Corina Knoll

He kept the secret for decades, even as his life fell apart.

“We were raised to view the priest as another Christ,” Saracino said, “so when you get raped by a priest, it’s like being raped by God himself.”

Last month, at 67 years old, Saracino filed a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Diocese of Rochester under a new law in New York that allows victims to seek justice for sexual abuse from long ago.

He expected revelations. Instead, he said, came another betrayal.

His lawsuit and dozens of others against the diocese were supposed to play out in civil court, with the expectation that victims would learn what church leaders knew and did. But the diocese sidestepped all of that by declaring bankruptcy.

Those who had anticipated a dramatic public accounting will now see their fight for culpability swept to the sidelines under the arcane rules of bankruptcy court.

Because the focus moves to the diocese’s assets, plaintiffs will be limited when it comes to asking pointed questions of priests and obtaining sensitive documents.

The legal emphasis has shifted from the church’s failings to its finances.

“Most of us do not give a hoot about the money,” Saracino, a retired high school teacher, said. “We’re after who’s responsible, who’s accountable, which priests are still in the diocese and currently in ministry. Bishop Matano knows full well it’s going to affect the discovery phase. The cover-up is worse than the crime.”

Bishop Salvatore Matano, who oversees the Rochester diocese, said the filing of Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Sept. 12 was the best way to serve the growing number of plaintiffs.

“We really want to do the most we can,” he said. He declined to elaborate through a spokesman, who directed questions to the diocese’s website.

For some, the departure from state court is not a major setback. Jake Giovati, 30, who said he was abused by a priest at one of the diocese’s parishes when he was about 10, said he believed the diocese was still being held to answer.

“In my mind, filing for bankruptcy is them looking at those claims and seeing them as so credible that they do not believe they could denounce those in court,” Giovati said.

But many others see the bankruptcy as a circumvention of the justice that can be delivered in civil court and in direct defiance of the state’s new Child Victims Act, which the Catholic Church spent millions of dollars trying to fight.

The act came with a one-year “look-back window” that opened on Aug. 14 and set aside the statute of limitations on sexual abuse accusations. Hundreds of lawsuits have since been filed. Now the diocese could request in bankruptcy court that the deadline to file claims be earlier than the end of the window.

“To see institutions now deviously try to make an end run around accountability is just horrifying,” said Michael Polenberg of Safe Horizon, a nonprofit victims advocacy group that pushed for the law. “Survivors deserve their day in court. What we see is the diocese keeping the curtains firmly closed.”

Bankruptcy opens up financial records to the public, allows a court to take the helm, breeds a negative image and can be a drawn-out, expensive process that involves hiring financial experts and lawyers.

But Chapter 11 is usually for those with an eye toward the future. An institution can know for months or years that it plans to file and generally has insurance providers to help cover outstanding claims.

“It’s not like, ‘Well, we only raised $120 on the collection plate this week, we don’t have enough to cover the cost of the civil litigation,’” Polenberg said.

More than 20 Catholic dioceses and religious orders in the United States, including the San Diego diocese, have filed for bankruptcy over the past 15 years, according to BishopAccountability.org.

Rochester is the first of the eight New York dioceses to do so. Overseeing 12 counties in Western New York where more than 300,000 Catholics reside, its assets are estimated at $50 million to $100 million, while its financial liabilities are $100 million to $500 million, according to documents filed in federal bankruptcy court.

Before the filing, the Rochester diocese most likely had input from the state and national conferences of Catholic bishops, as well as from the Vatican, said Jeff Anderson, a lawyer who has represented abuse victims in numerous bankruptcy cases involving the Catholic Church.

“It’s a coordinated decision from the top down,” Anderson said. “It’s not just a little diocese saying we can’t handle this.”

Plaintiffs who have already filed cases and any forthcoming claimants will be channeled through bankruptcy court, where they become creditors eligible for a portion of a settlement fund negotiated by a committee of abuse survivors. The payout hinges on what the diocese is worth. That can get slippery.

When Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York was serving as the archbishop of Milwaukee, he requested permission from the Vatican to move nearly $57 million into a cemetery trust fund, to protect the archdiocese’s money from victims demanding compensation.

