Six more ex-students of Yeshiva University’s prestigious all-boys high school have stepped forward to allege honchos there covered up decades of sexual and physical abuse.
Only days after 19 other ex-students at Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy in Manhattan slapped the university with a scathing $380 million lawsuit alleging similar allegations, a lawyer for the six students now coming forward said today that his clients are poised to file a similar suit after failing to reach a cash settlement with Yeshiva officials.
“The reality is you have an institution like Yeshiva University with a culture that not only allowed sexual abuse to occur – but to flourish,” said lawyer Michael Reck, adding he’s in talks with other ex-students with similar experiences and also considering coming forward.
Reck said five of his clients were allegedly abused by Rabbi George Finkelstein, a former principal at the high school, between 1969 and the early 80s.
The other is a female who claims being abused by Finkelstein in the late 1990s when he was a dean at Samuel Scheck Hillel Community Day School in Florida. She blames Yeshiva for failing to warn the Florida school that Finkelstein posed a threat to kids.
Rabbi Norman Lamm, Yeshiva University’s former chancellor who retired July 1, previously confessed in December to the Jewish newspaper The Forward that Finkelstein and Rabbi Macy Gordon, a former teacher, were allowed to leave quietly after students accused them of sex abuse.