asked when we were going to dinner.
Boys in one vehicle, teachers in another, we swerved to the Riverdale Steak House. As Eric climbed out from behind the wheel of his blue van, he muttered a line that we still repeat to this day: “I’m not taking any shit from the Bear.” Then we stumbled into the restaurant, where we consumed steaks and many more gin and tonics.
At the end of dinner, Eric and I uttered some prearranged exit line, thanked our hosts, grabbed my brother and drove off drunk into the night, leaving the two grown men to pay the bill and finish out the evening as they might.
“Do you remember Mr. Wright, the football coach?”
Ten years after graduation, four Horace Mann friends and I decided to go on a camping trip. We had been close in high school but later scattered across the country. And we all sensed that the next 10 years — careers, marriages, families — would pull us even farther apart. So we tied our sleeping bags to our backpacks and headed up to the Sierra Nevada for a week of hiking and bonding.
One night after a particularly grueling hike, we sat around the campfire, eating some burned vegetarian meal and enjoying that pleasing quiet that falls between exhaustion and sleep.
Then one friend cleared his throat. (Like many people in this article, my friend asked me not to use his full name, because of the sensitivity of the subject matter and the fact that these events took place when he was a minor. I’ll call him by his middle name, Andrew.) “Guys, I have to tell you something that happened to me when we were at H.M. Do you remember Mr. Wright, the football coach?” Our metal utensils ceased clanking.
Speaking calmly and staring into the flames, he told us that when he was in eighth grade, Wright sexually assaulted him. “And not just me,” he added. “There were others.” First Wright befriended him, he said. Then he molested him. Then he pretended nothing happened.
No one knew what to say, at least at first. But then slowly, the rest of us started telling stories, too. One of the guys talked about a teacher who took him on a field trip, and then invited him into his bed in the hotel room they were sharing. (My friend fled, walking in the rain for hours until the coast seemed clear.) Another told a story about a teacher who got him drunk and naked; that time, no one fled. We talked about the steakhouse dinner, which was a far cry from abuse, but an example of how easy it can be for boundaries to blur and how hard it can be, in the moment, for students to get their bearings. Finally, we all went to sleep.
Then we went home, and another 20 years slid by.
When the Penn State scandal came out last year, I kept getting tangled in the questions everyone else was getting tangled in: How does an institutional culture arise to condone, or at least ignore, something that, individually, every member knows is wrong? Andrew’s story came back to me in a rush. The questions of Penn State, I realized, are the questions of Horace Mann and perhaps every place that has been haunted by a similar history.
I called Andrew. He was thinking about Horace Mann, too — about his own experiences and those of his classmates. And about Mark Wright.
In many ways, Wright was the ultimate Horace Mann success story. People who knew him remember him as tall and extroverted, with an easy smile and a huge laugh. He graduated in 1972, a time when African-American students like him were a rarity, then went to Princeton, where he majored in art and archaeology and played right tackle for the football team. A glowing article about him in The Daily Princetonian described him as “a Picasso in cleats,” and speculated on whether he could have gone pro or would get a Ph.D. “I think Mark lives life to the fullest,” the head of his department told the paper, noting that he “exudes enthusiasm and versatility.” After college, he came back to Horace Mann to teach art and to coach football.
“I first had him as an art teacher,” Andrew told me, in the steadied voice of someone who had worked through the story in therapy. “He was a great guy. Funny, gregarious, everyone loved him. He had this aura of success around him, and I was so happy that someone like him would take an interest in a skinny underclassman like me. I felt special.
“One night he called my house and asked my parents if he could take me to the museum,” Andrew continued. “My parents were so excited that a teacher would take such an interest in me.” And this being Horace Mann, he added, “it didn’t hurt that he had also gone to Princeton.” Still, Andrew didn’t feel comfortable hanging out with a teacher on the weekend, so he turned down the invitation. A little later Wright had another idea: he asked to draw a portrait of Andrew.
“It was the night of the eighth-grade dance,” he told me, “and instead of going to the gym, I went to meet him in his art studio on the fourth floor of Tillinghast. He locked the door and told me to undress.” As he got to this part of the story, Andrew’s pace slowed and his voice lowered.
“He told me to bring a bathing suit, but when I got there he said not to bother putting it on. I was really uncomfortable but did it anyway since he was across the room. I remember exactly what he said: that he needed to see the connection between my legs. The next thing I knew, he had my penis in his hand. I was so scared. He was a pretty intimidating guy. He began performing fellatio and masturbating,” Andrew said, now breathing with effort.
