CHICAGO (IL)
Chicago Tribune
By Manya A. Brachear, Chicago Tribune reporter
11:44 p.m. CDT, May 23, 2013
The Roman Catholic religious order that runs Brother Rice High School in Chicago and St. Laurence High School in Burbank didn’t want Brother Edward Chrysostom Courtney in Chicago any longer. So in the early 1970s, the Irish Christian Brothers shipped him to the West Coast and kept the troubling reasons to themselves.
When he was finally ousted from the parochial system 10 years later, landed in a public school in rural Washington and sexually abused a boy there, those reasons came to light. Law enforcement finally got involved. The Christian Brothers dismissed Courtney from the order shortly before he pleaded guilty to indecent liberties with a child in Washington and became a convicted sex offender.
On Thursday, more than 80 alumni of both schools plus Leo High School, also once run by the order, learned they would receive compensation from a lawsuit against the order for allowing Courtney and 11 other men to teach despite allegations that those men had sexually abused children.
The $16.5 million payout to 400 accusers nationwide will come out of a Chapter 11 reorganization settlement between creditors and the Edmund Rice Christian Brothers North American Province, known as Irish Christian Brothers. In addition, the order agreed to enforce a zero-tolerance policy for brothers accused of abuse.
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