And when the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis filed for bankruptcy, its case dragged on for nearly four years, during which it was accused of hiding more than $1 billion in assets, including hastily painting over signs at cemeteries to conceal ownership. Its archbishop insisted it had disclosed all assets and was fully cooperating with the court.

“The process of bankruptcy and the activities of the church within that — hiding assets and bold-faced lying — was disgusting,” said Jim Keenan, 52, a claimant in the case.

James Stang, a lawyer who has represented creditors committees in more than a dozen bankruptcy cases involving Catholic dioceses, and who has been retained in the Rochester case, said victims could still find empowerment in bankruptcy court, such as the opportunity to meet with and question a bishop.

In some cases, Stang said, committees have successfully insisted that the settlement include disclosure of documents that divulge how a diocese handled sexual abuse.

When divvying up the settlement fund, various types of abuse are compared. Someone who had been penetrated would usually expect to receive more than someone who had been groped. The victim’s age at the time matters, along with the duration and frequency of the abuse and the overall effects on the person.

Rochester’s parishes are separately incorporated and should not be affected by the bankruptcy filing, according to a statement on its website. Employees and retiree benefits will continue to be paid, and donations, if made as a restricted gift, cannot be used to settle claims.

When dioceses have filed for bankruptcy in other states, they have been able to pay claims through insurers, reserves and the sale of nonsecular property, such as a chancery building or a mall, said Michael Pfau, a lawyer whose firm has represented child sexual abuse victims across the nation.

“It is not going to mean that there will be a wholesale sell-off of churches, hospitals and schools,” he said. “It has never happened, and it’s not going to happen in Rochester.”

Matano has framed the filing as the “fairest course of action” to address a growing pool of victims, suggesting that otherwise there would be a race to the courtroom and that the first round of plaintiffs would take all of the available funds.

“That is a grossly oversimplified talking point,” Pfau said. “Catholic dioceses and religious orders all over the country have resolved claims without filing for bankruptcy, and they have done that through good faith negotiations with abuse survivors and their plaintiffs’ counsel.”

The Buffalo diocese has been contemplating bankruptcy, but it is a less likely path for major districts like the Archdiocese of New York, which includes Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island and seven counties. In anticipation of the Child Victims Act, the archdiocese sued its insurers to compel them to cover claims, a case that is still pending.

For Saracino, who is suing the Rochester diocese, the Catholic Church can go no lower than evading transparency, which is, he said, the ultimate goal of bankruptcy.

“The thing they squander most in doing this is their moral authority,” he said. “They have none anymore.”

This article originally appeared in

Diocese Bankruptcy Upsets Abuse Plaintiffs

Peter Saracino was in elementary school when, he said, a priest lured him away from a swimming pool and sexually abused him inside a seminary.

“I was 13 years old, and it was a teacher, and I can still smell him,” she said, trembling.

It was Jan. 28, and lawmakers were about to vote on whether to extend the statute of limitations for child sex abuse survivors to seek recourse. Niou, an assemblywoman who represents Lower Manhattan, wanted to underscore the deeply personal nature of the bill.

In what became an unplanned show of solidarity, three other legislators that day revealed that they too had been sexually abused as children. Their speeches, raw and powerful, were another sign of the shift at the state Capitol, where new Democratic leaders have fewer qualms about showing emotion.

“Albany is not a place where you find love and mindfulness or thoughtfulness or compassion, and the fact that each of us felt like we had a space to do that just signifies also the tectonic shift of what’s going on there,” said state Sen. Alessandra Biaggi, a Democrat who represents parts of Westchester County and the Bronx, and one of the lawmakers who, before the Senate vote, described being sexually abused.

The other two lawmakers, Rodneyse Bichotte of Brooklyn and Catalina Cruz of Queens, explained their support for the bill by talking about being abused from the floor of the Assembly.