“I left the room and walked to where the dance was. I saw all these kids doing normal eighth-grade things. I tried being present at that party, but I was horrified.” Afterward, Andrew said, “it was really hard being at Horace Mann, knowing that if I ran into him, he would get up really close to me and say stuff like: ‘What’s wrong, little buddy? You’re not still mad about that time, are you?’ ”
This was 1978, a different era in terms of public awareness about sexual predators. Today children are taught from a young age that unwelcome touches are not O.K., not their fault and should be reported immediately. But at 13, Andrew hadn’t heard any of those lectures. He didn’t tell his other teachers or his parents. He felt too ashamed to talk about what happened. “What I did do in the immediate aftermath,” he said, “was contribute to the rumors going around that Mark Wright was a child molester, which were pretty rampant at that time. I’d join conversations about it and say that I’d heard he was into boys, etc. But these conversations were always very frustrating, because he had a lot of defenders who would say that people said this about him because they were jealous that he was such a stud.”
Eventually two friends told Andrew that Wright assaulted them, too. “People just talked about it,” he said. That’s how he heard about the physical exams that Wright gave athletes in the gym building. When Andrew’s coach told him he had to see Wright for a physical, he was wary but didn’t see any way out of it. So he opened the door to a small, windowless room and walked in. “There was no pretense of medical examination when I got there,” he said. “He just tried to start molesting me again, and I told him I’d tell someone if he continued, and he stopped and told me to leave.”
G., another kid from my class, who asked me to use only his initial, remembered the same setting — windowless training room, only one door. “I was 14 and recovering from a football injury,” he said, in an almost jocular tone, “when Wright used the purported physical exam to try to engage me in a sexual encounter by touching my penis. Although nothing further happened, I was speechless, and I never said anything to anyone. I never looked at myself as a victim, but. . . .” Suddenly his voice cracked. “In hindsight, I just wish I had said something to someone. Maybe then it wouldn’t have happened to other kids.”
We were only kids ourselves, I said, inadequately.
“I don’t think he looked me in the face when he was doing what he did,” he said later, “and I certainly didn’t look him in the face either.”
Later that year, one of Wright’s examination subjects, a football player, spoke up. “I reported that Coach Wright was performing limited but inappropriate physicals on team players,” the former student told me, “and that I was concerned that he was going to do so on others. The contact was very limited, to about 30 seconds. It was a ‘private-parts inspection.’ ”
When students and faculty returned to campus after the 1978-79 winter break, some told me, Wright was gone. One teacher remembers being told he resigned; others say they got no explanation, as do the students I spoke to.
Wright’s victims might have appreciated the invitation to talk about their experiences — if not with school officials, then with counselors or psychotherapists. Students in general might have welcomed an explanation, however limited, of why a teacher that so many looked up to simply disappeared from their lives. And the entire school might have benefited from a more open discussion of student-teacher boundaries, of the danger of abuse and the right to resist it, of how to report it and how the school would respond. But several faculty members of that era said that, to their knowledge, the school said nothing — not to the students, not to their families and not to the police.
Administrators at Horace Mann rarely speak to the press. Over the last six months, I contacted the current headmaster, Tom Kelly, on many occasions, by letter and phone, to ask about Mark Wright as well as the other teachers that I learned about in the course of my research for this article. I also wrote individually to 22 members of the board of trustees, imploring them to hear the stories that former students had told me and to speak on the school’s behalf about better policies that might now be in place. I received an initial reply from Kekst and Company, a corporate public-relations firm, and later a statement from the school that said in part: “As an educational institution, we are deeply concerned if allegations of abuse of children are raised, regardless of when or where they may have occurred.” It continued: “The current administration is not in a position to comment on the events involving former and, in some cases, now-deceased, faculty members that are said to have occurred years before we assumed leadership of the school. It should be noted that Horace Mann School has terminated teachers based on its determination of inappropriate conduct, including but not limited to certain of the individuals named in your article.”
As for questions about Wright or the other teachers I heard about in the course of my reporting, the school issued a blanket statement, saying: “The article contains allegations dating back, in some instances, 30 years, long before the current administration took office, which makes it difficult to accurately respond to the factual allegations therein. In addition, on June 13, 1984, there was a fire in the attic of the business office that destroyed some records.”
“Mr. Kops would occasionally cancel class in favor of something called ‘frolic.’ ”
Stocky and socially awkward, Stanley Kops was a far cry from the popular Mark Wright. He was a bit weird, actually. But so were lots of other teachers. Horace Mann tolerated and in some cases even prized eccentricity in its faculty.
