This is one of the dormitories at Project Pierre Toussaint. Two of Perlitz's abuse victims told me that, late at night, Perlitz would go from bed to bed and flash the illuminated face of his wristwatch in the boys' faces. Perlitz would then lead one of the boys into the dorm's private bedroom where he would rape the child.
Editor’s Note – This is the third in a five part series of diary entries written by Fairfield alumnus Paul Kendrick ‘72, who spent last week in Haiti. Kendrick is a long time advocate for sex abuse victims and a co-founder of Voice of the Faithful in Maine, which formed in response to the Roman Catholic sex abuse cases. He had visited Project Pierre Touissant, which was run by fellow Fairfield alumnus Doug Perlitz ‘92 in 2003. Last year, Perlitz was indicted by a Bridgeport grand jury on ten counts of abusing Haitian children. His trial is scheduled to start in April.
Cap-Haitien, Haiti – As Wednesday dawned, I was hoping to be able to see Jean (name changed to protect him from harm) one more time before he raced back to Port-au-Prince to be with his family.
Jean (he is Haitian) was a highly regarded former senior staff member at Project Pierre Toussaint. It took him almost two days to drive to Cap-Haitian from Port-au-Prince due to flooded roads (heavy rains) and two flat tires. He was finally able to meet with Cyrus Sibert (local journalist) and me in the late afternoon on Tuesday. Sensing he was hungry, we went several doors down to La Kay, a local restaurant across the street from the sea walled harbor area.
Jean had traveled to Cap Haitian to meet with me about Perlitz’s abuse of children and the possibilities of reopening the school. Jean and I had met one other time in Haiti.
We were just beginning our meal when the ground began to tremble. Dishes didn’t fall off the table, or anything like that, but the tremor was certainly noticeable. Within ten minutes or so, Haitian radio was reporting large amounts of damage in Port-au-Prince which is located 85 miles south of Cap-Haitian. Soon after, a man came running into the restaurant shouting that the news stations were reporting that a tsunami was about to happen on the north coast where we were located (within in an hour, the tsunami alarm was called off).
Jean’s face was ashen. He was already on his cell phone trying to contact his wife and two children (one and five-years-old) who he had left back in Port-au-Prince. His cell phone wasn’t working, so we headed to higher ground and went to an apartment in the inner city to try one of the other cell phone networks. Nothing seemed to work so Jean disappeared into the heavy rain where he eventually made brief contact with a family member. His family was OK. When the first shock hit, his wife and two kids had run out of their home. Then came the aftershock which caused the walls to fall sideways and the roof to collapse right before their eyes. They were brought to Jean’s wife’s mother’s house in a nearby town.
Later, as we sat in a hotel lobby, I told Jean that I knew he was preoccupied with concerns about his family and we could discuss the Project at another time. His family was safe, he said, “So let’s talk now.” And so we did for the next two hours.
Jean had worked at the Project for many years. He was more than capable of running the day-to-day operations at the village (the boarding school). Doug relied on Jean’s unique abilities.
Then, one day several years ago, a teacher at the school told Jean that some of the students were reporting that Doug was touching them inappropriately. The kids had been afraid to come directly to Jean, because they feared that Jean, by virtue of his position at the school, would defend Doug and not believe them. Jean spoke at length with the students and then invited Doug to lunch at the same hotel we were at.
Jean told Doug what he had learned and wanted Doug to immediately stop abusing the children. In Jean’s mind, if Doug would stop harming the kids and the school could stay open, than Jean would be satisfied that he had done what’s best for the boys. I asked Jean what Doug’s reaction was to being confronted about abusing children. He said, “Doug only wanted to know the names of the children who reported that they were being abused.”
“Who told you this?” asked Doug.
Jean went on to say that in the coming weeks and months, Doug began to act differently towards Jean, often criticizing his work and even suggesting that Jean take some time off to decide if he wanted to remain working at the Project. All of a sudden, Jean’s work performance was unacceptable.
Jean told me that for the next three years, Father Paul Carrier refused to speak to him. Carrier’s behavior was so bizarre, Jean said, that when Jean answered Doug’s cell phone, Carrier would say nothing until Doug came on the line. During the silence Jean would say into the phone, “Hello, is this you, Father Paul? Hello, Hello.” Eerily, Carrier said nothing.
According to Jean, Carrier and Doug spoke on the phone several times each day and Carrier traveled to Haiti on a monthly basis. Jean told me that Carrier and Perlitz vacationed together in the Bahamas. He told me about the time that Carrier, Perlitz and an employee of the school went to Cormier Plage (a small hotel located on the beach 8 miles from the inner city) for the weekend. The employee stayed in one room and Perlitz and Carrier stayed in a second room.
