Source: motherjones.com 9/23/26
A law that opened a window for survivors to seek justice for past abuse also exposed how schools enabled alleged predators.
Going to high school in Dutchess County, New York, in the 1960s, there was no late bus. For one star athlete at Our Lady of Lourdes High School, that meant regularly hitchhiking the 25 miles between school and home after 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. 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. 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.
“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. “He called me Irish. ‘Irish. Get in the car.’ And I’m a 17-year-old kid trying to maintain my varsity status, starting status, and he’s the coach. Also he is — was — 6’3”, 240 pounds. At the time, I’m barely 6 feet and 160. So he’s a huge man.”
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.” The young athlete started altering his route home, taking different downtown streets so his coach wouldn’t find him. But sometimes he did.
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. The student yelled at the…
No disrespect to any genuine victim of sexual abuse of any kind, but I know damn well a significant number of these cases are fabricated. I guarantee a handful of bottom-feeding tort lawyers combed the records and did the “you were abused, right?”, nod, wink, cha-ching spill to every former student they could find. And in a few years, we’ll be reading how every one of these cases was settled for an undisclosed amount.
And again, no disrespect to victims, but sympathy should have limits. Being the victim of a sex crime shouldn’t be a carte blanche excuse for every mistake, poor decision, or bad thing that ever happens to someone, nor should it give their thoughts, opinions, and feelings any more weight than anyone else’s. Lauren Book is the poster child of that. She made a career out of her victim-hood (fine) at great cost to a significant population that had absolutely nothing to do with her or her abuse (NOT fine).