Kops — like Wright, an alumnus of the school as well as an employee — used to walk through the aisles of his classroom lecturing about some king or army, then pause at a student’s desk to drive home a point. As students noticed, and openly discussed, the objects of these in-class tutorials tended to be handsome, self-confident male athletes. Kops didn’t just quiz them; he gave their shoulders a massage. If that didn’t coax forth the answer he was looking for, he bent one of their arms behind their backs and pulled — gently, at first, then a lot less so. The inquiry might move on to a headlock.
“I remember this one kid misbehaved,” said Rob Boynton, who was a year ahead of me in high school and is now a journalist and a professor. “And his punishment was to take his shirt off and stand by the window. It was freezing outside. Must have been February. All this in full view of the class.”
Another former student, who asked not to be named because his child currently attends the school, said: “Mr. Kops would occasionally cancel class in favor of something called ‘frolic.’ Basically, he would allow kids to run amok in the classroom and kind of joined in the action. I was new in seventh grade and remember thinking that this was a different kind of school where a teacher was physically ‘handling’ me. I can remember him being kind of red and breathless after particularly vigorous frolicking.”
Kops also coached the junior-varsity swim team; it was in that context that I came into contact with his long, creepy touches, which always accompanied pointers about stroke or form. His postpractice entry into the communal shower would clear the steamy room in a hurry. And then there was his ambiguous relationship to Clark, a subject almost perfectly engineered to capture the imagination of students.
Despite all these distractions, many of his students — boys and girls, athletes and not — were as devoted to him as he was to them. He made students feel that he cared deeply about their education and their well-being. In return, a pretty sophisticated student body chose to view his behavior as merely odd when, in many other contexts, it would have been deemed outrageous or even threatening.
That all changed in the fall of 1983 at the John Dorr Nature Laboratory, a rugged expanse of fields, streams and woods in Washington, Conn., that serves as Horace Mann’s outdoor-education center. At various points during their education, the school’s students go to Dorr for a few days to explore nature and bond with one another under the oversight of Dorr’s resident faculty and, sometimes, visiting teachers as well.
Kops accompanied one of the seventh-grade orientation trips that year and slept, as visiting faculty often did, in a cabin with the students. At some point in the night, one of the boys, whom I’ll call by his middle name, Seth, woke up.
“I was on the top bunk,” he recalled, in a matter-of-fact tone. “Middle of the night, my sleeping bag fell to the floor. I climbed down to get it, and as I bent over to pick it up, Kops came up from behind me and pressed up against me. It was pitch black. He then helped me to pick up the sleeping bag even though I didn’t need any help.” They were fully clothed, he said, and he didn’t feel assaulted, just uncomfortable. “I probably wouldn’t have said anything except for what happened the next morning.”
After breakfast, Seth told me, as the group assembled for activities, Kops took him aside behind a building, grabbed his own crotch and asked, “What were you doing last night?” Seth says he was in shock. “I freaked,” he said. “I started screaming: ‘You’re calling me a homo? You’re the homo. You’re the homo!’ ” Listening to Seth, I wondered if that was really what Kops was getting at — perhaps he was making a crude masturbation joke? But more to the point, I wondered if, from Kops’s peculiar perspective, that bizarre encounter with a 12-year-old looked all that different from twisting students’ arms or making them partly undress in full view of his class.
Seth said he was unsure of what happened next, but according to the story that circulated around campus, he took off running, screaming something about Kops. Seth says his father, an active parent in the Horace Mann community, demanded the school take immediate action, which it did. Kops resigned.
Michael Lacopo, who was the headmaster at the time (Clark had been promoted to president), is now retired and living in Colorado. When I reached him, he told me that he could not discuss any case by name but that he presided over only one such allegation. Speaking in clipped sentences, he gave me a very limited report. “The act was never consummated, but it was an issue of concern, and it became clear it was time for him to move on. And he didn’t deny it. And the kid’s parents were satisfied,” he said. “Everyone knew where I stood on the matter.”
Horace Mann says faculty members received a letter about Kops’s resignation, but Lacopo made no announcement to his students, their parents or the student body in general.
Kops called some of his favorite students at home and asked them to meet him at school the next day for an announcement. One was Kate Aurthur, who took his ancient-history course the previous year. When they assembled, she said, he told them he was leaving. “He didn’t say why he was leaving, and I didn’t know why yet,” she said. Regardless, the news came as a shock. “It was very emotional. He always had a red face and a soft voice, but he got redder than usual and choked up.”
