Religious Order Settles With Alleged Abuse Victims, Claims Filed Against 3 Local High Schools

A settlement has been reached between an order of Catholic brothers and more than 400 victims of sexual abuse, including former students at Brother Rice, St. Laurence and Leo high schools. 

The $16.5 million settlement comes after the Christian Brothers of Ireland and the Christian Brothers Institute filed for bankruptcy in April 2011 because of sexual abuse lawsuits, court documents show. 

The settlement will be divided amongst the over 400 individuals who came forward to allege sexual abuse at the hands of Christian Brothers or at schools run by the order, according to Mark McKenna, a Chicago lawyer who represents around 30 of the alleged victims. 

He says the settlement is a positive step that other religious orders and archdioceses in other parts of the country have not taken when it comes to alleged abuse victims. 

"To a man, the most important thing is that the institution is acknowledging that these events happened and that it was wrong," McKenna said.

A retired judge in San Francisco is set to review the statements from each of the complainants and will then create a scale for compensation, McKenna said.

This settlement does not end the process for his clients. The order's international base in Rome can still be sued. It was there McKenna said, that the superior of the order signed the documents that moved known abusers to other schools.

In addition, McKenna says about 30 men have signed on as complainants in lawsuits against Brother Rice, St. Laurence and Leo. These suits are directed at the individual corporations that run those schools.

"If there is a victim out there that still hasn't come forward, they still have an avenue of recovery to pursue a case in circuit court," McKenna said.

As Patch documented in April 2012, court records show that the order was aware of abuse allegations against one of its brothers, yet continued to place him in teaching positions at other schools. 

Read: Religious Order Knew of Molestation Charges at Brother Rice: Court Records

Brother Edward Courtney, who ran extracurricular activities and held various teaching and administrative roles at Brother Rice from 1960 to 1968, was moved to another school in Seattle after complaints were made by Chicago area students, according to attorneys from the Seattle-based firm of Pfau Cochran Vertetis Amala PLLC, who represented the alleged Seattle victims.

That law firm has settled a total of 20 cases against Courtney alone. He also worked at Leo and St. Laurence. In 1974 he was transferred to a school in Seattle. 

Over the course of the Seattle-based law firm's representation of abuse victims in Washington state, they discovered documents that showed he was transferred after allegations that he had molested a freshman student at St. Laurence. 

The two other Chicago-based educators who were pinpointed as alleged abusers were D.P. Ryan, who died in 2009, and Robert Brouillette. Both men worked at Brother Rice.

Brouillette was found to have child pornography on his computer and was caught in a sting operation after arranging a meeting with a 12-year-old. After four years at a treatment center for clergymen he was thrown out of the the Irish Christian Brothers, according to the Sun-Times.

In addition to the $16.5 million settlement, the Irish Christian Brothers have also agreed to a number of new measures that were created to protect other children from sexual abuse.

A stipulation McKenna says was of the utmost importance to his clients. 

-Lorraine Swanson contributed to this report. 

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