In 1986, Maddie Corman was a 16-year-old extra assuming Off Broadway as her mother lay dying in a hospital bed, hours afterwards accepting a stroke. Backstage, Ms. Corman was consoled by Israel Horovitz, the show’s 47-year-old columnist and her mentor. As she able to go on, he apprenticed her adjoin a bank and angrily kissed her, she said in a contempo interview.
Jocelyn Meinhardt was 19 back she began a summer acquaintance in 1989 with Mr. Horovitz at the Gloucester Date Company in Massachusetts, area he was aesthetic director. She knew Mr. Horovitz; one of his sons, Adam Horovitz, who would go on to acclaim with the Beastie Boys, had been her aerial academy boyfriend. That aboriginal night, she said, Mr. Horovitz collection her in his convertible — its authorization bowl apprehend AUTHOR — to the ancestors home. He bound the door, again kissed and fondled her. She began to cry. Mr. Horovitz again led her to his bedroom, area she said he raped her.
In 1991, back Frédérique Giffard was 16 and an au brace for Mr. Horovitz, she said he groped her breasts and placed her duke on his arrect penis. And aftermost year, Maia Ermansons, again 21, said that back she met to altercate a amphitheater activity with Mr. Horovitz — whom she had accepted back she was a babe — he kissed her adamantine and biconcave her breasts, acquainted how “large and beautiful” they had become. Stunned, she replied, “Thank you.”
“I acquainted abutting to him like a grandfather, but additionally he was a somewhat acclaimed guy whose time I acquainted advantaged to have,” Ms. Ermansons said in an interview. “For the man who represented all that, to amusement me the way he did, was the ultimate betrayal.”
Inspired by the revelations about Harvey Weinstein, Louis C.K. and others, a absolute of nine women accept appear advanced about for the aboriginal time to call a arrangement of animal corruption and violations of assurance by a man they brash a coach and friend. Mr. Horovitz is an award-winning columnist of added 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 aftermost year.
Over his five-decade career, Mr. Horovitz has been an affecting amateur in the amphitheater world. As the founding aesthetic administrator of Gloucester Stage, a admired bounded amphitheater that declared itself a “safe anchorage for playwrights,” and as an Obie-winning biographer whose assignment was produced frequently in New York and Paris, he has had the ability to action roles, jobs or a allowance duke to ancestors of actors.
In acknowledgment to questions this week, Mr. Horovitz, 78, told The New York Times that while he has “a altered anamnesis of some of these events, I apologize with all my affection to any woman who has anytime acquainted compromised by my actions, and to my ancestors and accompany who accept put their assurance in me. To apprehend that I accept acquired affliction is greatly upsetting, as is the abstraction that I ability accept beyond a band with anyone who brash me a mentor.”
His son, Adam Horovitz, said in his own statement: “I accept the allegations adjoin my ancestor are true, and I angle abaft the women that fabricated them.”
Mr. Horovitz’s behavior about women had connected been the accountable of whispers. But back at atomic 1993, Gloucester Date admiral had accepted it was added than bald speculation: that year, Mr. Horovitz was the accountable of an exposé in The Boston Phoenix in which 10 women accused him of animal aggravation and assault. The women’s names were not appear in the article. At the time the board’s president, Barry Weiner, absolved the accusations and declared some of the women speaking out adjoin Mr. Horovitz as “tightly wound.”
Last week, the amphitheater cut ties with Mr. Horovitz afterwards acquirements of the accusations by Ms. Ermansons.
“I apologize to the adventurous women who came advanced in 1992 and 1993 but were not listened to,” Elizabeth Neumeier, the Gloucester board’s accepted president, said in a statement. “We are abandoned and collectively afraid by the allegations, both old and new.”
The nine women who batten with The Times declared Mr. Horovitz as a complicated man who was, at times, a absorbing coach and accordant friend. He accomplished at several universities and accomplished adolescent writers, was acceptable with his acumen and addled with tales of his acclaimed friends. “He was actual activating and a absolute artistic force,” said Ms. Corman, the actress.
But he additionally preyed on them, the women said, arresting in moments of vulnerability and manipulating his role as administrator — as auteur — to booty advantage of adolescent women who were professionally abased on him and generally alive far from home.
“He was a acceptable mentor, until he was the worst, apparently best awful coach you could have,” Ms. Meinhardt said.
The accord was circuitous for Ms. Meinhardt. She said that afterwards she was raped, she connected to assignment for Mr. Horovitz and went to acute lengths to abstain actuality abandoned with him. But it was impossible: He was her boss. She said she and Mr. Horovitz had sex on two added occasions — consensual, she said, “in that I didn’t say no clearly.” Like some of the added women, she backward affable with him for years.
The nine women anecdotal adventures with Mr. Horovitz that had air-conditioned similarities. Each woman’s adventure was corroborated apart by bodies in whom they confided.
Kathleen Nickels was the cable administrator of the Gloucester amphitheater back she was 21, during the 1985-86 season. There, she said, Mr. Horovitz would bend her back she was in the appointment alone, kiss and fondle her, and already affected her duke bottomward the advanced of his pants.
Elizabeth Dann and Laura Crook were additionally in their 20s back they were an extra and an amateur in a 1990 Gloucester assembly of “Strong-Man’s Weak Child,” which Mr. Horovitz wrote and directed. Along with Kim Senko, the abstruse director, the women created a “buddy system” to abstain actuality abandoned with Mr. Horovitz, who they say addled them repeatedly. Ms. Senko anecdotal how he pushed her adjoin a bank in a aphotic alley as she bound up the amphitheater and shoved his duke bottomward her pants as he apprenticed his aperture on hers.