The next time students heard anything about Stan Kops, it was at the end of the next school year, and the news was far more shocking: he had committed suicide. The rumors ran quickly through the Horace Mann student body. Some said that he shot himself in a car, with a Bible nearby. Others said he shot himself on a baseball field as some sort of coded message to Clark. The school still said nothing.
Mr. Somary “was a hero to me, but he was also a monster.”
Years before Kops’s death, before Wright’s firing, before Clark’s arrival at Horace Mann, and for many years after, too, Johannes Somary, the head of the arts-and-music department, was a legend on campus. With his wild hair and faraway gaze, a jacket and tie over his pot belly, Somary seemed almost a caricature of a brilliant maestro. The son of a famous Austrian-Swiss banker, he enjoyed a prominent international reputation, having guest-conducted numerous orchestras, including the Royal Philharmonic of London and the Vienna Philharmonic. The walls of Pforzheimer Hall at Horace Mann were lined with posters from his concerts.
In class, he was strict, shouting in heavily accented English or slamming the piano lid if a rehearsal was not to his liking. Students took the glee club, and him, very seriously. They accompanied him as he strutted across campus, with an old-fashioned briefcase filled with musical scores and batons. They gathered in his office, where, they say, he was more relaxed and funny, and where they could spend their free periods discussing music, doing homework, even sitting on his lap.
“He had a formidable arsenal for impressing students,” said E. B., a flushed, avuncular man who attended Horace Mann in the 1970s. “He was fabulously wealthy, had priceless art on his wall, drove a shiny green Jaguar and was a world-famous conductor.” E. B. agreed to tell me his story (though he asked that I identify him only by his initials) at an Italian restaurant outside Lincoln Center. As he spoke, he seemed both nervous and eager, his eyes darting around the room. “He was a hero to me,” he said. “But he was also a monster.”
Somary started out by befriending him, then allowing him to call him Hannes, then hiring him for little jobs like baby-sitting in the Riverdale home where he lived with his wife and three children. It was there on a fall night in 1973, when E. B. was 16, he says, that Somary sat next to him on a couch, unzipped the boy’s pants and started handling his penis. “I wasn’t scared, just stunned,” E. B. said. “The primary emotion was revulsion. I told him to stop, and he did.” But a couple of weeks later, Somary abused him again. “I was such a good victim,” he told me as the meal in front of him grew cold. “Shy, trusting, unsophisticated.” He shook his head slowly.
M., another man now in his mid-50s, had a similar experience. He was so anxious about my revealing his identity that he initially said he would speak only through an intermediary. (“M” is a letter in his middle name — the closest he would come to letting me identify him in print.) But sometime near midnight this past January, he called me directly and launched into a rapid-fire account of how Somary, “a manipulator par excellence,” groomed him for victimization. And how, one night, Somary suggested they take a drive. Somary parked in a lot near the club where the two had spent many hours playing tennis together. “He then pulled me close to his chest,” M. said. “I’m thinking: This is weird. Uncomfortable. Then he starts kissing my lips. I’m thinking, Oh, my God, this can’t be happening. I didn’t know what to do. I was just a child. I didn’t have the ego strength to say no. I was shocked, uncomfortable, but I let it persist. He unzipped my pants and started to masturbate me.”
Somary took him on glee-club trips and then on solo trips to Europe, M. said: “We stayed at the best hotels, I met with the great classical musicians of the time and ate at the finest restaurants. I was expected to have sex with him and did even though it repulsed me every time. It was all very confusing. At one point I told my parents I no longer wanted to sleep in the same room with him on the European trips.” When Somary found out, he “drove to my house and sat in my living room like a jilted lover, begging me to stay in the same room with him,” M. said. “Right in front of my father.” M.’s mother, who confirmed his story, said she and her husband didn’t understand the nature of their son’s discomfort. They thought he was just being a teenager, preferring the company of his peers. He couldn’t bring himself to tell his parents the truth.
The arrangement continued for three years — even into M.’s time at college, he said. “I don’t know why I let it go on for so long,” M. said. “I’ve been asking myself that for decades.”
E. B., too, is still struggling to make sense of what happened to him. He started a blog called “Johannes Somary, Pedophile,” which he hoped would become a gathering place for fellow victims. (E.B. said one other victim reached out to him after coming across the blog.) At the urging of his therapist, he wrote a letter to Somary explaining the scars his abuse left. He received no reply. When he also wrote to Somary’s wife, he said, he received a cease-and-desist letter from her lawyer. I wrote to her also, and to Somary’s children, in hopes of discussing these allegations, but none of them replied.
