American Boychoir School Dean Arrested in Alleged Sexual Assault of New Jersey Boy,” NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, February 5, 2014.
The silence hung between us in a situational irony that would have been comedic had the representative noticed.
When I asked if the school was dealing with any current sexual abuse allegations, he paused and told me he could not discuss details.
The conversation shifted to the upcoming film, and at that point my mind turned numb. I was prepared for resistance, disbelief, and possible hostility, but I had not prepared for this man accepting Trav’s experience as true and then pivoting to a discussion of a Hollywood production with such glee and pride.
I remember mouthing, “Wow.”
As if on cue, he told me his own son was an alumnus, and he shared my concerns. Then he listed the most tired of all the narratives. He told me the school was safe because he would never let his own son attend a dangerous environment.
“I said that if anyone hurt my son, I’d kill them.”
I sighed.
This was when my “wow” turned into a stifled scream.
His response, however infuriating, is common. People often say some version of “If that happened to my boy, I’d kill the sonuvabitch.” I understand the intention because I, too, reach for scraps of anything, including misinformed bravado, that might better the situation.
“Really?” I answer, feeling antagonistic. “How? Poison? A brick to the head? A gunshot?”
“Well,” they say, in the usual response. “I’d sure sue the hell out of them.”
These statements set my jaw hard.
“No,” I answer, “you’d want to do those things.”
Declarations that prison time would be well spent are easy, glib observations to make from a distance in hypothetical terms. The reality is much more complex; posturing and abstract ideas of vigilante justice are uninformed and unhelpful.
“With a brick to the head?” I wanted to ask that acting representative. “Or a gun?”
3 Schemo, Diana Jean. “Years of Sex Abuse Described at Choir School in New Jersey.” THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 16, 2002.
4 Fiscal Year 2013 IRS Form 990.
5 “Former American Boychoir School Dean Arrested in Alleged Sexual Assault of New Jersey Boy,” NEW YORK DAILY NEWS, February 5, 2014.
If the American Boychoir School’s myopic approach was limited and restricted to a single individual acting as an interim representative, I could better understand, but these attitudes extend well beyond a single person, and cultural entrenchment is harder to address. Cultural entrenchment extends beyond a single school, and it affects any organization dealing with repercussions of child sexual abuse.
Alumni, students, faculty, constituents, and administrators must believe in the value of institutions facing child sex abuse allegations because to shift that perspective—however slightly or with compassion—means a shift in responsibility. That shift requires revising not just institutional policies, but institutional philosophies.
It is much easier to dismiss sex abuse as experimentation among peers or an anomaly limited to a few deviant adults, and this dismissive mentality or “us versus them” perspective leaves no room for broader cultural constructions or, most importantly, the victim’s experience.
For instance, the mother of an American Boychoir School student sent me a note. She had read my published essays about the abuse Trav endured while attending the school, and she opened with an attempt at compassion.
“I am sorry this happened to your husband,” she wrote to me, never, I noted again, doubting the accuracy of Trav’s account. Instead of stopping with that concern, however, she immediately added a series of familiar conjunctions.
But it happened so long ago. But so few boys were molested. But the school is a much better place now. But there are policies. Those “buts” skipped over the victims so quickly, I am not sure she noticed. She called my portrayal of the school unfair and explained that her son’s experience had been only positive. Her message—another script heard regularly by victims—was clear: Stop talking about it. Move on. Why spoil it for the rest of the boys?
“I am glad her son was not molested and raped,” Trav told me when I shared her words. “Some of my friends and I were.”
He continued, “Both things are true, and my experiences are no less important than her son’s.”
Now, in the midst of a massive fund-raising push (as of this book’s writing), among the school’s biggest arguments for continued support is nostalgia—that we, as a community, should not forget the school’s impact and significance. And all those beautiful young voices.
But this is exactly what the school asks of its victims: Forget. Go away. Your once-heralded voice is no longer important.
This approach shuts down a conversation.
The mother extolled the school’s positive impact and attached a photo of her smiling son as proof. She closed by inviting my family to attend the school’s holiday concert as her guest.
My response, a sharply worded and unkind email, requested that she read her words aloud, and then continue reading them aloud until the cruelty and stupidity of those words set in. Choral music is a trigger that could easily send Trav into a funk that might take a week to emerge from, and the prospect of literally applauding the organization while sitting powerless in the audience would reinforce the memory of every time Trav was forced to smile and perform as a boy.
When I read her words to Trav’s dad, his response was even more direct. “Is she kidding?”
Her note was not malicious, but it was thoughtless and unintentionally cruel. Like the acting school representative who spoke with me, this mother believed the school’s messaging. To think otherwise would shake her foundation as a parent. Like that administrator, she had to believe her son was protected and her family immune.
I also noted in my response that Trav began drinking coffee at age eleven, so he could remain alert and vigilant at night.
“Does your son,” I asked for a comparative reference, “drink coffee for this reason?”
As more and more institutions confront the unenviable task of responding to newly surfaced childhood sexual abuse allegations, there is much to be learned. For decades, the American Boychoir School, and others like it, have prioritized protecting the institution over caring for survivors of abuse perpetrated within the institution. Until that perspective shifts, I suspect this reputation for the child sexual abuse itself—as opposed to how the victims were treated—will persist.
These are the thoughts that occupied my mind in the last few moments of the van’s hurried push toward the New Jersey border. My shoulders had tensed up, too, and the paper cup held in my hand since Maine was now a crumpled ball of damp cardboard.
Timelines for institutional atonement are complex, but I imagine the levels of possible healing would be great if the American Boychoir School officials (and others in charge at other institutions) changed the narrative and approached accusations of sex abuse from an initial position of compassion,