CALIFORNIA
Los Angeles Daily News
By Brenda Gazzar, Los Angeles Daily News
For nearly four decades, Allan Bruce said he held a closely guarded secret involving the Catholic Church.
While a student at the private Crespi Carmelite High School in Encino, Bruce said he was repeatedly fondled — sometimes plied with alcohol beforehand — by a religious brother from 1984 to 1986. Bruce, then a Saugus resident, claims Brother Damien Chong sexually abused him at least 30 times in his quarters after inviting him to sleep there after football practice.
“I think the betrayal was the hardest part; he was supposed to be my friend and look after me and that wasn’t what happened,” the 47-year-old Bruce, who lives in Massachusetts, said by phone Monday. “I didn’t tell my parents or anybody. One, I didn’t think they would believe me and two, the school probably wouldn’t believe me either. I was just a C student from Saugus.”
Bruce was awarded a five-figure out-of-court settlement against the Carmelite Fathers and Brothers religious order last March involving the late Brother Chong — one of 16 Catholic priests, religious brothers, nuns or employees nationwide accused of alleged sexual abuse in which settlements were reached in the last few years and made public on Monday. The exact amount of Bruce’s settlement was not disclosed.
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