The bill, known as the Child Victims Act, passed nearly unanimously that day. As a result, victims of child sexual abuse have until they turn 55 years old to file lawsuits against their abusers; prosecutors can file felony criminal charges on behalf of victims until their 28th birthday. The law is not retroactive, but comes with a look-back window that began Wednesday and lasts for a year, allowing people of any age to file a suit, regardless of when the alleged abuse took place.

It was a long-fought victory for advocates who had watched the bill languish for more than a decade.

The lawmakers who spoke about their experiences now find themselves navigating a new reality. No different from other survivors, they spent years hiding their scars.

Niou said she had been suicidal. Biaggi said she had developed bulimia and anorexia. Bichotte said she would distrust fathers with their daughters. Cruz said she had experienced anxiety attacks. All four have struggled to maintain emotional and physical relationships. But, they said, they are trying to open up as much as feels comfortable to inspire constituents to do the same.

Together they filmed a public service announcement to raise awareness about the new law with Safe Horizon, a nonprofit advocacy group for victims. Niou also filmed a version in Mandarin, while Cruz did one in Spanish and Bichotte recorded a version in Haitian Creole. Their faces are shown on ads that ask, “Are you a survivor of childhood sexual abuse like me?”

When their joint announcement was broadcast in Times Square on Tuesday, Niou, Bichotte and Biaggi were present, slipping their arms around one another as they watched. Later they gave Twitter shout-outs to Cruz, who was unable to attend. The four are on a group text chain, and often send each other messages of encouragement.

Each still finds it unbelievable that they spoke about what had happened.

Biaggi, 33, was the first that day to share her personal story of abuse, addressing the Senate chamber with confidence.

“The trauma manifests into many different forms,” she told the room. “For me that silence lasted for 25 years, and it is almost unthinkable that I could stand here as a New York state senator to speak about something that I thought I would probably take to my grave.”

After watching footage of the speech, Biaggi said she found it impossible to reconcile the image of herself with the girl who had grown up harboring a secret. “On the floor of the New York state Senate, are you kidding? I’m just like, ‘Who is that person?’”

She later learned that around the time she spoke, the Assembly chamber on the other side of the Capitol was also stirring with emotion.

There, Bichotte asked colleagues to imagine a child violated and abused, forced to bury a terrible feeling of shame that never goes away. She mentioned the local pastor who she said began molesting her when she was 10 years old.

“I was afraid for a very long time to come forward,” Bichotte, 46, told the room. “For the risk of being blamed for my own pain.”

It was not the first time Bichotte had spoken to colleagues about her molestation. But Niou, 36, had not yet heard the story. After hearing it on that day, she was inspired to take a shaky breath and rise to add volume to her voice. She cried through much of it.

Cruz had initially planned to read a simple statement that said she supported survivors in their healing process. But as the two other assemblywomen spoke, she began to shift nervously in her seat. Her hands were sweaty. She wanted to weep, and she suddenly felt the need to say the words she had hidden.

So she stood. And she told the truth. A family member had touched her, and she has never been the same.

“I felt like I was naked in that room,” Cruz, 36, said later. “I was completely exposed.”

When Biaggi learned that other lawmakers had also shared their stories, she had a startling feeling.

“I felt like I wasn’t alone for the first time in my entire life dealing with this,” Biaggi recalled. “That was transformational for me.”

Biaggi and Niou are close friends and housemates in Albany. The two had previously mentioned their shared experiences to each other, but not in detail. Being public about it has since deepened their bond. And this commonality in their friendship, they said, illustrates not only the prevalence of child sexual abuse, but also the culture of shame and silence that shrouds it.

They still have boundaries to their stories. Biaggi did not want to describe her abuser, except to say the person was older. Niou and Cruz declined to reveal their attackers’ names. Bichotte was more comfortable giving details but has still never had a private conversation with her mother about it. None of them plan to file lawsuits against their abusers.

But they insist they have found justice in the new law. It got them talking about what had happened, they said, and might get other survivors to open up as well.

“There’s so much darkness around this,” Biaggi said. “The forum to be able to talk about it, is a light.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/18/nyregion/child-victims-act-lawmakers.html" id="8007e523-33a5-3737-ab7f-94a330980942">The New York Times</a>.

