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This episode contains descriptions of sexual abuse against minors and may not be appropriate for everyone. Please use
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discretion. You know, the um the boy choir school was at this mansion at the end of this long winding road um
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and you got to that road through these very windy back uh roads in New Jersey and
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then the driveway opened up to this huge oval and at the end of the oval was this
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incredible mansion and I remember pulling in and parking with everybody else that was moving in
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and thinking this was such an extraordinary place and I had won a lottery ticket uh you know, kind
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of a Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory like moment and uh and I was incredibly excited to be
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there. Lawrence Lessig is a law professor at Harvard and one of America's most famous
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lawyers. He's been called the Elvis of internet law. But lately, he's been focused on the
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influence of money on Congress. He was briefly a candidate for the Democratic Party's nomination for
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president in 2016. Before he was the name he is today, he was a kid in Rapid City, South Dakota
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where he was born and where his father built silos for Minuteman missiles. They eventually relocated to the small
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town of Williamsport, Pennsylvania. As a kid, he loved to sing. And when Lawrence Lessig was in the
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fourth grade, his church choir director suggested he go to a summer camp in Princeton, New Jersey at an elite
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boarding school called the American Boy Choir School. He was so good that the school invited
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him to stay and join their official choir, meaning he'd be away from home for most of the year.
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Your father didn't want you to go. No, he uh was very strongly opposed. Um and uh it was kind of a Billy Elliot
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moment where I had to plead with him that this was my, you know, chance to to see the world
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cuz what was so attractive was the idea of touring um around the world with a boy choir.
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And that the education was so great and this was such an opportunity and I just remember him melting and yielding
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and really hating the fact that he did that. He enrolled as a sixth grader at this
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incredibly prestigious school that had been around since 1937. Students performed for presidents and
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for the Pope. Lawrence Lessig remembers performing at Carnegie Hall and traveling the world. Meeting
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extraordinary musicians um and having a real sense of excellence, you know, we worked incredibly hard and we were
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incredibly good. And all of that was completely other than the world that I was living in in
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small town Pennsylvania. You know, one of the weird things that was true about the place, which is
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astonishing as a parent to think back about it, but was that we we climbed the building all the time. You know, this is
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a three-story very old mansion, so, you know, probably it was 40 or 50 feet at least to the top
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of the roof. But we would take ropes and and wrap them around chimneys and rappel up the
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side of the building and all the way up the roof. And um and people also perfected the ability to kind of climb
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brick. So, you would just Spider-Man-like learn how to grab the right crevices on the brick to climb.
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And and a friend of mine climbed the brick wall next to the director's apartment uh
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one Saturday morning and got to the ledge and looked in and saw the director sleeping in asleep in bed
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and next to him was uh another student. Um, and um, he told me that and I didn't I didn't
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quite believe it. Who was this director, Donald Hanson? So, Hanson was a musician from Canada.
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He had come down probably four years before, maybe three. Uh, and he was, you know, he was very
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young. He was in his early 30s at the time. He was an incredible pianist, an incredible musician, and incredibly
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beautiful. I mean, he was a striking, powerful, um, person who He didn't seem abnormal at
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all uh to anybody and certainly not to my parents or anybody around who looked at him. They Everybody's look
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at him as this incredible genius uh musician. And uh and he was literally, quite literally,
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saving the school at the time. The school was losing money, and Donald Hanson was operating as both the
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headmaster and director, pushing the board to raise the money the school needed to survive.
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So, this man, the school's savior, seemed to have free rein to operate however he liked.
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What happened to Lawrence Lessig during his time at the American Boy Choir School stayed hidden for many, many
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years. Until he realized he was in the perfect position to do something about it.
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I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. The whole place became incredibly crazy. There were regular parties on Friday
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nights and Saturday nights. Uh, you know, kids were would be drinking um, I remember this drink called the
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grasshopper, which I think was vodka and some weird mix. Um And, you know, it was completely out of
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control and uh there was a regular movie night where we would all sit in um Hanson's room
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watching a relatively small television screen, but it was the biggest one in the building.
