Activists Want Action From Cardinal, Vatican On Abuse
CHICAGO (WBBM) - A 77-year-old Catholic educator who is the focus of a sex scandal involving the Christian Brothers religious order lived until recently for a number of years in Bronzeville.
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Activists want to know if he molested any Chicago residents.
Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests founder Barbara Blaine said Brother Raimond Rose lived for at least 10 years near De La Salle Institute, at 35th Street and Michigan Avenue.
Blaine said lawsuits settled by the order in three states involving Brother Rose mention Chicago.
"Children from California, Minnesota and North Dakota were actually brought here, to Chicago, and abused here in Chicago on trips," Blaine said, citing documents released in out-of-court settlements involving the accusations against Rose.
Blaine said the group wants to know if any students from Chicago's De La Salle Institute were targeted.
She accuses the order's current vicar general, Brother Thomas Johnson, of lying about Rose's access to children and problems in two letters obtained by the Associated Press.
In one letter, Brother Johnson, who at that time was the order's Midwest leader, wrote a victim that Brother Rose had been forbidden from contact with anyone under the age of 18 and was working in the prison.
Blaine said Brother Johnson's letter neglected to say that the prison in question was for males ages 10 through 21. At least one inmate claims that Rose molested him.
Rose had worked at the prison about four years before officials there heard about sex-abuse allegations stemming from his years at Christian Brothers schools. When a prison official contacted Johnson, he pleaded ignorance.
"Until this accusation, I was unaware of any problem with Brother Raimond,'' Johnson wrote the state's deputy commissioner of corrections in a 1998 letter obtained by the AP - three years after his letter to Price. "Our files did not contain any reference to the fact that he was not to work with minors.''
Johnson is now based at the Christian Brothers' headquarters in Rome. He did not respond to an e-mail from the AP. The man who succeeded him as the order's Midwest leader, Brother Francis Carr, said Johnson and other Christian Brothers could not be interviewed.
Blaine said she wants sanctions against Brother Johnson from the Vatican, and wants Cardinal George to request them.
Cardinal George has been reluctant to seek discipline when the Catholic religious involved are members of a religious order, as opposed to diocesan priests.
Carr declined to provide contact information for Rose himself, who now lives at what Carr called an "adult health facility'' in Pennsylvania.
Rose "will not have any contact with minors,'' Carr wrote.
A Louisiana native, Rose became a brother in 1963. Brothers make vows of poverty, celibacy and obedience and live in religious communities, but they are not ordained as priests and do not preside over Mass or administer other sacraments.
Rose went on to teach religion and history classes at De La Salle High School in Minneapolis; Pacelli High School in Stevens Point, Wis.; Cretin High School in St. Paul, Minn.; Shanley High School in Fargo, N.D.; and the De La Salle High in California. He also worked at Dunrovin Retreat Center in Marine on St. Croix, Minn. Each of those postings later prompted at least one lawsuit claiming sexual abuse.
Many of the accusations followed a similar pattern: Rose allegedly took a boy or groups of boys on school trips, gave them alcohol and then molested one or two after everyone had fallen asleep or passed out.
