FLORIDA
Miami Herald
BY JAY WEAVER
JWEAVER@MIAMIHERALD.COM
At his Catholic high school, he seemed to have everything going for him: decent grades, lots of friends and a real shot at winning the state wrestling championship in his weight class.
But in his senior year at Monsignor Edward Pace High School, he started skipping school and flunking classes. And he quit the wrestling team.
All to avoid one man: Marist Brother Ken Ward, the Miami Gardens school’s dean of students.
“I would drive from Aventura to Pace, but I couldn’t be there because of him, so I would turn around,” said the former student, now 27. “I was so embarrassed inside because I let him touch me.”
Ward, who was in charge of discipline at the Archdiocese of Miami school, would regularly summon him on the P.A. system to his office and instruct him to undress, according to the former Pace student’s lawsuit filed this month against Ward and the archdiocese. As a ruse, he said, the dean would accuse him of using steroids so he could inspect his muscular body, with the office blinds shut so no one else could see.
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