NEW YORK
The Jewish Daily Forward
By Paul Berger
Published August 08, 2013, issue of August 16, 2013.
Twelve alumni of Yeshiva University have joined 19 other former students who are suing the Modern Orthodox flagship university for allegedly covering up decades of sexual abuse at its Manhattan high school for boys.
But the 31 students suffered a setback August 6, when United States District Judge John G. Koeltl denied their attorney’s request to gain access to more information through discovery at a court in Manhattan.
“You’re basically having plaintiffs tied one hand behind their back because much of the information is in the hands of the defendants,” Kevin Mulhearn, the students’ attorney, told the court, according to a transcript.
In New York, criminal and civil cases of child sexual abuse must be brought before a victim turns 23; the plaintiffs are older, and claim that they were abused during the 1970s and ’80s. Mulhearn, however, argues in the suit that the statute of limitations does not apply, because Y.U. fraudulently covered up the abuse.
Discovery would have given Mulhearn access to internal Y.U. documents and the ability to interview current and former Y.U. employees about the alleged cover-up. It is a legal maneuver he used in a similar abuse case against Brooklyn’s Poly Prep Country Day School, which the school settled with 12 men represented by Mulhearn.
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