MILWAUKEE (WI)
Journal Sentinel [Milwaukee WI]
July 10, 2026
By Sophie Carson
A Wisconsin woman is suing the Archdiocese of Milwaukee and St. Matthias Catholic Parish and School, alleging the institutions did not investigate reports a fourth-grade teacher was sexually abusing students and allowed him to keep tutoring other children even after parents raised concerns.
That former teacher, Kevin Buelow, was sentenced in 2024 in two separate trials to more than 26 years in prison for sexually assaulting five girls at both St. Matthias, in Milwaukee, and Holy Apostles Catholic Parish and School, in New Berlin. The assaults at St. Matthias occurred between 2010 and 2012, and at Holy Apostles between 2013 and 2018.
The woman who filed the lawsuit is unnamed in the complaint. She was 11 years old at the time of the abuse, the complaint said, and as a teenager became the first person to come forward and report Buelow’s abuse to police.
The case “represents a larger pattern of putting warning signs aside and not focusing on protecting children when that should be the top priority,” said attorney Jacob Goodman, from the Michigan-based Fierberg National Law Group, which brought the lawsuit along with the Milwaukee-based Pitman, Kalkhoff, Sicula & Dentice firm.
The case was filed June 30 in Milwaukee County.
A spokesperson for the archdiocese said it would not comment on a pending legal case.
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The lawsuit alleges:
After a child’s mother first reported Buelow had inappropriately touched the girl during a one-on-one tutoring session, Susan Booth, who was then the St. Matthias school principal, said she would speak with Buelow. Buelow denied what had happened.
Booth was “shirking her duty as a mandatory reporter,” the complaint said, and did not share the report with anyone at the parish or school.
Even after that first report, the lawsuit said, Booth, the school and the archdiocese allowed Buelow to tutor another child – the plaintiff in the suit – one-on-one throughout the summer of 2013, and they never told her parents about the first child’s report.
The lawsuit said the then-parish director, Jeff Van Dalen, also caught Buelow on a couch with the plaintiff with the door partially closed, and he became suspicious. Van Dalen brought the concern to Booth, but Booth told the director to speak with Buelow himself, the suit said.
“No investigation or other meaningful action followed,” the complaint said.
The tutoring sessions took place in St. Matthias’s “bridal ready room.” The lawsuit said the school and archdiocese had the ability to control their employee, Buelow, and “knew or should have known” he was meeting with children in secluded areas of the school without adequate supervision, but “nonetheless permitted this practice to continue.”
Booth and school officials then did not tell families at St. Matthias why Buelow was leaving. They also did not tell Holy Apostles administrators, who then hired Buelow. He was later convicted of abusing three girls at Holy Apostles.
“Holy Apostles received no warning or other notice from St. Matthias or from the Archdiocese of Milwaukee despite both schools being under its jurisdiction about the allegations leveled against Buelow preceding his transfer,” the complaint said.
Booth and other school officials “deliberately chose” not to investigate complaints against Buelow, not to report Buelow to law enforcement as mandated reporters, and not to restrict his unsupervised access to children, the suit said.
The lawsuit alleges the officials failed to enforce the archdiocese’s own policies around preventing child sexual abuse, which are called the “Safeguarding All God’s Children” policies.
As a result of the abuse, the plaintiff suffered “severe emotional distress, including, but not limited to, intense fear, shame, anxiety, depression, intrusive memories, sleep disturbance, and other serious psychological injuries that have profoundly interfered with her daily life and functioning,” the complaint said.
The plaintiff received several mental health diagnoses, including post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and depression and anxiety disorders. She struggled emotionally in college and had to drop out of school, the complaint said.
The plaintiff’s “life has become a shell of what she worked so hard to achieve,” the complaint said.
The lawsuit asks for compensation at an amount to be determined at trial.
Sophie Carson is a general assignment reporter who reports on religion and faith, immigrants and refugees and more. Contact her at scarson@gannett.com or 920-323-5758.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Woman sues Archdiocese of Milwaukee, St. Matthias over former teacher’s child sex abuse