Two decades after E. B.’s experiences with Somary, a student named Benjamin Balter, a member of the class of 1994, made a similar allegation.
In the summer of 1993, as Ben was preparing for his senior year at Horace Mann, he accompanied the glee club on a European trip. When he came back, his family says, they could tell something had changed. “He was always really, really smart,” Charles Balter said of his brother. “He was a really nice guy, but he was always a bit socially awkward. One of those kids who could perform at the highest levels of math and science but couldn’t do the basic things like tie his shoes.” After the trip, Charles said, “he was withdrawn, angry and secretive.”
The Balter family was in turmoil on a number of fronts at the time — Charles was recovering from a swimming accident (in which Ben had saved his life), their parents’ marriage had just ended and Ben was in the midst of coming out of the closet — so though they noticed Ben’s unhappiness, it did not occur to them that abuse could be the cause. That fall, Ben took private music lessons from Somary at St. Jean Baptiste, a church in Manhattan. Ben’s mother — who works at Horace Mann and who asked that I not print her name — says she asked Somary if she could observe a lesson. Impossible, he told her.
It was soon thereafter that Ben’s father found him hidden in a crawl space, passed out after swallowing pills. He was admitted to Nyack Hospital, where he was placed on suicide watch.
The day after he was released, Ben sent a letter to Phil Foote, then Horace Mann’s headmaster, accusing Somary of “grossly inappropriate sexual advances.” The letter said in part: “The purpose of a school such as Horace Mann is to provide a safe and comfortable learning environment. This goal is clearly made impossible by the inappropriate actions of teachers such as Mr. Somary. It is unfair to me and to other students to have such teachers in our midst, for they compromise not only the goals of the Horace Mann school but also the integrity of education in general.”
Ben’s mother says she confronted Somary, the man she knew as her son’s teacher as well as her own colleague. “Ben kissed me first,” she says he told her. When she demanded, “How dare you put your tongue down my son’s mouth!” his reply, she says, was, “That’s how we Swiss kiss.”
Foote’s tenure as headmaster lasted only three years, and since that time he suffered a stroke, but speaking recently in his home on the Upper East Side, he was able to recall both the letter and the surrounding events. “Somary came into my office with the mother and strenuously denied everything,” Foote said. “His vehemence made a lot of people put off doing anything about it.” Later, Foote said: “All the administration and trustees got together and decided they wouldn’t do anything about it. People came out of the woodwork protecting Somary.” (I have contacted 10 trustees from that era. Most declined to speak to me at all; only one, Michael Hess, agreed to speak with me on the record, but he said he had no specific recollection of the incident.)
Ben’s mother says a lawyer affiliated with the school warned her that unless she had evidence of the abuse on tape, there was nothing she could do. “It was Ben’s word against Somary’s,” she says she was told.
Whatever the legal standards might have been for firing or even prosecuting Somary, nothing was stopping the school from at least talking to Ben about his experiences. But according to his mother, no school official ever did. Exhausted by a divorce process, with one son in the hospital and another only recently released, and with no evidence of the kind the lawyer mentioned, Ben’s mother dropped her protest.
As for Ben, he finished up his senior year and went to Brown. But he didn’t seem to find solace there, nor in his postcollege life, in which he muddled through a series of jobs and relationships, struggling with depression and finding it hard to commit to anything. Charles said that through it all, Ben continued to bring up the abuse he had suffered. “There was definitely a before- and after-Somary quality to his life,” Charles said. In 2009, while living on Shelter Island, off the eastern end of Long Island, he made another suicide attempt, with antidepressants and alcohol. This time he succeeded.
“I have been running from this thing most of my life.”
I spoke with nearly 100 people for this article, including 60 former students and 15 former or current faculty members. Some of them implored me not to pursue the subject, insisting that no good could come of opening old wounds. Others said that Horace Mann today is a very different place than it was back then — eagerly responsive to the concerns of students and parents. Some said they were unaware of these rumors. Some said nothing had happened to them but that they had heard similar stories from classmates. Many said they were surprised it took this long for these stories to come out.
The former students who chose to share their stories with me are all men, but if their classmates are to be believed, the situation was far more complex. People who haven’t set foot in the school in 30 years still rattle off the names of male teachers who were said to be sleeping with their female students. A couple of female faculty members were said to be sleeping with male students. Once I started asking around, these stories continued to bubble up — from friends I thought I knew well and from other schools, public and private, each with their own elaborate histories of which teachers you ought to steer clear of, which students seemed too old for their years. In just the past couple of years, among just the tiny fraternity of elite New York City private schools, two allegations made the news. A male math teacher at Riverdale Country School pleaded not guilty to charges that he had oral sex with a 16-year-old female student. And Poly Prep was named as a defendant in a lawsuit in which 10 former students and two day-campers say the school covered up for a football coach who was molesting boys. In New York City public schools, during the first three months of 2012, reports of sexual misconduct involving school employees were up 35 percent compared with the same period last year.
