From Amos Kamil’s New York Times Magazine cover story, “Prep-School Predators” which brought the Horace Mann scandal to light to his National Best Selling Book, Great Is The Truth … Secrecy, Scandal, and the Quest for Justice at the Horace Man School, New Jersey and New York’s SuperLawyer, Rosemarie Arnold has made headlines for her extraordinary results on behalf of her sexually abused client.
Rosemarie Arnold, who represented M., was infuriated by the school’s counteroffer. “They just wanted to settle with people who wanted bullshit – five to ten thousand dollars”, she said of the mediation process. “My client had a serious claim. Somary had abused him hundreds of times and we could prove it. There were letters and a witness.”
“When we didn’t want to settle, [HM] acted like they were the victims,” Arnold said. “They acted like they only had this limited pot of five million. The alumni are among some of the most powerful and richest people in the world. They were saying they didn’t have to pay claims and only had five million to pay claims as the insurance companies were denying coverage. Not my problem.”
“The main issue in our case is the fact that Horace Mann knew that Somary was a sexual predator before my client even went to the school,” Arnold told The Riverdale Press, “and rather than deal with it, not only did they sweep it under the rug, they tried to cover it up.”
Arnold was asking Horace Mann for $15 million. “I don’t need the money and neither does my client,” Arnold said. “We want the truth exposed.” Although Arnold said she knew M. wouldn’t get the full $15 million, she told me she had “no intention of settling for a lot less than that. And neither does my client. But even if he did, he can’t get his life back. He’s a fifty-seven-year-old heroin addict. What justice is there for him? There’s no justice for any of them.”
M.’s case settled in March 2015.
- Excerpts from Great Is The Truth … Secrecy, Scandal, and the Quest for Justice at the Horace Man School by Amos Kamil with Sean Elder