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  Former Jesuit College Prep Staffers Accused of Abuse

Associated Press
April 24, 2002

Three past staff members at the Jesuit College Preparatory School in Dallas reportedly have been accused of sexual abuse.

The Dallas Morning News reported the school's current president has acknowledged firing a maintenance supervisor, Brother Claude Ory, in 1994 after repeatedly hearing allegations of sexual impropriety, providing alcohol to minors and ultimately sexual assault.

The newspaper also reported:

- The Rev. Vincent Orlando, a former teacher at the North Dallas boys' school, was suspended from a Catholic school in Tampa, Fla., after allegations of sexual misconduct with a minor while stationed in Texas in 1985.

- An official with the religious order said he had removed another Jesuit Prep teacher, the Rev. Don Dickerson, in the early 1980s because of sexual misconduct. The official, the Rev. Tom Stahel, said he could not remember the specifics of the case. Dickerson left the order in the mid-1980s and no longer functions as a priest, Stahel told the newspaper.

Ory, now minister of a Jesuit residence house at Loyola College in Baltimore, Md., admitted to The Morning News the alcohol allegations but denied any sexual wrongdoing. He was never criminally charged. Orlando was not available for comment, The Tampa Tribune was told. The News reported that Dickerson could not be located for comment.

Ory's accuser, whom the newspaper did not identify, said Tuesday he was an 18-year-old recent Jesuit graduate working on a campus maintenance crew to repay a tuition debt when the incident happened.

The man said that after a day's work in the mid-1990s, Ory supplied him large quantities of alcohol, both on and off campus. He said he believes the brother also spiked a drink with an unknown hallucinogen. They ended up at an off-campus apartment, where he said Ory took advantage of his intoxication by groping him and trying to perform a sex act.

The accuser said he ran from the apartment, wearing no shirt or shoes, and ultimately found a ride home from a friend who lived nearby. He said he reported the incident within days to Dallas police and school officials.

In an interview with The Morning News, Ory denied drugging or assaulting his accuser, but he admitted to providing him with alcohol. Ory said he had a drinking problem himself for which he later received treatment.

Ory said he thinks he drank with his accuser because "I was trying to bond." He said he discouraged him from going home to his parents that night because the young man was so inebriated.

"He wanted to go home, and I said, 'No, you stay right here,' " Ory said. "I don't accuse myself of pedophilia."

Senior Cpl. Diana Watts, a police spokeswoman, said department policy prevented her from commenting on any aspect of a sexual assault case.

Postell said he had no proof of the man's account. He said he fired Ory about this time because he suspected him of drinking on the job, but he acknowledged having received several previous allegations of sexual impropriety against Ory, including harassment of young adult laborers.

He said he played no role in Ory's subsequent reassignment to a Jesuit college in Mobile, Ala., or his later move to Loyola in Baltimore.

Stahel already was investigating a molestation allegation against one of Postell's predecessors as president of Jesuit Prep. The newspaper reported last week that the Rev. Thomas Naughton was accused of molesting a sophomore in 1978, when he was the school's president. He has been suspended from a California church and has declined to comment.

Stahel would not detail the allegations against Naughton or Orlando. The News reported it was not clear where Orlando was working in 1985, the year in which he is alleged to have committed abuse. He worked at Jesuit schools in Houston and Dallas before going to Tampa in 2000.

Postell said Tuesday that Naughton was removed suddenly because of a drinking problem. He said he learned only recently of allegations reported to school officials in 1979 about Naughton.

Those allegations were that Naughton reached into a locker-room whirlpool to grope a young faculty member and that he was seen in the one-person tub with someone else as student athletes returned from a game.

 
 

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