I have several friends who confided in me, back in high school, about their own sexual encounters with teachers, but who are now unwilling to talk about it. I can’t say I blame them. Victims rarely speak out, said Paul Mones, a lawyer who represents people who have been sexually abused by authority figures. “The whole goal of the grooming process is to wrap the child close,” he told me. “The affection and trust is to make the kid complicit in the act. Make them feel like it was their fault, so it won’t even occur to them to talk.” Even if they do, New York State’s statute of limitations, which says people who were victimized as minors cannot take civil action against an abuser after they turn 23, makes it unlikely that they would find justice.
Thirty or even 40 years later, many students who have talked about surviving their teachers’ abuse say they still live in its shadow. “I spent decades feeling unlovable,” said E. B., the creator of the anti-Somary Web site. “I drank and drugged for many years, because I just couldn’t face all the anger it brought up.”
Andrew, my friend from the camping trip, said: “You spend a lot of your life feeling like an outsider — it shatters you. These people who were supposed to be the good guys were actually the bad guys, and nobody would talk about it.”
M., the one who says Somary abused him for years, also feels the effects. “I have had so many issues that I think I can trace back to this,” he said, including drug abuse and broken marriages. “I have been running from this thing most of my life.”
Stories like theirs point to why sexual abuse by teachers — or religious leaders or relatives, for that matter — is so especially damaging. As Mones said: “It’s counterintuitive, but sexual abuse emotionally binds the child closer to the person who has harmed him, setting him up for a life plagued by suspicion and confusion, because he will never be sure who he can really trust. And in my experience, this is by far the worst consequence of sexual abuse.” That’s one reason, he said, why those few victims who ever speak out at all tend to do so only after the abuser is dead or dying: telling the truth while the other person is still strong enough to deny it, or to blame the accuser, is just too terrifying.
At Horace Mann, students who spoke up at the time and saw quick action from the school seem to have suffered few, if any, ill effects. “I was not traumatized by the experience in the least,” Seth, the student at the center of the John Dorr Nature Lab confrontation with Stan Kops, told me. “In fact, I was just relaying the story to a friend the other day at lunch. I think the school acted swiftly and appropriately.”
The football player who blew the whistle on Mark Wright’s “private-part inspections” also says he was not traumatized. Though the administration did not inform him of its action, Wright was gone almost immediately, and the student says he was satisfied with the outcome. “No one knew why he was gone, but as far as I am concerned, the administration wasted no time in addressing the situation,” he said. “I have the deepest respect for how it was handled. Unbelievably glad about how they handled it.”
For whatever reason, the allegations against Johannes Somary were handled quite differently. At some point after the incident with Ben, faculty members said, Somary was told he could no longer travel unchaperoned with students. But he continued to teach. Several teachers past and present say they noticed his unusually close relationships with certain students. “In the late ’60s, early ’70s, people started talking about his inappropriate behavior,” one of his former colleagues said. “One student a year was anointed,” another said. A third former teacher, who taught at Horace Mann during the last years before Somary’s retirement, said he was shocked at the time that Somary was still allowed to teach.
These teachers saw enough to make them wonder and even to worry. Yet when the school chose not to act, none of them shouted from the rooftop for help. They came to work the next day, as they had the day before. Teachers had strong incentives not to speak: their jobs were on the line, as was the reputation of an institution in which they had invested some degree of their identities. Even today, witnesses with no current ties to the school have reasons not to speak. Those with school-age children worry about damaging their children’s chances at Horace Mann or other elite New York schools. Others point to Horace Mann’s influence, real or perceived, and what it could do to their careers or social standings.
Perhaps the teachers who wondered about Somary thought they didn’t have enough information. Perhaps they just dearly hoped their hunches were wrong. At least one wishes now that he had acted differently.
“In some ways,” said the teacher who worked at Horace Mann during Somary’s last years at the school, “I guess I’m culpable.”
After Horace Mann, Mark Wright lived for a while in Washington, D.C., and worked at TIAA-CREF, the financial-services organization. Then the trail grows faint. His Horace Mann classmates didn’t keep up with him after college, and of the dozens of Princeton classmates contacted for this article, none had any information to share. Wright died in 2004 while living in a bay-side condo in the South Beach section of Miami Beach. The cause was never announced.
