A legal industry built on private school sex abuse

While many firms have done just one or two of these investigations, a few major players have emerged in the field

It has become almost routine in recent months: An elite prep school announces the result of an outside investigation revealing how faculty members sexually abused their students, while administrators did little, if anything, to protect the children in their care.

For the schools, which include places like Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass.; the Pingry School in New Jersey; Choate Rosemary Hall in Connecticut and dozens more, the investigations are a way of owning up to past misconduct, and pledging that in a more transparent and enlightened time, children are safer in their hands.

For the victims, the investigations can be healing, a