'I Can Still Smell Him': For 4 Legislators, This Law Is Personal

Yuh-Line Niou told no one for years. And then, one day, she told everyone.

The “most awesomest” gift she’s ever received? A colorful scarf knitted by a friend. “But really it’s a hug made out of yarn,” Mack said.

As innocuous as she appeared, Mack was entranced by an organization called Nxivm, that promoted itself as a mentorship program but was on the brink of devolving into a sex cult. Mack herself would later be accused of recruiting women as “slaves” for the group, Nxivm, branding them and demanding “collateral” of explicit photos and videos.

In April, the 36-year-old actress pleaded guilty to racketeering and racketeering conspiracy. She faces up to 20 years in prison, and may be called to the witness stand in the coming weeks in the trial of Nxivm’s leader, Keith Raniere.

Four other women have also pleaded guilty, and trial testimony has begun to reveal details about Nxivm’s dark inner workings.

Beyond the lurid details of the case is a story of a bright, beloved young woman in Hollywood who longed for enlightenment but instead became enthralled by the teachings of a twisted leader.

“I joined Nxivm first to find purpose,” she said between sobs during last month’s plea hearing in Brooklyn federal court. “I was lost and I wanted to find a place, a community in which I would feel comfortable.”

Mack declined to be interviewed while the trial is proceeding, but interviews with former Nxivm members and those who knew her before she joined the organization outlined her journey from Teen Choice Award winner to convicted member of an apparent sex cult.

Mack was 18 when she was cast as Clark Kent’s sidekick, Chloe Sullivan, on “Smallville,” a TV series about young Superman that ran for 10 seasons.

“She was just this great kid who seemed happy, mature for her age and very responsible,” said her childhood manager, Diane Hardin.

As she moved into her teens, Mack was poised but lacked sophistication, needing help with her makeup and style, recalled her former agent, Judy Savage.

“If you saw her, she was kind of an ordinary-looking girl — wasn’t gorgeous or sexy — but could make herself into anything on screen, and you would be really surprised at her work,” she said.

After high school, Mack moved from her family’s home in Los Alamitos, California. to North Hollywood and had a group of industry friends. She was particularly close to Christine Lakin of “Step by Step,” who recalled a girl who was “hilarious and up for anything.”

But Lakin and others said Mack, the middle of three children, also had a touch of naiveté.

“The only thing I can think of is she so badly wanted to connect to something that she didn’t see the rational side of things,” Lakin said. “I think she was just constantly searching for something that was missing in her life.”

On “Smallville,” Chloe was the clever-but-grating best friend next to the ethereal dream girl, Lana Lang, played by Kristin Kreuk.

It was Kreuk who brought Mack to her first meeting of Jness, a women’s group under the umbrella of Nxivm (pronounced Nex-ee-um), in 2006.

The weekend seminar was held in a Vancouver, British Columbia, hotel where Mack seemed to bask in the attention from Nancy Salzman, who co-founded Nxivm with Raniere. Salzman was teaching a workshop and spoke about how men are genetically polyamorous, said Susan Dones, the owner of a Nxivm center who was there that day, though she had begun to question Raniere’s motives.

Dones, who left the group in 2009, recalled thinking, “Oh my God, they’ve gotten their claws into her.”

Mack tended to throw herself wholeheartedly into experiences, a habit she said she developed at a young age when she watched her mother battle and beat cancer.

“I am insatiable. Greedy, in a way. I live with voracity and intensity ... voracitensity,” she wrote on her now defunct website.

By 2007, she was insisting that anyone she hired enroll in Nxivm classes. She also turned increasingly inward, obsessing over defects in her character, said a woman who worked for Mack for eight years who asked not to be named for fear of being contacted by current Nxivm members.

“One of the insidious things that the cult does is it breaks everyone down where you’re only focused on your flaws,” said the employee, who left Nxivm around 2013.

After “Smallville” ended in 2011, Mack moved to Brooklyn, and later bought a home in Clifton Park, New York, a suburban upstate town where many Nxivm members had flocked, including Raniere, who was referred to as “Vanguard.”

