See Labbe’s role in handling allegations against McEnany, Beaulieu, and Argencourt. In his supervisory roles, Labbe kept other accused Brothers in ministry and did not report allegations. The order’s provincial from 1985 to 1991, and headmaster of Bishop Guertin when the allegation surfaced, Labbe said he was innocent but put himself on administrative leave. In November 2002, attorney Hutchins used old yearbooks and handwriting samples to convince the order’s lawyer that Brother Leo Labbe was the “Brother Gerald” accused of abusing an 11-year-old boy in 1960 at Sacred Heart Boarding School in Andover MA. Before 1970, religious order clerics, like nuns, often were known only by chosen first names. During that time, by his own count, he molested 15 to 20 boys at Bishop Guertin and several more at Camp Fatima, a summer camp owned by the diocese of Manchester.Ĭompounding the difficulty of holding religious orders accountable is the fact that many victims do not know their abusers’ real names. Instead he was allowed to transfer to Bishop Guertin High School, where he worked as a golf coach and math teacher for 20 years. The supervisors were the assistant headmaster, Brother Leo Labbe S.C., and the provincial superior, Brother Ronald Dupuis S.C.Īccording to Beaulieu, the order did nothing to discipline or monitor him. In his December 2002 deposition, Beaulieu also said that he had informed supervisors in 1970 that he had molested a 15-year-old student that year at the Sacred Heart Prep School in Pascoag, Rhode Island. Charles Academy in Woonsocket.Ībuser says supervisors concealed his crime When he died suddenly in September 2002, RI law enforcement was preparing to charge him with several counts of first- and second-degree child molestation that occurred in the 1980s when the cleric was at Mt. Brother Roger Argencourt was transferred to the order’s schools in Zambia in 1978 after telling a spiritual counselor that he had assaulted boys at Bishop Guertin. said that he had molested children at all but one of his assignments. In a December 2002 deposition by NH plaintiff attorney Peter Hutchins, Brother Guy Beaulieu S.C. Every one of its schools in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island was staffed at times by alleged or admitted abusers. The NE Province appears to have circulated nearly all of its members, including those accused of child sexual abuse, among most or all of its facilities. Despite recent cases, its large number of alleged child molesters, and a 2003 class action lawsuit that accused it of having a “lax and tolerant attitude” toward sexual abuse, the NE Province largely has escaped the scrutiny of journalists and prosecutors.Įvery MA, NH, and RI school staffed by accused clericsĪ reason the Brothers have eluded attention is that like many religious orders, they own facilities in several states and countries, and members are rotated frequently across jurisdictions. After the boy revealed the abuse in confession to the school’s chaplain, he was summoned to meet with the headmaster, Brother Jean-Rosaire, S.C., who warned him that if he told anyone else about the abuse, he would not be believed and would go to hell.īrother Regis is the 12th publicly accused member of the New England Province, which at its peak in the early 1970’s had only 302 members and today has 65. He alleges that in 19, as a 14-year-old attending the Sacred Heart Boarding School in Sharon MA, he was fondled and raped orally and anally by Brother Regis, S.C. The plaintiff is a retired police officer from Pawtucket, Rhode Island. of the Norfolk County Superior Court in Massachusetts ruled that a complaint filed against clerics of the New England Province of the Brothers of the Sacred Heart could be amended to include a count of “breach of fiduciary duty.” As of October 2012, the case is moving toward trial. Brothers of the Sacred Heart Accused of Sexually Abusing Children Īgainst the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, New England Province
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