$10M suit: Priest raped boy 8 or 9 times

By Haidee V Eugenio
Pacific Daily News
February 19, 2018

http://www.guampdn.com/story/news/2018/02/19/10-m-suit-priest-raped-boy-8-9-times/350300002/

Father Louis Brouillard is shown in an undated photo from the Pacific Daily News archives.

A lawsuit filed on Monday accuses former priest Louis Brouillard of raping an altar boy eight or nine times during overnight sleepovers at the Barrigada parish rectory, around 1971.

Brouillard also allegedly subjected the boy, who was around 14 at the time, to seeing Brouillard walk around naked in the priest's room before Mass. This happened for more than a year, the complaint states.

The plaintiff is identified in Superior Court documents only by his initials A.B.L. to protect his privacy.

A.B.L., represented by attorney Michael Berman, said in his lawsuit that on each of the eight or nine occasions when he spent the night at the Barrigada church for about a year, Brouillard would greet, hug and kiss him all over his body before raping him.

"This activity was extremely painful to A.B.L. at his young and inexperienced age and he wanted it to stop," the lawsuit states.

A.B.L., now 60, said in his lawsuit that Brouillard kept telling him the act was "natural and normal" and that because he was a priest, he should believe his word.

"Only as A.B.L. got older did he realize Brouillard's conduct was very wrong and was in fact criminal," states the lawsuit, which demands a minimum of $10 million in damages.

The lawsuit states A.B.L. agreed to spend the night at the Barrigada church because of the high respect both he and his parents had for the Catholic Church and its priests, "and as such he believed he was being a good, young Catholic boy, who was also serving as a good altar boy."

While not a Boy Scout, A.B.L. joined one Boy Scout outing in which Brouillard required other boys to swim naked and he then would grope their private parts. The lawsuit says this made A.B.L. feel very uncomfortable. The priest then treated the boys to McDonald's restaurant, the complaint says.

A.B.L. is the latest plaintiff in nearly 160 clergy sex abuse lawsuits filed in local and federal court. A.B.L.'s lawsuit named Brouillard, the Archdiocese of Agana, the Boy Scouts of America and its Aloha Council's Chamorro District and up to 50 others.

The parties are pursuing mediation to try to settle the cases, and are set to report to the courts in March as to the status of the proposed mediation.

The church on Guam now faces lawsuits demanding at least $1.03 billion in damages because of alleged abuse by priests and others associated with the church. Not included in that amount are 23 lawsuits that call for damages to be determined during trial.

Of the 157 pending lawsuits, 100 name Brouillard as the abuser.