Hawaii School Settles ‘Decades of Abuse’ for $80 Million

A prestigious school reserved for students of Hawaiian ancestry covered up a lawsuit from 32 former male students, alleging the school sent them to a psychiatrist who conducted “decades of monstrous sexual abuse." According to the lawsuit, the Kamehameha School forced the students, at times “under threat of expulsion,” to see psychiatrist Dr. Robert Browne that “drugged them, raped them and tormented them psychologically at weekend ‘sleepovers’ in his home” between 1958 and 1985. After two years of negotiation, the school settled for $80 million. Browne committed sexual acts, forced the students to perform sexual acts, sodomized one student, and forced him to watch porn at gunpoint—all under the guise that this was “normal” therapy. The victims stayed silent until one of them confronted him in 1991. Browne shot himself in the head soon thereafter.