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Nine Women Accuse Israel Horovitz, Playwright and Mentor, of Sexual Misconduct
Nine Women Accuse Israel Horovitz, Playwright and Mentor, of Sexual Misconduct
By JESSICA BENNETTNOV. 30, 2017
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Israel Horovitz at the Gloucester Stage Company in 2009. Nine women have come forward to accuse the playwright of sexual assault and misconduct. Credit Maisie Crow for The Boston Globe, via Getty Images
In 1986, Maddie Corman was a 16-year-old actress performing Off Broadway as her mother lay dying in a hospital bed, hours after having a stroke. Backstage, Ms. Corman was consoled by Israel Horovitz, the show’s 47-year-old playwright and her mentor. As she prepared to go on, he pressed her against a wall and forcefully kissed her, she said in a recent interview.
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In 1991, when Frédérique Giffard was 16 and an au pair for Mr. Horovitz, she said he groped her breasts and placed her hand on his erect penis. And last year, Maia Ermansons, then 21, said that when she met to discuss a theater project with Mr. Horovitz — whom she had known since she was a girl — he kissed her hard and cupped her breasts, remarking how “large and beautiful” they had become. Stunned, she replied, “Thank you.”
“I felt close to him like a grandfather, but also he was a somewhat famous guy whose time I felt privileged to have,” Ms. Ermansons said in an interview. “For the man who represented all that, to treat me the way he did, was the ultimate betrayal.”
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Maia Ermansons, in blue and No. 6, in Barefoot Theater Company’s production of Israel Horovitz’s “The Race Play” in 2007. Credit via Maia Ermansons
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Ms. Ermansons, left, who has known Mr. Horovitz since she was 11, and Jana Mestecky, who worked for him, both say Mr. Horovitz kissed and groped them against their will. Credit Emily Andrews for The New York Times
Inspired by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K. and others, a total of nine women have come forward publicly for the first time to describe a pattern of sexual abuse and violations of trust by a man they considered a mentor and friend. Mr. Horovitz is an award-winning author of more than 70 plays, including “The Indian Wants the Bronx” (starring Al Pacino in 1968); “Park Your Car in Harvard Yard” (on Broadway in 1991); and “Out of the Mouths of Babes,” which ran Off Broadway last year.
Over his five-decade career, Mr. Horovitz has been an influential player in the theater world. As the founding artistic director of Gloucester Stage, a respected regional theater that called itself a “safe harbor for playwrights,” and as an Obie-winning writer whose work was produced frequently in New York and Paris, he has had the power to offer roles, jobs or a helping hand to generations of actors.
In response to questions this week, Mr. Horovitz, 78, told The New York Times that while he has “a different memory of some of these events, I apologize with all my heart to any woman who has ever felt compromised by my actions, and to my family and friends who have put their trust in me. To hear that I have caused pain is profoundly upsetting, as is the idea that I might have crossed a line with anyone who considered me a mentor.”
His son, Adam Horovitz, said in his own statement: “I believe the allegations against my father are true, and I stand behind the women that made them.”
Mr. Horovitz’s behavior around women had long been the subject of whispers. But since at least 1993, Gloucester Stage officials had known it was more than mere speculation: that year, Mr. Horovitz was the subject of an exposé in The Boston Phoenix in which 10 women accused him of sexual harassment and assault. The women’s names were not disclosed in the article. At the time the board’s president, Barry Weiner, dismissed the accusations and described some of the women speaking out against Mr. Horovitz as “tightly wound.”
Last week, the theater cut ties with Mr. Horovitz after learning of the accusations by Ms. Ermansons.
“I apologize to the brave women who came forward in 1992 and 1993 but were not listened to,” Elizabeth Neumeier, the Gloucester board’s current president, said in a statement. “We are individually and collectively appalled by the allegations, both old and new.”
A Mentor, Until He Wasn’t
The nine women who spoke with The Times described Mr. Horovitz as a complicated man who was, at times, a charismatic mentor and empathic friend. He taught at several universities and nurtured young writers, was generous with his wisdom and dazzled with tales of his famous friends. “He was very dynamic and a real creative force,” said Ms. Corman, the actress.
addie Corman with Jonathan Marc Sherman, center, on the set of the 1986 production during which she said Mr. Horovitz kissed her forcefully. She was 16 at the time. Mr. Sherman, in whom she confided at the time, corroborated her story. Credit via Maddie Corman
But he also preyed on them, the women said, striking in moments of vulnerability and manipulating his role as director — as auteur — to take advantage of young women who were professionally dependent on him and often working far from home.
“He was a good mentor, until he was the worst, probably most nightmarish mentor you could have,” Ms. Meinhardt said.
The relationship was complex for Ms. Meinhardt. She said that after she was raped, she continued to work for Mr. Horovitz and went to extreme lengths to avoid being alone with him. But it was impossible: He was her boss. She said she and Mr. Horovitz had sex on two other occasions — consensual, she said, “in that I didn’t say no clearly.” Like some of the other women, she stayed friendly with him for years.
The nine women recounted experiences with Mr. Horovitz that had chilling similarities. Each woman’s story was corroborated independently by people in whom they confided.
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