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And watch a movie. And um some of us would sit on the couch Some would sit on the couch next to Hanson and there would
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be a blanket and the movie was Run Silent, Run Deep. And um he was uh as silently as he could
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reaching inside of um my pants and uh sexually um uh abusing me at that time. And I was, you
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know, kind of stunned. I remember just I don't even remember the movie. I just remember sitting there and just
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wondering what was going on and and did anybody see what was going on and uh understand what was happening. And that
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was the very beginning of um the next 3 years. How old were you at that point? I guess
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I must have been I was 12. Um You know, there was a period of time after that where he would be very
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familiar and playful and uh signaling his uh strong affection. But from that point, this is like I think
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around December when this happens, until my birthday the following June, um I don't think there's any other
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encounter. Um And then we went away on tour to uh California. And he became increasingly focused again.
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And when we came back, it was just it was on my birthday or the day after my birthday or something like that. And
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he he said, "Okay, I have to give you your present." And he invited me up into his room. And um
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And it was this weird mix of um um I don't know how to describe it. I mean, he he was saying to me I mean, he said to
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me, I you know, you're an ugly boy and I'm the only one who's going to want you.
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Uh And so he was setting it up as if, you know, this is a great gift to me. And and I, you know, quite frankly, it felt
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like a great gift. It was, you know, I I was happy to accept the characterization of myself as an
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ugly boy. That's just the insecurity of that age. And and I was certainly experiencing the attention as
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powerful gift uh despite my ugliness. Um And that began a much more regular relationship or experience, you know,
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series of experiences. And but over the time, this this uh relationship uh this, you know, our
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connection changed. And in my final year, this is a three-story mansion and he moved his apartment from
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where it had been um originally, which is a place that my friend climbed up the window to see it, to the third floor. Um
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And the third floor at the time had a very large apartment that had been used as a rehearsal room. And then it
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had two bedrooms down the hall. Uh And I was in one of those bedrooms and he moved up to the large apartment. And
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then he he had a wall built that separated the bedroom and the large apartment from the rest of the third
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floor. And so I was behind the wall. So so essentially, I was living in his apartment. And the And the framing to
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everybody was, well, this is eventually going to be all my space and so when you
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leave next year then I'll just move in here too. But the reality was I was, you know,
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14 or 14 or 15 um and I was living with the director. We had a key to our apartment and um
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and that was, you know, during that year I was, you know, regularly sleeping with
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him. Um you know, in much the way a couple does. You know, it's not like we had sex all the time and it's not like
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that was the central part of our um existence, but it was where I lived and one night I came in to find him choking
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on his own vomit because he'd gotten so drunk that uh he just couldn't move and I had to flip him over to um stop him
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from choking to death. Um Uh but that uh in that context there was no way that others in the school didn't realize
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what was going on. In particular teachers. I mean there was a classroom on that floor and so
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you know, five days a week the science teacher would walk up the stairs and look at a door
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behind which he knew one of the only ninth graders was living with the director. Um you know, and
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and the striking character of the uh context was you know, that uh you know, everybody knew he was sleeping
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with everybody all the time and it was just, you know, when was your turn. Um And it
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it was straight it's just impossible to even imagine, but it was not something that
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uh at least I experienced with jealousy or anything. It was, you know, we were we were the club. We were
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the you know, we we were the people on the inside and um you know, it's an astonishing number
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of people. It could have been a third of the school um at any particular time that at had some sexual contact in some
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form. You know, it's a small school. You know, there are certain at certain times
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there's 30, sometimes there's 50, depending on the year. But still, a large number of people he's
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having some kind of connection with. You You also, as you say, just had a a friendship with him. You
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obviously talked about life and things. What kind of things would you speak about? What kind of
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conversations would you have? We certainly talked about managing the school a lot.
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Because I was the like the head boy the last year and you know, so we would work out how we
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would discipline or how we would make sure that the kids were doing what the kids needed to do. And what did the kids
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need to do? And how do we how do we do that? So, in that sense, we were working together. Um
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There were a couple times when we had a conversation about what was going on and
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you know, when I would raise skeptical questions about it. Um And these were questions always prompted
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whenever I went away. You know, like I went home for Thanksgiving or I went home for Christmas and
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you know, you leave I I would leave that world and immediately I would feel you know, deep anxiety about what was
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going on in that place. Why were we doing that? That didn't seem I mean, that wasn't I knew that wasn't what
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normal people did. Why Why did we do it? And I remember one time we were walking.
