DETROIT (MI)
The Detroit News
By Oralandar Brand-Williams
The Detroit News
Detroit — Metro Detroit activists want the Archdiocese of Detroit to investigate whether a priest who killed himself last weekend in Pennsylvania was accused of molesting youngsters while serving at an Oakland County school in the mid-1980s.
Franciscan brother Stephen P. Baker, who was assigned to St. Mary’s Prep in Orchard Lake from 1983-85, was found dead Saturday of reported self-inflicted stab wounds to the chest.
Baker’s suicide in the St. Bernadine Monastery in Newry, Pa., occurred a week and a half after a legal settlement by 11 men who said Baker sexually abused when they were youngsters and he served as a priest in Ohio and Pennsylvania. After the settlement was announced Jan. 16, 60 more accusers came forward, said Matt Jatczak, a representative of the Detroit area office of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.
Jatczak was joined at a news conference by a SNAP member from Canada who accompanied him to try to deliver a letter Wednesday at the Archdiocese of Detroit’s downtown office on Washington Boulevard. The letter asks Detroit Archbishop Allen Vigneron to investigate whether Baker molested any students while employed by St. Mary’s.
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