PENNSYLVANIA
Philadelphia Inquirer
[Audit Records: Diocese of Manchester and New Hampshire Attorney General – summary audit records on LeDoux – BishopAccountability.org]
[case file – BishopAccountability.org]
[Audit Records: Diocese of Manchester and New Hampshire Attorney General – entire Manchester audit archive – BishopAccountability.org]
Susan Snyder and John P. Martin, Inquirer Staff Writers
Posted: Friday, January 4, 2013
A Widener University dean who is also a Franciscan priest resigned in July after school officials learned he had been accused of sexually abusing a teenage boy in the 1980s.
Michael Ledoux, 55, had worked at Widener for nine years, and in recent years supervised student teachers at the Widener Partnership Charter School, which has students from kindergarten through the seventh grade.
The accusation was reported in 2003 to church officials in New Hampshire, where Ledoux served more than two decades ago. Widener officials learned about it this past summer through a tip.
University president James T. Harris III told Ledoux he was placing him on administrative leave pending an investigation but Ledoux chose to resign, Widener spokesman Dan Hanson said. The university has found no evidence of complaints or improper behavior during Ledoux’s tenure there, Hanson said.
The accuser never pressed charges or pursued a lawsuit, but there was a settlement. Reached by e-mail, Ledoux, who now lives at a Franciscan facility in New York, declined to discuss the matter but maintained his innocence.
His case illustrates a thorny issue for schools, communities, and religious orders around Philadelphia and the country in the decade since the clergy sex-abuse scandal exploded. Credible allegations emerged against hundreds of priests or former priests, but more often than not, the accusations were too old to be prosecuted or litigated.
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