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The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests

SNAP Press Statements


Statement Regarding Judge's Ruling on Parole Violation of St. Louis Sex Offender


For immediate release:
Friday, Mar. 26, 2004

Statement by SNAP leader SNAP leader David Clohessy,
National Director of SNAP, 314 566 9790 cell

Brother Robert Brouillette, A Convicted Sex Offender, Goes Free Today

We are very distraught about today's decision to set free a cleric who has molested youngsters.

It is devastating because again a dangerous man is set free instead of being locked up.

It is tragic that a cowardly judge hid behind a legal technicality to put boys at risk again. We hope that Will County voters will keep Judge Daniel J. Rozak's reckless action in mind on election day.

We pray that anyone who experienced, witnessed or suspected abuse by Brouillette finds the courage to call the police and prosecutors.

And we pray that those who have been so severely hurt by this cleric persist in their pursuit of justice and in their efforts at healing and prevention. Our hearts ache for them.

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SNAP: Jail Christian brother
Former St. Laurence counselor accused of violating probation in child porn case

Friday, March 26, 2004
By Ted Slowik
- The Joliet Daily News

A group that represents people who were sexually abused by priests wants a judge to jail a Joliet Christian brother who corresponded with one of his alleged victims while on probation. Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests claims Brother Robert Brouillette, 60, wrote to one of his alleged victims in July 2000." In (the letter), Brouillette begs the victim not to report him," said David Clohessy of St. Louis, SNAP's executive director. "To us, that shows he is unrepentant and unreformed."

Brouillette was a counselor at St. Laurence High School in Burbank.Will County Judge Daniel J. Rozak is scheduled to decide this morning if Brouillette, who was convicted of possessing child pornography and soliciting a minor for sex, violated conditions of his sentence and whether he should spend the next six months in jail. In a letter to Rozak, SNAP urges the judge to put Brouillette behind bars.

Brouillette was sentenced to four years probation in March of 2000 for using the Internet to arrange a meeting with a police investigator who posed as a 12-year-old boy. When authorities raided his room in the religious order's residence at 958 Western Ave. in Joliet, Brouillette led them to a cache of child pornography. At the time of his arrest in 1998, Brouillette was working at St. Laurence High School.

In a civil lawsuit filed in 2002 in Cook County and still pending, a then-21-year-old man alleged that Brouillette sexually assaulted him during his freshman and sophomore years at St. Laurence. The suit alleges that officials with the college preparatory school and the Archdiocese of Chicago knew Brouillette had a 30-year history of sexual misconduct with minors when he was hired as a guidance counselor in 1994. Since his sentencing in 2000, Brouillette has spent his four years of probation in the St. Louis area at the St. John Vianney Renewal Center, counseling center for clergy with sexual problems.

During a news conference Wednesday outside a St. Louis parole office, SNAP leaders said that in addition to corresponding with an alleged victim while on probation, Brouillette attended an event at a Catholic high school in Hawaii and is listed in that school's literature as a "deputy provincial."


Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests
www.snapnetwork.org