This article was co
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article → co → ?
Warning: This story contains graphic descriptions of child sexual abuse.
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story → contain → abuse
For one star athlete at Our Lady of Lourdes High School, that meant regularly hitchhiking the 25 miles between school and home after practice.
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that → mean → practice
It was during those lonely treks, he said, that his new coach and gym teacher, Vincent Dutkowski, would stalk him in his car, offering to give him a ride, trying to coax him back to his apartment.
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coach → say → apartment
By this point, Dutkowski had already sexually molested him multiple times, he said, grabbing his buttocks and his testicles in pickup basketball games in the school gym, plucking out his pubic hair.
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he → molest → hair
A few times, when he was alone with Dutkowski in his office, the coach would pull down his gym shorts and his jock strap and fondle him.
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coach → pull → him
“I’d be walking down Market Street in Poughkeepsie and he’d pull up next to me,” the man, in his 70s, told The 74 in March, asking not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of his story.
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man → walk → story
“He called me Irish.
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He → call → me
And I’m a 17-year-old kid trying to maintain my varsity status, starting status, and he’s the coach.
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he → ’m → status
At the time, I’m barely 6 feet and 160.
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I → ’m → time
So he’s a huge man.”
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he → ’ → ?
Once trapped in the car, he said, Dutkowski’s hands were everywhere, groping his genitals through his clothes and “talking all sorts of really filthy sexual talk.”
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hands → trap → talk
The young athlete started altering his route home, taking different downtown streets so his coach wouldn’t find him.
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coach → start → him
But sometimes he did.
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he → do → ?
The last ride he took, he said, Dutkowski turned left toward his own apartment instead of right toward the bridge and flipped open his coat to expose his penis.
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Dutkowski → take → penis
The student yelled at the 36-year-old man to stop the car and let him out and he scrambled away.
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he → yell → him
After that, he said Dutkowski benched him, even though it was his senior year and he had started every game of his high school career.
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he → say → career
He was humiliated and couldn’t understand why no other adult ever asked him what happened.
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what → humiliate → him
When he tried to quit the basketball team, he said, the coach told him he wasn’t going to play him but if he stayed, “I’ll leave you alone and you can pitch (baseball) in the spring time—and we keep this between the two of us.
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we → try → us
That’s where it sat for 39 years until the alleged victim, by then a successful lawyer and civil litigator, decided to confront it.
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victim → ’ → it
He said he deposed himself for two hours on videotape and sent a verified statement to the Archdiocese of New York and Our Lady of Lourdes.
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he → say → Lourdes
It was 2004 and he got a letter back from the archdiocese’s general counsel telling him the statute of limitations had run out on his complaint.
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statute → get → complaint
In 2019, New York state passed the Child Victims Act, which allowed any living survivor of childhood sexual abuse to bring a civil case during a two-year lookback window and permanently extended the statute of limitations from age 23 to 55 for future civil cases.
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survivor → pass → cases
That opening resulted in 10,787 cases being filed by 14,592 plaintiffs.
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cases → result → plaintiffs
Among them is the former Our Lady of Lourdes student, one of at least five who named Coach Dutkowski, a convicted sex offender who died in 2012 at age 83, as their abuser.
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who → name → abuser
Elements of the complaints against Dutkowski—an alleged serial predator who moved among schools, using his power and authority to coerce and silence his victims—run throughout the Child Victims Act cases.
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who → allege → cases
To understand the full scope of the role schools played in those nearly 11,000 lawsuits, The 74 searched all 62 New York counties and combed through thousands of court documents, identifying at least 1,973 complaints that accuse a school, educator or other district personnel.
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that → understand → school
That means that more than 18 percent of all the New York state cases—or nearly 1 in 5—attest that a child was sexually abused, assaulted or raped by an adult who had access to them through their school.
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who → mean → school
In many counties, that share was even higher: In Suffolk County, for example, 36 percent of all cases involved schools and in the Bronx, nearly 40 percent.
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percent → involve → Bronx
And in Franklin County, on New York’s far northern border, survivors in an overwhelming 75 percent of the CVA cases filed accused school employees of abuse.
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survivors → file → abuse
The numbers from The 74’s analysis are considerably higher than the 13.4 percent of cases attributed to K-12 schools in a more narrowly focused review of the New York Child Victims Act cases done by the advocacy organization Child USA.
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numbers → attribute → organization
They also provide greater context to the frequently cited estimate that 1 in 10 K-12 students will be subject to sexual misconduct by an adult by the time they graduate, according to a 2014 government report and 2004 research mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act.
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they → provide → Act
“That’s an insane number for one period of time where a window was open,” said Kathryn Robb, director of the Children’s Justice Campaign at the advocacy organization Enough Abuse.
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Robb → ’ → organization
“And how many possibly couldn’t file after the window had closed.”
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window → file → ?
Robb, who spent over a decade helping to draft and pass the New York bill, added that because so few survivors ultimately report their abuse, the tally of school-based complaints is likely a significant undercount.
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tally → spend → complaints
But the number who did come forward, she said, “allows a justified alarm to be sound[ed] for both the public—parents, grandparents, people, guardians—and also our lawmakers and leaders.
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alarm → come → public
The 74’s investigation reveals the sheer magnitude of cases involving New York educators although the vast majority of teachers, administrators and school personnel do not sexually harm the children in their care.
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majority → reveal → care
At the same time, the cases present a rare level of visibility for the former students whose pain and trauma went unrecognized when they were young.
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they → present → students
By delving into scores of cases, The 74 was also able to glean what it is about schools themselves—their physical structure, their institutional practices, the dynamics among the adults who work there—that contributes to children being preyed upon, year after year and decade after decade, in a place where they are legally required to be.
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they → delve → place
The alleged abusers in these cases held an array of roles across all types of schools—public, private, residential and religious.
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abusers → allege → schools
…and 375 more, not listed.
The Aporia
