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	Priest, Principal Deny Abuse of Boy at Northbrook School By Daniel J. Lehmann Chicago Sun-Times June 25, 1994 A Roman Catholic priest and a former principal denied Friday allegations they sexually and physically abused a schoolboy six years ago. "There's absolutely no truth to any of it," the Rev. Robert J. Lutz told a packed courtroom in the Daley Center. Lutz and Alice Halpin responded firmly with "no," "never" and "absolutely not" that they hit, kicked, swore at, rolled naked on the floor in front of or sexually assaulted the youth, then a second-grader at St. Norbert school in Northbrook. "Richard Doe," now 13, testified two weeks earlier in the $ 7 million civil lawsuit that Lutz and Halpin subjected him to profanity and physical abuse in the 1987-88 school year. Doe also said the pair appeared unclothed before him, and he told authorities Lutz rubbed his penis in his face. The boy's allegations unfolded between July, 1988, and January, 1989, in a series of talks with his parents. They increased in seriousness, from verbal to physical and sexual abuse. Local, Cook County and state authorities investigated, and no charges were filed. The youth's parents sued in July, 1989, and were eventually countersued by Lutz, 69, and Halpin, 49. "John and Jane Doe" testified earlier this week their son complained of being repeatedly "beaten" by schoolmates during recesses. He also told them he was taken to Halpin's office on numerous occasions in both the first and second grade, where the abuse took place in the second year. Both defendants said they were never alone in a room with the boy in his two years at the school. Halpin said she recalled seeing the boy twice -- once when he suffered a bloody nose from a football that hit him in the nose and again following a yelling and pushing match with a few other boys that was amiably resolved. Lutz, wearing a black suit and a clerical collar, said he met the parents in July, 1989, over a reported "discipline problem on the playground." He referred them to Halpin. Halpin, a former Sister of Mercy, said she met twice with the parents. The playground was supervised at all times by two paid teachers aides, Halpin said she told them, and "the situation was not as their son described." The Does withdrew their son from the school, with Halpin saying the boy's father was "very irate." Halpin left the school in 1991 because "the stress was too much" and now teaches math at an inner-city Roman Catholic school, she said. Defense attorney Patricia C. Bobb asked Halpin, who spent 13 years as a principal at two schools, if she planned to seek such a post again. "I don't think I could do it," Halpin said.
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