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He had a Jaguar parked in a garage just off of the campus and we were walking to
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the Jaguar to go someplace. He was going to take me to shop or something and and
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I said what I was saying to him, so what Why is this Why do you do this? Why does this make Why Why is this good? And
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And he gave me this very passionate argument about how every musical every great musical organization has
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this at its core. If you don't have this kind of passion, sexual connection to the between the leaders and the
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performers, they just never have they never perform at the level that they otherwise could. And so, this is
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kind of part of what the deal was. Um And Yeah, I don't remember feeling like I believed it completely, but I didn't
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have a place to stand really to to know whether it was wrong or how what to do if I thought it was wrong. And you know,
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I felt Yeah, I mean, I was like a collaborator inside of this system that seemed
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clearly to be wrong. What happened next? So, I graduated in ninth grade and went
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home. And when I got home, I was a very It was a difficult transition home. Um And when I got home, Hanson reached out
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to me and invited me to come with him to Canada to his his family had a camp up there. And
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wanted to spend some time at the camp to kind of final goodbye. And so, I asked my parents if I could go with him. And
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my mother for the first time signaled that she was unsure about the relationship and and wondered about the
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relationship. And And And I got furious that I ran out of the house. Nonetheless, she let me go. And I went.
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And I had this final week there. And um And then I went back and spent the rest of the summer really just
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struggling about what going on. That fall, he started 10th grade back in his hometown, Williamsport.
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He didn't tell his parents anything. The chairman of the American Boy Choir School board asked Lawrence Lessig to be
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the alumni representative on the board, and he agreed, which meant he saw Donald Hanson again.
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Hanson had at that time had a relationship with another boy who had graduated, and I
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said to him I thought that should be it, but this that he should not that I thought it was
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wrong for him to have these kinds of relationships, and he should not have them anymore, and he had this love
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affair with this boy who left, and that, you know, that that should be the end of this
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cycle of his life, and he was so committed, so agreed. It was almost like it was it was almost like he was
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liberated, like finally somebody was telling him no, and he could he could agree. Um, and we talked about, you
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know, I'm on the board, and if I know if I if I you've got to promise me this isn't
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going to happen, because I I have an obligation, and You were just a You were just a teenager though, confronting him.
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Yeah. I mean, I wasn't There was nothing dangerous about the confrontation, I didn't feel, but I But just that just
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that I'm just thinking about myself as a as a teenager confronting one of my teachers and having the courage to say,
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"Hey, what you're doing is wrong." I I That must have taken courage. Maybe. I didn't remember it as a courageous
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act. I remember it as a as a hurtful It was hurtful. But I felt like I had to Maybe it was jealousy. I don't know what
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I you know, who knows what it was completely, but But from that moment on, I had this, you
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know, I would go down regularly for board meetings, I'd see him. We had we you know, there's no time at which we
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had any further sexual connection. Um And he would continue to affirm that this,
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you know, I would say, "How are things going?" He said, "Things are great. No problems, no issues, no complications."
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And And then, you know, a couple years later, um there was an emergency board meeting
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called because he had been caught, um uh with some kid or some mother of some kid at
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told the school that he had abused her son and you know, we I came down for the emergency board meeting and I went to
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his room and said, "What the [ __ ] You know, you promised me." And he said, "I know, I just could
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couldn't help myself. I'm sorry." And I felt so stupid. I felt so you know, cuz I was so convinced I had
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saved the world. Like I had taken this board position, I'd leveraged the power to do good by keeping him an
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essential part to make the school succeed, while at the same time protecting those kids.
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I was such a genius and I was turned out to be such a fool. And these children, I don't know how
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many children turned out to uh uh have, you know, been so harmed, so damaged by by him continuing to be who he was.
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By this point, Lawrence Lessig was in college at the University of Pennsylvania.
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After graduation, he went on to study philosophy in England. Donald Hanson had left the American Boy
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Choir School and no one was quite sure where he'd gone. And once he reached out to me and he
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came to visit in Cambridge, England and uh my girlfriend at the time and I and she knew the whole ex-story
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um met him and we went for a punt down the Cam. It was completely surreal experience of
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What did your girlfriend Well, it does sound surreal. What did your Did your girlfriend look at you and say, "Why are
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we Why are we hanging out with this guy?" It It partly I think she partly was just, you know, she wanted to understand
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it and so here we were together and we were going to see the abuser and you know, again, he was a
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he was a completely compelling and loving character. So, it was, you know, the afternoon
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you know, standing back from it or above it, it's surreal, but the actual experience of the afternoon was
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perfectly normal and he I don't remember if we had dinner or whatever, we all had the afternoon and then said goodbye
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and that was the last time I saw him. So, that probably was, you know, 1984 or 1985.