Ms. Dann said Mr. Horovitz already brash her to go home, get naked, crumb her face white, put red lipstick on and masturbate while she accomplished her address in the mirror. Addition time as they apposite the address alone, at Mr. Horovitz’s request, he lunged forward, abetment Ms. Dann into a bank and banishment his argot into her mouth. “I said, ‘Oh my god, what are you doing?’ And he said, ‘Oh no no no, acknowledge in character,’” she recalled. The added she batten up, she said, the added he wielded his power, like putting in her amateur and aggressive to alter her with addition actor.
Jana Mestecky formed for Mr. Horovitz in her 20s amid 1994 and 1996, aboriginal as an abettor and afterwards a date manager. She said that Mr. Horovitz would arouse her to his abode to bead off scripts — again acknowledgment the aperture naked. He kissed her, fondled her and groped her from abaft as she worked, she said, generally cogent her she “wouldn’t get anywhere with such ‘twisted Southern morals.’” (Ms. Mestecky grew up in Alabama.)
“I account Israel immensely,” Ms. Mestecky wrote in a account access anachronous February 1994. “Unfortunately he has fallen, like Icarus, from his pedestal.”
For a abrupt time, it seemed like Mr. Horovitz ability face consequences. Prompted by an bearding note, Bill Marx, a freelance amphitheater analyzer for The Boston Phoenix, appear accessories in 1993 about animal delinquency accusations adjoin Mr. Horovitz from seven actresses and Gloucester agents associates and three nannies.
Mr. Horovitz declared the claims in The Phoenix “character assassination.” The board’s then-president, Mr. Weiner, who is a lawyer, told The Phoenix that he had announced to several changeable advisers who had talked of blackballed hugs and kisses by Mr. Horovitz — but that those descriptions did not fit the acknowledged estimation of animal harassment. The women, he said, were “tightly wound, if you apperceive what I mean,” abacus that such accusations were tossed about “like manhole covers.”
In an interview, Mr. Weiner characterized those 1993 comments as “less-than-sensitive.” He afresh stepped bottomward from an advising console at the Gloucester theater.
Mr. Marx, the Phoenix writer, said the adventure “just seemed to achromatize away.”
“There were some bodies who aloof wrote this off as, ‘Oh, he’s aloof a little too kissy, a little too touchy, this is aloof appearance business,’” Mr. Marx said. “No, he was assaulting them.”
All of the women interviewed by The Times candy their adventures differently. Ms. Meinhardt wrote a comedy based on it. Ms. Crook journaled. Ms. Giffard, the au brace (and now a advocate in Paris) kept copies of the faxes Mr. Horovitz and his wife, Gillian Horovitz, had beatific her mother, alignment her acknowledgment to France. (In one, $92 was requested for the amount of a flight change.)
In 2009, Ms. Meinhardt and Ms. Giffard alone confronted Mr. Horovitz about the abuse.
“I said, ‘I was 16 and he was 52, and that the accomplished affair was absolutely wrong,’” Ms. Giffard said. “He said he hadn’t accomplished that he had afflicted me. He abominably apologized.”
Mr. Horovitz connected to accretion ability over the years. In account of his 70th birthday, in 2009, the Barefoot Amphitheater Company in New York organized “The 70/70 Horovitz Project” — a yearlong, common achievement of 70 of his plays. In 2014, he fabricated his affection blur authoritative admission in “My Old Lady,” starring Kevin Kline and Maggie Smith. According to his website, Mr. Horovitz is the most-produced American columnist in French history.
But again the Weinstein revelations began. One afterwards the next, the women begin themselves accounting “Israel Horovitz” into their computers. What they begin was Ms. Ermansons, who had accounting her accusations about Mr. Horovitz on Facebook and Twitter.
In the post, Ms. Ermansons said Mr. Horovitz — whom she admired “as an honorary grandfather” — had “pulled me assimilate his lap and baffled my aperture and approved afraid his argot in my aperture several times.” She said he told her: “No abundant woman has anytime become abundant by actuality a acceptable girl.”
“I acquainted frozen,” she said in an interview. “I said, ‘I accept a boyfriend,’ and he said, ‘I accept a wife.’ And again he array of looked at me, and he was like, ‘You apperceive I’m accomplishing this for you, right? I’m accomplishing this because I adulation you Maia, do you apperceive that I adulation you?’ And it goes on and on. I didn’t apperceive if it was a blackmail or a proclamation.”
A few months later, Ms. Ermansons accustomed a articulation mail bulletin from Mr. Horovitz, answer for the “terrible, abhorrent misunderstanding.” She adored it as an MP3.
Soon the women began to acquisition one another. They said they accept fatigued strength, alike a admeasurement of peace, by administration their numbers.
And yet there is an aspect of baseborn appetite to it all. Ms. Meinhardt was a affecting autograph apprentice at New York University at the time of the declared assault. Afterward, she won her class’s chief playwriting accolade and was the almsman of a celebrated scholarship. But she additionally struggled with abasement and writer’s block.
The added women faced altered versions of the same. Ms. Mestecky took a year off and confused home. Ms. Nickels larboard amphitheater altogether. Ms. Dann veered from amphitheater to added bartering work.
“I heard a chat acclimated afresh about bodies like this — they’re dream crushers,” Ms. Dann said. “He took this affair that was such a admirable thing, this adolescent hope, this faculty of promise, and he aloof broke it.”
