Yeshiva U. Hit With $380M Suit Over Sex Coverup

By Rich Calder for the New York Post (7/9/2013):

Yeshiva University was slapped with a $380 million lawsuit yesterday by 19 ex-students of its prestigious all-boys high school, who allege that honchos there covered up decades of sexual and physical abuse.
The scathing 148-page suit, filed in White Plains federal court, alleges the university willfully turned a blind eye while two of its rabbis sexually assaulted then-teenage boys at the Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy in Manhattan between 1969 and 1989.

“It is time for these men to get the justice that they were denied as children,” said Kevin Mulhearn, a lawyer for the victims. “They feel they were robbed of their dignity and respect.”

A lawsuit alleges the university willfully turned a blind eye while two of its rabbis sexually assaulted teenage boys.

 

Three of the plaintiffs allege they were attacked by Rabbi Macy Gordon, a former teacher who is accused of sodomizing one victim with a toothbrush during a violent attack in a school dorm room. The suit alleges that the victim and his father reported the attack to the school in 1980 — but that officials failed to report it to authorities and that Gordon sexually brutalized at least one other boy.

The remaining 16 plaintiffs claim they were attacked by Rabbi George Finkelstein, a former principal at the high school.

Mulhearn said his clients opted to come forward decades after the alleged incidents after learning “they were not alone” following a December 2012 story in the Jewish newspaper The Forward in which then-Yeshiva University Chancellor Norman Lamm acknowledged both rabbis were allowed to leave quietly after students accused them of sex abuse. Lamm retired on July 1.

“To a man, these assaults have negatively impacted their lives, whether it’s some who suffer severe depression or others who have trouble having relationships with women,” Mulhearn said.

The victims range in age from mid-30s to mid-50s and reside as far as Israel.

Yeshiva University declined to comment on the lawsuit.