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You You told your girlfriend. Did you tell anyone else about what had happened to you?
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Well, the first person I told was a girlfriend I had at college. Um And that was a really emotional
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experience because explaining it to her completely tore me up. And then um the second person I told was my
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girlfriend at Cambridge. It was so striking. I saw her She's now a professor at Texas and I saw her
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um the fall of 2015. And she she had some photo albums from the time we were together and she pulled
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them out as she was preparing dinner and I started flipping through them and there was a
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person in the pictures I didn't recognize and I took the book over to her and I pointed
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to this person and then it hit me that that was me. And um I had never seen myself
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for who I was because I had this conception of who I was defined by that man who had called me this ugly boy and
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all through that time I had experienced my self conception as this ugly person who was so grateful
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for the love and attention of anybody. And I was then sitting in their kitchen thinking
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how my whole so much of my life had been had been set up by this man. So I you know there were many times
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between that ex- abuse and the moment when I saw those pictures where I had reflected
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on the significance of what that experience had done and how it had damaged me. Um
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but that moment was the most profound because I it wasn't just that I could reflect on things that had
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happened to me. It's it's that I saw it changed the way I looked at the world and myself most
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importantly. And I don't know. In 1991, he started teaching law at the University of Chicago and for the first
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time in his life he got some help from a therapist. He said you needed you need real
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therapy. And I said well what's that going to cost? He said well you know it's going
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to be a couple hundred thousand dollars to pay for the therapy you need and I said I don't have that money and he said
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well why doesn't the school pay for it? And I said it's a good question. So I hired a lawyer
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and we sued the school and the school quickly settled and all I wanted was the money for the therapy and
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they wrote the check for the therapy and I went I uh started getting therapy and I I was
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really proud of the way they dealt with it. Like I was you heard me and I need help and they just gave they wrote the
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check where the insurance company wrote the check. But this way that they dealt with the
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question which felt like a very healthy and direct way to deal with it changed pretty dramatically.
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In 2001 he got an email out of the blue from someone he didn't know. It said are you the Lawrence Lessig who went to
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the boy choir school? We'll be right back. The email was from a man named John Hardwick who'd been a student at the boy
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choir school before Lawrence Lessig and who wanted to file a lawsuit. And he had
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tried to get me involved in the case that he was bringing and I was incredibly reluctant and I
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told him I I was you know it's not my it's not my issue it's not my and I got my life and I don't want to go back
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there and please don't call me and he literally would not stop. He was uh you know, calling. He said, "Well,
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then can I send you a list of students and you tell me which ones you think were abused?" And
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I said, "No, no, no, no, no." You know, God forbid I would be in the middle of that fight and have to
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confront and think about that experience again and again and again. And I just didn't want to do it.
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And I felt like the insurance company and the school had behaved well towards me. So, I didn't I told him it was kind
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of a weird loyalty. You guys had dealt with me appropriately. So, I'm expect you're going to deal with him
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appropriately. And so, it just wasn't my fight to get involved given that I had such hope about, you know, how it would
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resolve itself. And obviously I was wrong about that. A couple of years later, Lawrence Lessig
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was reading the New York Times and came across an article about John Hardwick's lawsuit.
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The headline read, "Judge throws out lawsuits against boy choir school." The judge ruled that the school was
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insulated from any legal action because it was protected by something called the
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doctrine of charitable immunity. And I was like, "This is outrageous. It's just so wrong. Um
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the insurance company is wrong, the court is wrong, everything is wrong here." And
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so, I contacted Hardwick and I said, "Let me take the case. I'll take the case for free. And um let's get this
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stupid decision reversed." Will you describe a little bit more, just help me understand the charitable
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immunity act, what it what it says? So, the act basically immunizes charities for the negligence
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of um their employees. Um it's a completely stupid doctrine that was erected originally at a time when there
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wasn't really insurance available. So, it was a way to make sure that you know, if you slip and fall in front
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of a church, you can't sue the church and drive the church out of existence. But, the important line there was
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negligence, you know. So, it's one thing to be negligence, it's another thing to
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be reckless or intentional in the wrong that you are committing. Um And our claim was or John's claim was
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that the school, you know, was completely reckless about policing the behavior of um its
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employees, not just Hansa. I mean, you know, there are there others, many others. I don't know
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how many, but I and I don't know any of this firsthand, but um from people I trust, you know, others in the institute
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who were there and attracted to the institution because it was just a place where you could abuse children. That's
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why they were there. Uh and when the institution should be, you know, charged with knowing
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so clearly what's going on that they uh that this should be considered reckless at least that they didn't take steps to
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address it. And so it wasn't negligence, it was something much worse than negligence.