When Stan Kops left Horace Mann, he landed at Rutgers Prep, a private school in Somerset, N.J., where he taught history while taking classes at New Brunswick Theological Seminary. A former Rutgers Prep official, who was involved in Kops’s hiring but who did not have permission to comment on it, said the school always checked applicants’ references. “No one from Horace Mann said anything that indicated Stan would be anything other than a safe bet at Rutgers,” that official said. “Rutgers had no idea about any potential allegations of sexual impropriety against Stan at H.M. If they had, they never would have hired him.”
Kops finished the year without incident, the Rutgers Prep official said, but “he had strange teaching habits and taught in ways more in keeping with a more homogeneous school like Horace Mann.” His contract was not renewed.
Shortly after the school year ended at Rutgers Prep, Kops drove across the Raritan River to Piscataway and shot himself — not standing on a baseball diamond, as the more imaginative gossip had claimed, but sitting in his car, the police told the school administrator. A close relative of Kops’s, speaking on behalf of his family, said they had no comment for this article. Today his name appears on the honor roll of the Tillinghast Society, which recognizes alumni who made provisions for Horace Mann in their wills.
As for Somary, he taught at the school without interruption, until his retirement, at 67, in 2002.
Phil Foote, the former head of school, told me that he didn’t know why Ben Balter’s mother “gave up so easily” in her quest to see Somary fired. “I always wondered why she didn’t pursue it,” he told me. “Maybe she just got defeated.” Sitting in his living room recently, I asked him why he himself didn’t try to remove Somary, or at least to investigate the charges more thoroughly. Why didn’t he go to the police? “The structure of H.M. was not easy,” he said. “There were groups and groups within groups. It was a time with different values and different systems. You didn’t have the access you do now. It was hubris. H.M. was sure it was above everybody else. Nobody wanted anything to change.”
I asked if he knew what became of Ben. He said no, then paused to study my face. “He committed suicide?” he guessed, before I could say it. He turned away and, staring into the middle distance, said, “Oh, my Lord.”
Ben’s letter was addressed to Foote. But his mother said that she also spoke to Eileen Mullady, the head of school who immediately followed him, to make sure she knew about her son’s letter. I reached out to Mullady, as well as the former Horace Mann administrators Larry Weiss and Ellen Moceri; none responded to my questions. Neither did the board of trustees, the body responsible for those school officials. One longtime former member told me: “No one will talk to you. They are all lawyering up.”
Tom Kelly, the current headmaster, didn’t start his job until after Somary’s retirement. Three years after Ben’s suicide, after I asked the school for comment about it, Ben’s mother says Kelly showed her the letter her son wrote. It was the first time she had ever seen it. She wished she had done more for him, she told me.
Somary died in February 2011, from complications related to a stroke. “Now this wonderful, wonderful man is trying to shape up the heavenly chorus, and God bless him,” says a Class of 1957 obituary on a Yale alumni Web site. “They will sing everything his way.”
E. B. phoned Kelly to implore him not to sponsor any memorial service. Kelly told him none was planned. But shortly thereafter, the school’s director of alumni relations sent an e-mail inviting certain alumni to the Johannes Somary Memorial Concert at the Basilica of St. Patrick’s Old Cathedral. According to the school, Somary’s widow, a retired Horace Mann teacher, and his children, who were all alumni, “asked to communicate with their former students and classmates, and they were granted limited access to the database of alumni.” E. B., whose e-mail address was not included in that mailing, called to demand an explanation and was told that the school did not endorse the concert.
A few days later, E. B. says he wrote a letter to Archbishop Timothy Dolan explaining the situation and asking him “as the spiritual head of the Archdiocese of New York to rescind permission that has been given by the organizers of this concert to use this sacred space.” The church did not respond, he says, but the location for the concert was changed to the Great Hall in Cooper Union.
Despite all that transpired, M., the student whose encounters with Somary stretched over several years, went to his former teacher’s funeral. “I don’t know why I went,” he said. “Still, today, after the drinking and the heroin and the therapy and the battered relationships, I just can’t bring myself to fully hate the man who gave me so much.”
“Great is the truth, and it prevails.”
