Talk:American Boychoir School

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I am an alumnus of the American Boychoir School -- a week or so ago I added comments to this article about the American Boychoir's history of sexual abuse as reported by the New York Times and ABCNews' Nightline. Stangely, when I checked this evening, the comments had been taken down. I imagine it was the Boychoir who removed the remarks believing that it to be bad public relations. I've put my remarks on the Wilkipedia article again. They are easily verified and all quite true. It will be interesting to see if these are also removed. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Jwh7758 (talk • contribs).

Actually..I, not the Boychoir, moved the abuse part to the history section and did not remove it. Please sign your name next time too. Wangster 13:17, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

There is a big big problem here, for everyone concerned. Assuming the allegations to be true, then obviously the School would have a stake in cleaning things up as much as possible. But it's also important to realize that the alleged abuse happened decades ago and that the school is a completely different place now. By no means am I trying to denigrate the alleged abuse or the damage done to its victims; nobody in their right mind would want anything like that to happen to anyone. I have complete faith in the place and the people running it; my son, who graduated from ABS this year, would not have attended if there had been the slightest doubt in my and my wife's minds about the environment and his safety.

The question remains: how does the school get past this situation? Is it appropriate, just, fair, that the current school be driven out of business for alleged crimes that are some 35 years old and for which nobody currently at the school bears any responsibility? Closing the modern school down does nothing to solve the problem, it just drives a very valuable institution into the ground to no positive end--only vengeance. Should one shut down Harvard because of alleged anti-Semitism in admissions practices a century ago? Should we outlaw the Roman Catholic Church because of highly regrettable, illegal, and morally repugnant actions of some of its clerics? I believe the answer should be "no." What should happen is for the institution in question to clean itself up, deal with the offenders, change policy, guidance, and management, and move on. ABS has done these things already. I sincerely hope the public at large can understand that and move on also. But it's such an emotionally-charged issue that there's no wonder people can't do so yet.

I am sorry to sound so legalistic in my repeated use of the word "alleged," but I don't believe any of this has been debated/decided in a court of law yet. Wspencer11 20:01, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The school admitted in court filings that the abuses occurred (see the April 16, 2002 NYT article). 67.117.130.181 09:57, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for that information...I stand corrected on that point. It does not change my position, though. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 17:25, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Editing the article

I would like to suggest that, given the hot-button nature of the abuse aspects of the School's history, significant edits should be discussed here first. Mr. Kruger's addition, although it was quite correctly removed, is an important one to have available, and I hope he (or someone) will add it here. I will do so myself if nobody else does it anytime soon. --Wspencer11 (talk to me...) 20:40, 8 February 2007 (UTC)