It wouldn’t be much longer before Jean, exhausted from Doug’s constant criticism and suggestions that he find other work, resigned his position. A few years later, and at Doug’s urging, Jean returned to monitor the school while Doug went on a long planned sabbatical. Jean remained until the school was forced to close.
Jean visited the Fairfield, Connecticut area a few times to speak at Haiti Fund fundraisers. On one trip, sometime in late 2005 or early 2006, Jean told me that he confided in a woman who still teaches at Tomlinson school in Fairfield. He told her that Doug was sexually abusing students (she is a close friend of Jean and Tom Tisdale, both of whom are defending Doug’s innocence). Jean asked the teacher to keep this information confidential because he feared the school would be forced to close.
The teacher has not yet returned my call.
The teacher is a mandated reporter. Jean stuck his neck out to protect children by confronting Doug and demanding that he stop the abuse.
And then there’s Jessica Lozier, one of the signers of the letter that disgruntled former board members and Perlitz supporters sent in August 2008 to donors in which the signers disparaged the current board’s decision to fire Perlitz. I learned that during the same 2008-2009 period that there was a warrant for Doug’s arrest in Haiti, Lozier would withdraw money from Doug’s bank account in Cap-Haitien to pay the bus fare for several boys to travel to Santo Domingo to meet with Doug. Some boys would return later in the day. Others would stay with Doug in his hotel room and be sexually molested by him.
I told Jean how sorry I was for the miserable, sick and despicable manner in which he was treated by Perlitz and Carrier in the aftermath of his confrontation with Doug. Jean had trouble finding another job in Cap-Hatien, so he eventually moved his family to Port-au-Prince.
I called former Haiti Fund board member Hope Carter today, introduced myself and asked her to help me help the boys in Haiti. Click. She hung up on me. I wanted to ask Carter if she is bank rolling Doug’s legal defense. As I looked into the sad and troubled faces of the boys who were abused by Perlitz, I couldn’t help but ask myself what kind of people are former Haiti Fund board members such as Tom Tisdale, Fairfield alumnus and area chairperson of the Order of Malta, Madeline and Philip Lacovara, and of course, Father Paul Carrier, Jesuit priest and former Fairfield University campus ministry director. What kind of people are they that they could so easily turn their backs on children who are homeless, hungry, frightened and raped. “Who is their God?” I must ask myself.
I will be talking more in my final two “diaries” about what it will take for the Fairfield University community to reopen the school and drop-in center and I will share with you my vision of what can be accomplished for the children by engaging in a “konbit’ with the Haitian people. .
In Haitian Creole, a konbit is a traditional Haitian method of working together to till your friends’ fields as well as your own – a cooperative effort. In this way, we want to always show our respect for and friendship with the people of Haiti.
If anyone would like to contact me, please call me at 207 838 1319 or email: kendrickpt@aol.com.
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Sick. We should be ashamed that a University like Fairfield is supporting this kind of journalism.
Gee,Stag,
I just can’t get over the fact that you are ashamed of the journalism and not the story. How can that be?
Ashamed that Fairfield U. is willing to post such garbage. It brings down the story and the journalism to Paul Kendricks level.
Paul, your “protection” of this staff member is horribly irresponsible and dangerous. Anyone with a moderate amount of knowledge about the program knows exactly who you are talking about, especially those who could potentially have a direct threat on “Jean”. You should be incredibly ashamed for divulging what you did about his personal life or his role in the project. If anything happens to him you will have direct responsibilty. The focus needs to be on rebuilding the project, not on convincing people of Doug’s guilt, trying to change the minds of those who still support him, or, especially, grossing out the minds of even those of us who already believe he is guilty.
Thank you Fairfiled for allowing this series to be published. It is rare that anyone publishes the gritty reality of sexual abuse of children. Usually the accounts are rather limited in details and imagery and are usually whitewashed or sanitized. I can certainly understand the feelings of disgust and sickness experienced by some readers. Just think how “sick” this must have been and continues to be to those who have been raped or sodomized or worse, lost their lives by suicide. Where is our empathy?
Perhaps this series has the unique ability to move readers to read with such disgust that they will stop at nothing to protect these kids from harm and offer unconditional love to these hurting kids.
Perhpas this is what’s missing from most accounts of sexual abuse in our church. The masses or pew dwellers do not get to hear first- hand such a raw, disgusting account. Nor do they get to have these images in their heads all the while we’re simultaneously witnessing the human devastation of the recent earthquake. This is now VERY real for us.
