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The elite Horace Mann School, which harbored sexual-predator employees for decades, paid a total of more than $1 million in a hush-hush settlement with two victims who attended the private institution between 1993 and 1996, court filings revealed yesterday.
Lawyers for the posh Riverdale, Bronx, school revealed the sum — which was supposed to remain confidential — in a Manhattan Supreme Court lawsuit filed against its insurance companies for refusing to reimburse the payout.
“But it’s not about the money,’’ said Dr. Kathleen Howard, 74, a former longtime Horace Mann science teacher whose son, Ben, was one of the two victims involved in the settlement.
“I realize that it could be millions and millions of dollars, and it would never have made any difference,’’ she told The Post last night.
Her son, abused by late music teacher Johannes Somary, committed suicide in 2009 at the age of 32.
The school’s suit charges that its insurers, Granite State and New Hampshire insurance companies, and Chartis Claims Inc., all divisions of AIG, “breached their contract with Horace Mann with regard to the John Doe No. 1 and John Doe No. 2 claims.”
Among those who have attended the school are former governor and current city-comptroller candidate Eliot Spitzer, magazine publisher Si Newhouse and poet William Carlos Williams.
The legal papers say Horace Mann is owed compensatory damages of at least $1.05 million for the two settlements, plus defense costs and other expenses.
More than 30 students have come forward with abuse allegations from the 1970s through the 1990s involving at least eight teachers.
The school has reportedly settled with 27 former-student victims. Assuming all 27 received $500,000 payments, the school would be on the hook for $13.5 million, not including potential future settlements with about five holdouts who had wanted Mann to conduct an outside investigation into the abuse.
Howard said that in 1993, when she first read the letter her son wrote detailing the abuse, she went to school higher-ups but they turned her away.
“They called me in and said there was nothing I could do about this letter — it would be Ben’s word against Somary’s because I would have had to have the abuse on tape,’’ she said.
Howard’s family’s lawyer, Michael Dowd, confirmed the settlement.
He added of the retired teacher, “She lost her son — there’s nothing that can replace or satisfy that.”
In a statement, Mann said, “The school had no choice but to bring this lawsuit” because the companies did not honor their policies.
An AIG spokesman did not return calls.