MISSOURI
Riverfront Times
Posted By Danny Wicentowski on Thu, Nov 5, 2015
The latest addition to a string of lawsuits filed against Chaminade College Preparatory School accuses a now-deceased Marianist Brother, John Woulfe, of repeatedly molesting a high school student between 1968 and 1971.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in St. Louis County Circuit Court, alleges that Wolfe used his position as a guidance counselor at the exclusive all-boys’ school to schedule closed-door “college counselling” meetings with the victim, identified in the suit only as John Doe. Over the course of several sessions, Woulfe allegedly masturbated and performed oral sex on the student.
Woulfe died in 2005, three years after a different Chaminade alumnus accused him of similar abuses during private meetings in Woulfe’s office. Father Martin Solma, head of the St. Louis-based Marianist Catholic Order, revealed in 2012 that more than a dozen former students have come forward alleging sexual abuse involving Woulfe and other members of the order, including Brother Louis Meinhardt. Last month, Chaminade agreed to pay a $300,000 settlement to a former student who said Meinhardt sexually abused him during a typing tutoring session.
According to the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, at least eight Marianist clergy members have been accused of sexual abuse going back to the 1960s. The Marianists run three St. Louis-area high schools: Chaminade, St. John Vianney and St. Mary’s.
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