Around 2013, Kreuk left Nxivm and maintained only “minimum contact” with those still involved, according to a statement she posted last year on Twitter. Her manager did not respond to requests for comment.

But Mack ventured even deeper into the organization’s philosophies. In 2014, she was helping to start a media website for Nxivm that promised to strip news of its spin.

A year later, prosecutors said, a secret society formed within Nxivm called DOS — an acronym for a Latin phrase meaning “Lord/Master of the Obedient Female Companions” — where women were “slaves” overseen by “masters” and ordered to have sexual relations with Raniere.

Mack is said by prosecutors to have targeted vulnerable women under the guise of female empowerment, starving them until they fit Raniere’s sexual ideal and threatening them with the release of collected “collateral.”

Although Mack married Nicki Clyne, a fellow Nxivm member and actress who appeared in “Battlestar Galactica,” in 2017, she appeared to be infatuated and romantically involved with Raniere, former members of the organization said.

When Mack appeared in court in April to plead guilty, her small voice wobbled as she spoke. She apologized. She wept.

“I believed that Keith Raniere’s intentions were to help people, and that my adherence to his system of beliefs would help empower others and help them,” she said. “I was wrong.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="5ed4cc8d-cb5d-3c84-a1fd-7bc069b9c0db" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/nyregion/nxivm-cult-allison-mack.html">The New York Times</a>.

From 'Smallville' to a sex cult: The fall of actress Allison Mack

Six years ago, Allison Mack sat on a purple rug filming a segment for her YouTube channel. Bubbly and earnest, she answered fans’ questions with delight.

Eventually, their alarmed parents discovered that a teacher, Joseph DeShan, had a past life as a Roman Catholic priest in Bridgeport, Connecticut: In the late ’80s, when DeShan was about 30 years old, he began a sexual relationship with a girl half his age, with whom he had a child.

This information was not a secret. The teacher’s past had first surfaced in 2002, when he was briefly removed from the classroom but was allowed to return by the superintendent at the time. The small community of 16,000 seemed to accept his past.

But residents now find themselves divided over what has become an emotionally charged debate in the southern New Jersey town, prompting hostile exchanges on Facebook, at sporting events and during school functions.

The controversy is flaring just as Catholic dioceses around the country are releasing lists of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse or misconduct, including DeShan, who was quietly named by the Diocese of Bridgeport. The diocese listed him among clergy who had been credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors and had settlements paid on their behalf.

The renewed tension reached a head last month when a state arbitrator decided that DeShan could not be fired, overruling efforts by the school board to end his tenure.

One parent, who asked not to be named for fear of being ostracized, said: “You can’t be friends with so-and-so, or you can’t go over to their house, that kind of stuff. People are well aware of who does not agree with the decision, and who does.”

Parents new to the information are insisting DeShan should have been fired long ago.

“It has continually been brushed under the rug for so many years,” said Asha Quinn, whose daughter is in sixth grade at the middle school.

Quinn said she felt it was her duty to notify other parents. “There was a handful that said it was a long time ago and he hadn’t done anything else since,” she said. “The question becomes: How many times does somebody have to molest a child before they aren’t allowed to teach anymore?”

DeShan’s supporters, who say he is a compassionate reading teacher, speak with the same conviction, but argue that he made a mistake when he was younger and that he should be left alone. Both sides say their stance is in the majority.

In December, the Cinnaminson Board of Education filed tenure charges against DeShan with the New Jersey Commissioner of Education, demanding that he be removed for prior and present conduct that had caused “substantial disruption.”

The board cited complaints that students described DeShan as “creepy” and a “rapist,” and that parents had asked that their children be excused from his class. There was also an alleged incident in which DeShan told a young female student, “Let me see your pretty green eyes. You don’t see them too much anymore,” according to a document released by the state.

Walt De Treux, the state arbitrator in the tenure case, dismissed the “pretty green eyes” comment, ruling that the allegation was based on hearsay. He also said in his decision that DeShan’s past behavior had already been investigated, and that the board had no grounds to “revisit conduct of which it has been long aware.”