I have similarly conflicted feelings about Horace Mann. It was in many ways an amazing place filled with inspiring teachers and smart, funny students, with a sense of enthusiasm and possibility. Despite all I’ve since learned about it, I still look back on my years there with affection and gratitude, as do so many former students, even some who shared their harrowing stories with me. But that gratitude is part of what makes these stories so painful. We were at such a vulnerable moment in our lives — just beginning to make the transition from childhood into early adulthood, struggling to come to terms with the responsibilities of sexuality and trying to decide what we were willing to stand up for. We needed strong and consistent role models. In many cases we got them. But in too many other cases, we got models of how to abuse authority, how to manipulate trust, how to keep silent, how to fix your eyes forward.
The statement that the school sent me via the public-relations firm seems to suggest that the system worked as well as it could have. After all, Mark Wright’s and Stan Kops’s tenures at Horace Mann were brought to an end. The school provided no explanation for why the accusations in those cases were treated so differently than those against Johannes Somary. But all three of these stories have something in common: they seem like artifacts of a previous era, a time before the explosion of electronic communication and before the scandals in the Catholic Church, the Boy Scouts and Penn State. Today, if faculty members disappeared from campus under suspicious circumstances or if rumors were swirling about predatory teachers, students would be texting about it in real time. Outraged parents would be organizing into networks and distributing action plans. And schools would dispatch counselors to help everyone through their pain. According to the school’s statement, “Horace Mann School today has in place clearly articulated and enforced rules, regulations, policies, procedures and expectations concerning appropriate behavior within the community — including whistle-blower protections to ensure that any member of the school community can freely report alleged violations.”
Clearly Horace Mann’s policies have evolved far beyond what they were in Mark Wright’s day. National awareness of the issue has evolved, too, but we still have a long way to go. With its prestigious reputation and its network of influential alumni, Horace Mann could take a leadership position, educating other schools on how to talk about these dangers with their students and their faculty. But first it will have to acknowledge the kinds of experiences former students shared with me for this article.
A little while ago, I took my children to see the school. We sat eating ice cream on the same left-field wall I used to sit on 30 years earlier. The place has changed so much since I was a student; a wave of prerecession fortune left snazzy new facilities in every corner. But at the center of it all is still that same green diamond of manicured grass that a member of the Yankees grounds crew once helped maintain. The smell of spring’s thawing mud reminded me that baseball season was just around the corner. A razor-thin kid shagged flies, and my thoughts drifted back to Inky.
Horace Mann has referred to Inky Clark as “a man of true valor.” I remember him that way, too. Years after I graduated, I learned he even reached into his own pocket to pad out my scholarship to Horace Mann, then he did it again for my college, when Eric discreetly warned him that my family might fall short.
Inky was in so many ways a hero, a man who felt the urgent obligation of history and rose to answer its call. But he was also a man who shied away from the most urgent obligation of all. He pried open the doors of insular institutions, making an elite education — and all the benefits it confers — available to students who would never otherwise have had a shot. But then he stood at the helm of one such institution while teachers allegedly betrayed their students in the most damaging ways.
If Horace Mann’s current anti-abuse policies had been enforced back in Clark’s day, Mark Wright’s first physical examination might have been his last. But it seems that Clark handled Wright’s and Kops’s cases discreetly, without offering an explanation to the Horace Mann community or initiating a schoolwide discussion about the surrounding issues. A discussion like that might have encouraged E. B. or M. to speak up, decades before Ben Balter had his own painful experiences with Somary.
Clark left Horace Mann in 1991, having led the school for two decades. He died eight years later of a heart attack while recovering from a fall. He was 64. The baseball diamond that first drew me to the school is now called Clark Field.
I saw Inky for the last time during a college vacation. He and I hadn’t been close for years, but my mother still felt grateful to him — as did I — and she invited him over to her apartment for brunch.
The years had caught up with Inky, or perhaps it was the drinks. Beneath the cheery banter and the bright outfit, he seemed weary. We caught up about my time in college, the injury that ended my years on the field, the various players and teachers we both knew.
Inky was a man who dared to reinvent august institutions and inspired decades of students. For reasons I still can’t quite fathom, he had gone to the effort of changing my life. But here we were sitting across from each other, after so many years, and we were just making small talk. It didn’t seem right.
Stan Kops had recently committed suicide. That horrible news felt like a heavy, unaddressed presence in the room. So, yearning for a deeper connection, I took a swig of my drink and found the courage to say that I was sorry to hear about the death of his friend.
Inky looked at me with his watery blue eyes and slowly wiped his mouth. “Strangest thing, Mouse,” he said, as though from far away. “I heard about Stan Kops, too.”
Amos Kamil is a screenwriter, playwright and brand strategist. He graduated from Horace Mann in 1982.
