Rachel Hochhauser, who works for the Manhattan District Attorney’s White Collar Crime Division, is emblematic of our unofficial school mantra: “From the classroom to the world.” After three years of serving abroad prosecuting war criminals from the Yugoslavian War of the 1990s at the International Court at The Hague in The Netherlands, Ms. Hochhuaser returned to New York City to resume her work with the Manhattan D.A. Her life is a fascinating mixture of public service in the field of law and order.
At Fieldston, Mr. Montera recalls, “Rachel was a remarkable history and literature student. She was quite precocious. She was that rare 8th grader who could explain T.S. Eliot’s “Prufrock” poem. By her senior year she had an impressive command of national and
international politics.She was a natural teacher and very community minded.” Graduating from Fieldston in 1991 under the guidance of Dean Arthur Whitman, Hochhauser continued her studies at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating in 1995. Hochhauser took a year off to travel Vietnam and then returned to New York City for law school.
Hochhauser, whose voice is filled with energy, had always taken an interest in international law. “With the importance of social justice that Fieldston ingrains in you,” Hochhauser knew she wanted to pursue a career that, “had nothing to do with sitting behind a desk,” and definitely included “pursuing justice for victims.”
She applied to the Manhattan DA’s office in 1999 and received an offer. After just a short period of time she realized that, “It hit all the right bells.” It was especially enjoyable because it was demonstrative of, “all the good things you learn at Fieldston, particularly to stick up for the little guy.”
After spending three years working on violent crime cases she moved to the Sex Crimes Unit and worked there for another three years. In 2005 she joined the Child Abuse Bureau working to prosecute sex offenders, child murderers, and sexual assailants. Then, in 2010, she went back to violent crime and started to mentor new lawyers coming into the DA’s office. In 2011, she applied to an international criminal tribunal to prosecute war criminals from the wars that grew out of the collapse of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Following the collapse of Cold War communism in Eastern European states like Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and The Soviet Union itself, other authoritarian communist regimes, in places like The Balkans, also imploded. In Yugoslavia it led to a scramble for nationalist leadership and hideous explosion of
violent ethnocentrism. The ambitions of Serbian nationalists conflicted with the ambitions and desires of Croatians, Bosnians and Montenegrins. It was here that Ms. Hochhauser’s sense of history and research skills came in handy. Hochhauser was part of a team responsible for the prosecution of a Bosnian Serb general who was one of the top two people responsible for acts of genocide that occurred during that time.
One of the most interesting ironies about her time on the tribunal is that she used a documentary”The Fall of Yugoslavia” that was directed and produced by another Fieldston alum, Laura Silber, as evidence to help put him away. “I also found out that Laura Silber is the daughter of Barbara Silber, who was the chair of the Science Department at Fieldston during my years at the school.”
After three years at the Hague, Rachel returned to the DA’s office in 2014 and started to focus on economic crimes in the wake of the Wall Street scandals following the 2009 economic crisis. “Working at the Hague was an incredibly eye opening and interesting experience. I got to work with lawyers from all over the world; I experienced the world as melting pot. When I returned to New York I began working on white collar crimes a big and important job here in the Economic Capital of the World.”
It was also a homecoming for her: Hochhauser felt that at the DA’s office she was more connected to her cases because they were happening right there in her city. Hochhauser is proud of the justice system while simultaneously recognizing that, “ that all criminal justice systems and all prosecutors should strive for improvement and that there is always room to improve”and of her department for, “giving a voice to someone who doesn’t have one.” She said it was especially gratifying working on child abuse cases because it was, “all encompassing and you really feel like you are helping someone.”
Hochhauser concluded by saying that, “The education I got Fieldston is the best I’ve ever gotten in my life and I would not have done this kind of public sector work if it weren’t for Fieldston. It is truly a special educational environment.” In a second phone interview Ms. Hochhauser elaborated on this by saying that “Fieldston facilitated analytical thinking on how exactly to do the right thing, even outside of ethics classes. That was something wonderfully unique about Fieldston.”