De Treux ordered that DeShan, who had been absent from the school for about six months, be immediately reinstated with full back pay and benefits.

DeShan arrived at the Cinnaminson school district in 1996, six years after the teenage girl gave birth to their child. But it wasn’t until 2002 that his past surfaced in a series of Hartford Courant articles.

He was put on leave, but returned after three weeks when the superintendent at the time, Salvatore J. Illuzi, said that he and two lawyers for the district had determined no administrative rules had been violated.

In Connecticut, sex with an underage girl is considered statutory rape, but the state’s statute of limitations on sexual assault had also passed.

Illuzi retired in 2017 and was replaced by Stephen Cappello, who said the district was disappointed with the April arbitration ruling and was working with a lawyer to determine its next steps.

DeShan did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

This article originally appeared in <a id="690ecf63-d5a4-34f9-a525-4319556d9885" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/07/nyregion/nj-priest-sexual-abuse-girl-teacher.html">The New York Times</a>.

A priest impregnated a teenager. Decades later, should he be allowed to teach?

It began last fall, when students new to Cinnaminson Middle School in New Jersey brought home rumors of a “rapist” at the school.

A priest impregnated a teenager, decades later, should he be allowed to teach?

“I’m going to fall!” a man repeatedly said in Spanish as he clung to the scaffolding that dangled against a building on East 50th Street in Manhattan.

The man had been struck in the head and bloodied by a heavy piece of molding while repairing the building’s masonry. Although authorities rescued him from the scaffold, he would die later at a hospital. He was 51.

Amid New York’s towering buildings, where scaffolding is so common it seemingly blends into the design, the man’s death offered a reminder of the risks faced by workers in a city under constant construction.

The man had been outside the 14-story residence at 311 East 50th St. when he was struck by a coping stone that had been removed to anchor the suspended scaffold, a Fire Department official said.

Just before noon, witnesses saw the man clinging to the structure and heard his shouts.

“He was holding on for his life,” said Rodrigo Galindo, 52, who was delivering food nearby. “I was rooting for him.”

Firefighters climbed a ladder to reach the man, who by that point appeared to have lost consciousness, Galindo said. They broke a window and pulled the man inside, as a co-worker on the scaffold stood motionless, a witness said.

Jimmy Khan, 50, an employee at a nearby deli, watched as the man was carried away on a gurney. “I had to look away,” Khan said.

The man was taken to NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, where he died, the authorities said. His name was not released, pending family notification. It was unclear if he had been wearing a hard hat or harness.

A second worker on the scaffolding at the time of the incident was not injured but was taken to the hospital for observation, said Myles Miller, a spokesman for the Fire Department.

The owner of the building was granted a permit last year to repair the building’s exterior facade, a $48,000 project that focused on mending window structures and repointing, a process of fixing weathered mortar, according to an application filed with the Department of Buildings. A sign outside the building identified the construction company as VLAD Restoration.

Last year, the company and its owner, Vlad Tomczak, settled a lawsuit with six demolition workers who said they were entitled to unpaid overtime wages and claimed more than $290,000 in damages, according to court records. They settled for $129,000.

Messages left with the company were not immediately returned.

The owner of the building is listed as Kenneth Rotner of Great Bay Building Company. He could not be reached.

A woman who said she works for the building’s management company called the incident a horrible accident.

“We’ll do an investigation as to the cause of the accident and make a determination of any liability and what they did right or did wrong,” said Timothy E. Hogan, deputy commissioner of enforcement for the Department of Buildings.

Shortly after Monday’s incident, the Fire Department requested an inspection of the building, citing a “partial facade collapse,” and noted that the site conditions were endangering workers.

Eleven years ago, the building was among those damaged by a crane that snapped from its anchors and smashed into an apartment, leaving a disaster zone of twisted metal and rubble. Seven people were killed, including six construction workers.

The grim memories of that day were not far from the minds of residents on the block.

“So many people died,” said Susan Manuel, 70, who lives nearby. “It is very upsetting to people here. It makes me sad that workers are still vulnerable.”