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But the lower court had said, "Well, it's too hard to draw a line between negligence
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recklessness and willfulness, and we think the intent of the legislature was basically to immunize all of that
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behavior." Which made no sense, was completely unjust, and just left these institutions free to
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to continue to do their wrong. And and you know, by this stage, you know, I was a law professor. And what law professors
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realize is the great thing that tort law does is that it disciplines institutions to
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behave appropriately. So if an institution is liable, what that means is that, you know,
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insurance companies and boards of directors make sure that the right protections are in place to avoid this
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wrong going forward. So the reason to make sure that they're liable, schools are liable,
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is so that the insurance companies say, "We're not going to sell you insurance unless you're taking steps to make sure
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that, you know, your children are not being abused." And that's all that this is about, making sure that there's a
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system to protect children because you know that the pathology of abusers will always try to find a way
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in. So, you need these systematic institutional protections. When you agreed to take on the case to
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to work on the appeal, how many people in your life knew about your own direct connection to this
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abuse? >> Um Was it just those two girlfriends till that point and your therapist?
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>> It could have been just those two. I don't think I had any other I don't think I had any reason to talk to
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anybody else about it. Um But when I took on the case, I knew it was going to be public and
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and so I had to do the hardest thing uh for me, which was to talk to my parents about it.
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What What was that conversation with your parents like? So, it was uh unfortunately easier than I
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had hoped it would be. You know, I What I feared most is that they would would take it
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too personally, that they would feel like they had failed to protect me. Because in a sense, they had. In a real
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sense, they had. And I didn't want them to feel too guilty about that. But afterwards, I realized I wanted them
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to feel guilty enough about that because I you know, I I remember through that period always feeling like
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I was you know, an adult in a even though I was 12 or 13 or 14 or 15, I felt like I was smart enough to know
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and take care of myself and I didn't need anybody to be protecting me, and certainly not my parents. And if they
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had tried to, I would have been outraged just like I was when my mother signaled
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she might have known something was going on. But you know, 10 and 15 years later, uh
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uh as I look back on it, I was like, "This was your job. This is what you were supposed to be worrying about and
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thinking about, and and that you didn't was bad. And then, when it came out that
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it didn't seem to hurt as much as I um would have thought, that was also difficult. And so, I didn't want to
00:31:05
rub their noses in it. I didn't want them to make feel and make them feel terrible about it. But,
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in the end, it made me feel even more alone about the experience because I felt,
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you know, it was just for me. It wasn't for anybody else to feel that the burden.
00:31:24
I wonder if this case, that that first day in the courtroom, uh if it felt different, if it was
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Were you more nervous, or was the the weight greater? No, it was easier than any case that I've ever done.
00:31:41
There's no ambiguity in my head about what the law should be here, and there was no justification for the decision
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below. I was absolutely confident. And um I remember after the court of appeals argument, the lawyer for the insurance
00:31:58
company came up and said, "I've never seen a better oral argument in my life. That was extraordinary."
