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Lessig once told me a story about the summer after he left the Boychoir School. Hanson invited him to take a trip to the Hanson family compound in Canada. Lessig badly wanted to go. But his mother said no, and when Lessig asked why, she said,"I don't know, there's something weird about this." Lessig threw a titanic fit. "I screamed, slammed the door, walked out of the house," he said. "I came back three hours later, and we never said anything about it ever again." Lessig paused. "They knew."
So if they knew-that is, they know-isn't keeping it from them a charade?
"You underestimate the power of the human mind to ignore things that aren't placed right in front of you," he said. "It doesn't have to be such a successful charade to succeed in not forcing them into this deeply depressing, painful recognition of not taking steps to protect your kid."
What has brought all this into focus for Lessig is the birth twenty months ago of his son, Willem. Lessig recalls his father's tirade when he asked to go to the Boychoir School."It wasn't until I became a father that I understood," he says. "I can't imagine sending my son away to school. I can't imagine how they could do it."
Willem has also afforded Lessig an insight into his deliberations over whether to reveal his abuse to his parents: "I think to myself, My God, I would never want my child not to tell me something like that."
But Lessig and his parents remained locked in a silent impasse: the parents too fearful, and perhaps too guilty, to press him about what happened; the son too angry with them to volunteer the information.When Lessig saw his mother and father at Christmas, at their home in Hilton Head, they told him they'd received a card from a friend that mentioned his latest legal adventure: We saw Larry's name in the paper, the card reported. We see he's fighting a lawsuit with that boychoir in Princeton.
His parents inquired,What lawsuit? Lessig refused to tell them. Now he doesn't have to-and they don't have to ask. For better or worse, the impasse has finally been broken.
John Heilema
In the days following the story's publication, Lessig's e-mail inbox was flooded with hundreds of messages. Most expressed support and sympathy; others shared stories that echoed his, and sought advice about counseling or therapy. On various Web sites, Boychoir School alumni came forward with stories of their own, few of them as dark as Hardwicke's, but many troubling all the same. Meanwhile, Donald Edwards, in a letter to the Boychoir School's faculty, staff, parents, and trustees, offered for the first time a public apology to the victims of Hanson's abuse-an apology, however, that was marred by the letter's blithe conclusion."There is little any of us can do outside the legal process to address the past," Edwards wrote, as if the school's conduct in the Hardwicke case was a good-faith attempt to confront the past, as opposed to evading it.
Among the responses to the story, one was especially shocking. In an article in the Toronto Star, Don Hanson emerged from hiding (though without revealing his whereabouts) to denounce the accusations against him. "This is an awful lot of slander, this whole thing," he said, adding that Lessig's involvement in the case "just pisses me off, just destroys me. He was the best head boy that I ever had in the choir." Regarding Hardwicke, Hanson was harsher: "He has an axe to grind. I threw him out of the school down there…[He] was a known predator of kids his own age. He approached me. He wanted to come to my room." (Hardwicke replied: "To place the blame on the victim is an age-old game; I was a child.")
For Hardwicke, Hanson's taunts were infuriating, but they were nothing compared to the sustained silence of the New Jersey Supreme Court-which continued, inexplicably, for months. While awaiting the ruling, Hardwicke redoubled his efforts to amend the Charitable Immunity Act. Although the amendment had the support of many members of the New Jersey legislature, its progress was stalled by the determined opposition of the Catholic Church. But in the fall of 2005, owing largely to the publicity surrounding Hardwicke's case, the amendment acquired irresistible momentum, passing both the state assembly and the state senate. On January 5, 2006, Acting Governor Richard Codey signed it into law: No longer would charitable institutions be immune from being sued for negligence in cases of child sexual abuse.
A few days later, the state supreme court requested briefs from both sides in Hardwicke v. American Boychoir School on the implications of the amendment for the case at hand. In their brief, Lessig and Keith Smith made the logical argument: that if charities were not immune from negligence claims in child sex-abuse cases, "it would be bizarre," as Lessig put it elsewhere, "to imagine them immune from liability for intentional torts."The school's brief, predictably if contortedly, argued just the opposite: that because the legislature referred specifically only to negligence, then charities were still immunized from other types of claims, including the type being made by Hardwicke.
For Lessig, the interminable wait for a decision was nearly as excruciating as it was for Hardwicke.Yet no matter how the court ultimately ruled, Lessig had no doubt that the case was a turning point for him. No longer was this aspect of his past a secret from his family. Indeed, he was pla
His response was perfectly in character. "[F]irst, a plea: that we drop the H-word and B-word from commentary about this," Lessig wrote on his blog. "This is an important social issue because of how ordinary it is in fact; and we need it to be understood to be ordinary, so as to respond in ways that can check and prevent it."
Jimmy Breslin : The End of the Mob
The Mafia's Worst Enemy Was Part of the Family
from Playboy
Late at night I am watching Bobby De Niro in some Analyze movie, and I feel sorry for him because these Mafia parts, at which he is so superb and which he could do for the next thirty years, soon will no longer exist. Simultaneously he could be forced into new subjects. Al Pacino, too.Which is marvelous because both are American treasures and should be remembered for great roles, not for playing cheap punks who are unworthy of getting their autographs. I would much prefer De Niro or Pacino to Sir Laurence Olivier in anything.
Now, watching the late movie, I am remembering where I saw it start for De Niro. It was on a hot summer afternoon when the producer of a movie being made from a book I wrote, The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight, asked me to meet De Niro because he was replacing Pacino in a big part. Pacino was going into some movie called The Godfather. De Niro was looking for his first major movie role.