This article originally appeared in <a id="eaaa5eeb-7240-3a58-adb4-71bdc49fb04d" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/08/nyregion/construction-worker-death-nyc-midtown-east.html">The New York Times</a>.

7 stories high, a 'coping stone' strikes construction worker, killing him

NEW YORK — The cry for help came from seven stories high. Passers-by could only watch, frozen and powerless, their Monday suddenly fraught with worry.

He managed to amble over the rail that carries 600 volts of electricity and wedge himself between the columns that separate the local and express tracks.

It was about 9:15 a.m., and a northbound train was barreling his way.

The response was swift. A customer hurried to a call box and pushed a button for help. The station agent who got the call notified the rail control center. All train operators in the area received an alert and were told to be on the lookout.

By then Hopeton Kiffin, a 51-year-old operator for the No. 5 train, had spotted a flash of red on the tracks ahead of him in an area his express train would normally rush through. He slowed the train down. Someone on the platform pointed. There stood a boy in a red shirt, staring straight ahead, clapping his hands.

“I’ve seen strange things, adults walking on the tracks — once I saw a guy who was on there walking to the next station — but this one, with the child standing there, I was taken aback,” Kiffin said in an interview.

Kiffin’s reaction was swift but gentle. He secured the train, jumped out and approached the boy, who did not speak or respond physically or verbally to words.

“He was very serious — there was no emotion, no verbal communication, not a lot of eye contact,” Kiffin said.

So the father of three stopped talking and offered his hand.

“I have an 8-year-old daughter and sometimes words — they don’t listen — so I just gently held him by the hand,” he said. “I thought, ‘Let me guide him, and let him feel secure.’”

For a moment, the frequent subway story line of shared communal woe took a turn. Complaints about delayed trains, jam-packed platforms and violent crime were briefly overshadowed by Kiffin’s compassion.

About 15 minutes passed. Some people watched from the platform. Kiffin asked them how the boy had gotten into such an unusual place. No one knew.

Eventually Kiffin got the boy to walk to the waiting train and coaxed him into the operator’s cab.

The train then moved to the next stop, Borough Hall, where the police were waiting. The boy was taken to a nearby hospital to be evaluated.

Kiffin was praised for his efforts.

“I’m very proud of our train operator and station agent for their quick action to bring this child to safety without incident so that he can be reunited with his family,” the president of New York City Transit, Andy Byford, said in a statement.

Tony Utano, the president of Local 100 of the Transport Workers Union, said Kiffin had helped to avoid a terrible tragedy.

“You can never relax when you are operating a subway train,” Utano said in a statement. “You have to be alert for anything out of place. This story has a happy ending only because this operator spotted this child and managed to get him to safety.”

Kiffin lives in East Flatbush and has been a train operator for 13 years. When reflecting on the day’s events, he was relieved that his instincts as a train operator and a parent had quickly fused. Things could have gone very differently, he believed, had the boy become frightened or upset or fallen on the electric rail.

“I feel I did my job,” Kiffin said.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/nyregion/boy-rescued-subway-tracks.html" id="9c9ddff2-8ede-351f-a467-50f2711f2304">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — He had wandered onto the Brooklyn subway tracks near Hoyt Street Station on Thursday morning, a boy of about 12, unattended and willing to test fate.

A Boy Wandered Onto the Subway Tracks. A No. 5 Train Operator Sprang Into Action.

The slave owner, Pierre Deyo, would distinguish himself as a member of one of the six families that founded New Paltz, New York, a town about 80 miles north of New York City.

Deyo House, a student dormitory on the campus of the State University of New York at New Paltz, was named in honor of him and his father. The names of the other founders — all of whom were slave owners — have graced five other buildings at the college that was established in 1828.

Until now. After months of debate and discussion, all six buildings will be renamed by the start of the fall semester.

The school’s president, Donald P. Christian, said his decision to initiate the conversation that led to a recent vote grew out of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally of white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia. The rally began on the campus of the University of Virginia as part of a protest over a plan to remove a statue of a Confederate general from a city park.

“The fact that these names were on residential buildings was one that we heard a lot from students — what it meant for them to be asked to live and eat and sleep in buildings that carried the names of slave owners,” Christian said.

