“This thing has affected me in all facets of my life - whether it’s married or professional, whatever it is,” said Sullivan, now 72 and living in Florida. Sullivan said he kept it to himself for nearly 60 years, until Rockefeller University last year started looking into allegations Archibald abused hundreds of boys there. James Sullivan, a retired New York City police lieutenant, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview that Archibald started abusing him in 1958, when he was 11. “It was kind of an open secret,” said Jennifer Freeman, one of the lawyers bringing the case under a recent change in New York law that opened a one-year window for victims to sue over abuse they say happened decades ago. The allegations, detailed Monday in a lawsuit filed on behalf of 20 men, are in the same vein as those made against other prominent institutions where adults entrusted to care for vulnerable or disadvantaged children have been accused of violating them. Others say they were fondled by the coach of the club’s championship-winning basketball team, Nicholas “Lefty” Antonucci. Reginald Archibald, a renowned endocrinologist who volunteered to perform annual physical exams on teenage and preteen members.
NEW YORK (AP) - For underprivileged boys from rough-and-tumble New York City neighborhoods, the Madison Square Boys Club stood as an oasis - a home away from home where they could shoot hoops, swim laps, and learn skills, like cooking and photography.īut behind the well-known club’s doors, some men who attended as boys in the 1950s through 1970s say, they were sexually abused.
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