00:32:04
And I was both touched and astonished that there would be any doubt because of course, this was going to be the most
00:32:14
important thing I argued, and I knew I had to do I would do it well because I had to. I had to um finally, I had to do
00:32:22
something good in the middle of this disaster that you know, and one part of me,
00:32:30
you know, will always feel guilty for, even though, you know, the adult part of me says, "You're a kid." But, the kid
00:32:35
part of me says, "Yeah, but it was me. I just like all of those teachers, I could
00:32:40
have said something. I could have known enough, should have known enough, should have had the
00:32:45
courage enough." I read that there was a moment when the lawyer, when Greenblatt sort of outed
00:32:52
your personal stake in the case. Yeah. What happened? You know, it was almost I experienced it
00:32:59
as like fearing that it would seem that I was biased and then I mentioned immediately thought, "Well, I was
00:33:04
biased, but I'm an advocate. I'm not a judge. Um it's my job to be on the side of what I'm arguing for." And
00:33:13
you know, [ __ ] you. Um I was abused. What what's what What's the wrong in that? Uh except to the by the person who
00:33:20
did it. Um but it's you know, at that point I kind of embraced the recognition that I'm not
00:33:26
going to hide the fact or be able to hide the fact. People going to put two and two together and so that's when it
00:33:31
was clear I needed to just come out with it and in a way that made it as comprehensive
00:33:37
as it could be. The court ruled in favor of John Hardwick and the school immediately
00:33:45
appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court. And when the Supreme Court ruled, the
00:33:50
Supreme Court took like almost 2 years to decide. Supreme Court of New Jersey took almost
00:33:56
2 years to decide. And when it decided, there was nothing reported on it at all. So nobody knew
00:34:03
about it. And I didn't go around sort of telling everybody. You know, I sort of blogged about it. Um but you know,
00:34:09
seven people read blogs. So I remember I was in a train and I got the news and I uh
00:34:16
I bought drinks for everybody in the cafe car on the train and you know, I said, "I just won a case and it's really
00:34:21
important and I'm not going to tell you why it's important. I'm just going to buy you a drink." And that was the sum
00:34:26
total of the celebration. Were those happy people on the train not sure why they were getting a free drink,
00:34:32
but um that was it. You know, one of the ways in which the experience of this abuse was so
00:34:46
important to where I am right now is that it's from that moment in my life that I
00:34:52
began to think about justice in the way that has um that is completely my obsession right
00:34:58
now. And that's the distinction between thinking about the criminal and the people who enabled the crime to
00:35:05
happen. Those people who do nothing when great harm is happening as a not so much as opposed to, but in
00:35:13
addition to those who are doing the great harm. And and so in this case itself what was important to me was not so much
00:35:22
whether you could go out and arrest people like Donald Hanson, which of course they could have. They could have
00:35:26
criminally prosecuted. They could still criminally prosecute him, but it was making sure that those around the
00:35:31
criminal felt the responsibility to do something, too. Where is Hanson now? I don't know.
00:35:42
Um I've tried to find out. Not so much cuz I want to, you know, have him arrested
00:35:49
as much as just to see where he is in his own head. But I know he fled and went into hiding
00:35:57
because, you know, once it became clear the extent of his crimes that um New Jersey was pretty intent on
00:36:05
prosecuting him criminally and he wanted to evade that. Now, this might sound odd, but
00:36:12
why are you willing to talk about it? Because I can. You know, I'm incredibly privileged. I
00:36:21
have tenure. I um have a wife and a family that love me, um and I don't need anything else beyond those
00:36:33
things. And uh but there are a lot of people out there who need much more, and they will only
00:36:38
get it if um the world comes to terms with its failure to protect those who need to be protected.
00:36:49
And in my view, we will only do that when we learn to focus our anger in the right
00:36:56
place, which means not just at the criminal, but at those who enable the criminal.
00:37:04
You know, I remember when um when the Weinstein case was first first came out, I
00:37:11
as pathological as Weinstein is, and certainly he is, you know, scum, um there's an endless list of people who
00:37:20
let that happen, and those are the those are the That's the responsibility we have to develop a sensibility
00:37:28
to uh sense a sensitivity uh it's got to be a part of our life, and so I, you know, I'm in a place where I
00:37:38
can afford to whatever it might do to me, I can try to campaign for that. That's what
00:37:44
I'm trying to do, campaign for that. That's what my work is about. That's what everything I do is about.
00:37:52
Uh and so I'm happy to talk about it when I can. The American Boy Choir School filed for
00:38:08
bankruptcy in 2015, and then, citing low enrollment, closed its doors for good this fall.
00:38:24
Criminal is produced by Lauren Spor, Nadia Wilson and me. Audio mix by Rob Byers. Mathilde Erfelino is our intern.
00:38:32
Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at
00:38:39
thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show. Criminal is recorded in the studios of
00:38:46
North Carolina Public Radio WUNC. We're proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collection of the best podcasts
00:38:54
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00:39:01
I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal. Radiotopia from PRX