The decision by SUNY New Paltz follows a recent wave of colleges grappling with troubling histories. Some schools have started projects specifically to explore their ties to slavery, publishing the findings online. Yale University, less than two years ago, changed the name of a residential college that commemorated a 19th century white supremacist.

The chairman of SUNY’s Board of Trustees, H. Carl McCall, a former state senator and comptroller who was New York’s first black candidate to be elected to statewide office, applauded the decision by SUNY New Paltz to remove the slave owners’ names.

“They did participate in this terrible attack on humanity that is a part of our American heritage, and we have to do everything we can to talk about it and to take steps now to show that we do not accept it,” McCall said in an interview.

The bucolic SUNY New Paltz campus, where the 7,500-member student body is 6 percent black, is nestled in a town immensely proud to be founded by Huguenots — French protestants who fled Europe to escape persecution.

In 1677, six Huguenot families purchased the land that became New Paltz, according to the town’s website. Their handiwork can still be seen on the stone houses that line historic Huguenot Street. A national landmark, the street and the surrounding area is run by a historical society that hosts tours and events. Many of the founders’ descendants live in the area, and their last names still hold clout: Bevier, Crispell, DuBois, Hasbrouck, LeFevre and, of course, Deyo.

Those same surnames appear often in historic documents that reveal transactions for human life.

“In consideration of the sum of twenty-five pounds to me in hand,” a seller wrote in 1790, according to the bill of sale that is part of the historical society’s collection, “doth bargain and sell to the said Ann Bevier a Negroe girl named Gin about eleven years old.”

Three centuries later, Christian asked the community’s opinion about the dining hall and five residence halls that were namesakes of slave owners.

The school established a diversity panel made up of students, faculty and staff members to explore the issue. The group held public forums, examined how other institutions have handled similar issues and researched local history, determining that the buildings were indeed named after the town’s founders and not their descendants.

N’della Seque, a 21-year-old senior and the president of the student association, said she was moved by the tearful pleas to change the names during forums run by the diversity panel. “That moment right there was what made me realize, ‘No, this has to change,'” she said. “I didn’t see it as erasing history. It was realizing what this history means to certain individuals.”

The panel ultimately recommended the name change, a decision that deeply offended some descendants of the founders.

“It’s unfair to project the moral standards of today onto those earlier generations,” said Robert W. Hasbrouck, 85, a ninth-generation descendant of an original settler.

He is the president of the Hasbrouck Family Association, a nonprofit with about 400 members intent on preserving the region’s history.

“Should we rename or tear down the Washington Monument and the Jefferson Memorial? Where do we stop?” Hasbrouck asked. “We feel that it’s unjustified, it’s being done as an overeagerness to be politically correct.”

Jennifer LeFevre, whose surname is being removed from a residence hall, had urged the College Council to retain the original names.

“To bow to pressure to reject the town’s heritage simply because some elements of that history are distasteful to some is a disservice to history,” LeFevre wrote in a letter to the council.

The College Council passed the resolution to remove the names in a 4-3 vote in late February. The buildings will soon feature Native American names that reflect regional geographic features (Shawangunk Hall, Awosting Hall, Minnewaska Hall, Mohonk Hall, Ashokan Hall and Peregrine Dining Hall).

Ilyasah Shabazz, the daughter of Malcolm X and a SUNY New Paltz graduate, said on Twitter that she was proud of the decision.

“This is what community accountability and cultural intelligence working together looks like in real time application. Proud of #SUNY,” Shabazz wrote.

The Huguenot names will not disappear altogether. The school is hoping to include them in a contemplative space where their contributions are recognized along with details about their slave ownership.

The town’s Huguenot historical society has made its own attempts to implement programming that honors the region’s authentic history. Although the town’s 14,000 residents are predominantly white, the society recently began hosting a celebration of African culture, music and food in honor of Juneteenth. It has also welcomed a member of the Slave Dwelling Project, a preservation organization that conducts overnight stays at sites associated with slavery.

Some descendants of the six founding families had no objection to the school’s decision.