Yeshiva High School Abuse Victims of 1970's and '80's Sue Yeshiva University

As reported by the New York Times, on Monday 19 former students at Yeshiva University High School for Boys filed a federal lawsuit against Yeshiva University and others seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in compensatory and punitive damages for alleged sexual abuse by two rabbis formerly at the high school-- the principal and a Talmud teacher. The accused abusers were not reported to authorities, but instead were allowed to leave the school quietly. Recently-retired former Yeshiva University president Rabbi Norman Lamm has apologized for not doing more. (See prior posting.) The 148-page complaint (full text) in Twersky v. Yeshiva University, (SD NY, filed 7/8/2013) alleges:

[F]or several decades, the administrators of Yeshiva University (“YU”) and The Marsha Stern Talmudical Academy− Yeshiva University High School for Boys (“YUHS”), including Rabbi Lamm himself, enclosed themselves in a “cocoon of callousness” by allowing several known sexual predators to assume and remain in exalted positions in YUHS’s administration and faculty.

The complaint alleges causes of action for fraudulent inducement, negligent infliction of emotional distress, deceptive business practices, false advertising, negligent misrepresentation, negligent supervision and retention, and violation of Title IX of the federal Civil Rights Act.  Reporting on the filing of the lawsuit, The Forward quoted one of the plaintiffs who said: "It was necessary to file the suit because there was no proper response from Yeshiva University to any of our claims and to any of our pain. They just wouldn’t listen." [Thanks to Scott Mange for the lead.]