Of course, we can stop reading, close our minds and eyes, pretend it never happened and be the next Christian group to discard these children. What a loss this would be.
Fairfled, the Jesuits, really all of us are being presented with a unique opportunity to turn this around. So much has been invested over the years that this can be turned around. Let’s not miss this opportunity.
I think of missionary priests and nuns who come to our parishes and make their appeals. Most of us will not make trips such as these men and women. But, they do bear witness. Paul is our missionary. he is bearing witness. Now it is time for us to dig deep and figure out how to help and how to salvage what could be a fantasic program.
As an advocate for over 1,000 victims of clergy and religious sexual abuse, I applaud the work of Paul Kendrick who is doing yeoman work in Haiti and beyond. Part 3 of his diary describes the insidiousness of pedophilic behavior and those who cover it up. There is the usual manipulation of the kids’ bodies, minds, and souls, and the usual participation of “enablers” who look the other way, join in the pedophilia, or marginalize those who are trying to blow the whistle. What happened in Haiti with this project is typical of so many other “Catholic” projects. Abuse of power, money, and authority was rampant and led to mass abuse of children. Fairfield University should be giving Paul Kendrick unlimited and unwavering support so he can do the work that is so necessary; making sure the abused are cared for, rescued, and healed. The healing process will take a lifetime, and Fairfield University must provide resources and support until the healing process is complete. To do anything less would be a further betrayal of these young men.
How is it possible for anyone to read these essays and not be outraged by Perlitz’s horrific acts of volence against children, by his mistreatment of a trusted staff member who confronted him about his abuse of the students, by Rev. Carrier’s obvious rage towards the employee for exposing Doug’s abuse, by a Town of Fairfield teacher who knew that Perlitz was raping the boys but took no steps to stop him, and by a whole group of Catholics whose actions have caused the Project to close and the same homeless kids who were molested by Perlitz to be back on the streets.
I hope we all want to know what Paul Carrier knew about Doug’s abuse of children and when he first knew it. I am beside myself with outrage at what went on at that school. I am not a lawyer, but I would urge these boys to retain an attorney and file a lawsuit against the whole bunch of them including Fairfield University, Malta, the Jesuits, the teacher, Paul Carrier and anyone else who participated in keeping the secrets. It is obvious that Perlitz and Carrier were out of control. The boys were severely harmed and are entitled to monetary damages for their injuries.
“The nose of a mob is its imagination. By this, at any time, it can be quietly led.”
Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849)
“Convinced myself, I seek not to convince.”
Edgar Allan Poe
He is guilty. Fact.
Situation, such as described in these reports, challenge us all as Christians. We can’t just pick a side. Perlitz will be judged by a jury. However the investigation by the project’s board and its subsequent firing of Perlitz has to give us pause. The flight of its major backers(Fairfield, the Jesuits, and the Knights of Malta) have destroyed the effectiveness of the school and abandoned its clients. Fairfield University justly trumpeted its support of PPT for years. Now when an ugly, hidden side of the project appears they forsake what any fairminded person would expect. This is probably on the advice of its lawyers and its insurers risk managers. They fear the accountability for a failure to supervise. How sad, if Fairfield should base its decisions on those fears.
I appplaud you for carrying these reports and forcing your community to engage in a little conscience formation.
You better be careful questioning people’s motives and assuming this man’s guilt. Calling into question these people’s morals and asking pathetic rhetorical questions like “Who is their God?” is nothing more than despicable libel. You are a reprehensible person operating under the guise of wanting to help people. My friend, there will be a stain upon your soul for this disingenuous behavior. If you have no faith in the American justice system, then live in a country like Iran where your comments would earn you certain death.
The ALLEGED behavior of Perlitz is despicable IF PROVEN TRUE. Not until then! The people named and defamed in this “article” have a legitimate case against the remarks of this moral midget. Kendrick, I hope God has mercy on you, because I can say without reservation that I would not. You, like many elitists today, would cross out provisions of the Bill of Rights that you don’t like. I hope you are brought to justice. This goes beyond mere libel, they should put you in jail.
Please reread your first line, Ace. Have you put as much time and energy into advocating for the protection of children?
What does my first line have to do with this conviction by Kendrick? He is the judge, jury, and executioner all in one.
These people are crypto-Satanists. The Knights of Malta, the Jesuits, the Knights Templar, etc…these are fanatics of the lowest order and they are protected from the very top of the hierarchical ladder. Who is their god, you ask? A dark…very dark one. Quite literally. They don’t seem to understand the toll they are exacting upon themselves. They believe that Satan will save them from ultimate Divinity!
You know your Dan Brown I see