The Choir | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

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

As a child, Lawrence Lessig was a gifted singer. His church choir director encouraged him to attend a choir camp at a prestigious boarding school in New Jersey. He was so talented that the school invited him to stay and join their official choir. He sang at Carnegie Hall and toured the world. But it was what happened behind the scenes that would change his life forever.

Criminal is a show about people who’ve done wrong, been wronged, or gotten caught somewhere in the middle. Hosted by Phoebe Judge. Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.

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Episode 82 originally published January 12, 2018. https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-82-the-choir-01-12-2018

Music in this episode: “Fellowships of Paper” by Blue Dot Sessions (Original Music for Criminal) “Celestial Navigation” by Blue Dot Sessions “You, yourself and the main character ” by Komiku “A Pleasant Strike” by Blue Dot Sessions “Lenses” by Blue Dot Sessions (Original Music for Criminal) “In Paler Skies” by Blue Dot Sessions

Brief Summary

Lawrence Lessig recounts his abuse at the American Boy Choir School and his fight for justice against the institution.

Key points

Lawrence Lessig's Choir School Journey. Lessig recalls his extraordinary experience at the American Boy Choir School, filled with excitement and talent.
The Dark Side of Talent. Lessig reveals the troubling relationship with his choir director, Donald Hanson, who abused his power.
Confronting the Past. Years later, Lessig confronts Hanson about his abusive behavior, leading to a shocking realization.
Lawrence Lessig Takes on a Case. After being contacted about a lawsuit, Lessig reluctantly decides to get involved.
The Doctrine of Charitable Immunity. Lessig explains the controversial legal doctrine that protects charities from negligence claims.
The Supreme Court Ruling. After a long wait, the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiff, John Hardwick.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I had won a lottery ticket moment.

Reflecting on the excitement of joining the choir school.

0:47WatchJun 2, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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