Metro

Horace Mann School apologizes for decades of sexual abuse

The elite Horace Mann prep school today apologized for decades of sexual abuse suffered at the hands of teachers and administrators and pledged reforms to improve student safety, in its first public comments addressing the sex scandal.

“We sincerely apologize for the harm that was caused by the teachers and administrators who abused anyone during their years at Horace Mann School,” the school said in a statement posted on its web site.

“These unconscionable betrayals of trust never should have happened. But they did, and now we, as a school, must fully accept this reality.”

The elite Bronx prep school has been accused of turning a blind eye to sex assaults on at least 31 children between 1962 and 1996. In today’s statement, the school admitted that “former teachers and administrators in fact did abuse, in various degrees,students.”

Victim Jon Seiger, 51, last month described how eight faculty members used him as a “sex object and personal plaything.”

“Instead of a safe, nurturing place that would educate me, Horace Mann ended up providing a perfect storm of childhood sexual abuse,” he said, claiming he was first raped and forced to give oral sex to headmaster Inky Clark at age 14.

The school said it reached settlements with a “great majority” of former students who claim they were abused. At least one former student has sued the prestigious school, claiming he was molested by a music teacher some 450 times in the 1970s.

Other survivors are pressuring lawmakers in Albany to approve a bill that would allow molested students to sue schools well after the statute of limitations has expired. Currently, the statue prevents adults who were sexually abused as kids from filing claims after they turn 23.

Most of the teachers and administrators who committed the sex assaults are either dead or “mentally infirm,” the school said; others identified as abusers have refused to cooperate, and the school said it doesn’t have the power to force them.

The NYPD did investigate the allegations after a survivor exposed the abuse last year, but called off the probe because, under state law, the incidents happened too long ago to prosecute.

Horace Mann promised to create an advisory panel on student safety and appoint a survivor to the Head of School Committee, which advises to board of trustees, and said will release the school’s own report of abuses.

But Horace Mann did not say it would support the independent investigation that some survivors had called for.,

“The school is effectively saying no to our primary request,” Joseph Cumming, who claimed he was sexually abused at Horace Mann, told the Wall Street Journal.

“While nothing we can say or do will erase the painful memories shared by the survivors, we hope our actions demonstrate our resolve never to forget this portion of our past and reiterate our commitment to the safety of today’s students,” read the letter, signed by Board of Trustees Chair Steven M. Friedman and Head of School Thomas M. Kelly.