![]() The Salesians declined to say whether they provided information about accused priests to New Jersey dioceses. Four of those brothers also worked in New Jersey. However, in 2018, the New Orleans Archdiocese publicly named eight Salesians after the order told local church officials that they had been credibly accused of abusing children there. Church officials have said religious order clerics are not included because their orders, and not local bishops, are responsible for them. None of the accused Salesians were included in any of the lists of credibly accused clerics released two years ago by the state’s five Catholic dioceses. The lawsuits were filed after the state suspended the statute of limitations in civil sex abuse cases for two years. Anthony of Padua Church in Elizabeth and Scheneman is accused of abusing a boy at a camp at the Salesians’ Don Bosco College in Newton, which has since closed. In the New Jersey lawsuits, Rooney is accused of abusing two students at the now-defunct Don Bosco Technical School in Paterson Maffei allegedly abused an altar boy at St. All three had previously been accused of sexual abuse in a 2013 lawsuit by a former student at a Salesian seminary in New York for high school students. Tariq Zehawi / įour other lawsuits filed in New Jersey since December 2019 name three religious brothers on the order’s list of credibly accused members - Sean Rooney, Joseph Maffei and Alan Scheneman - alleging abuse decades ago. Brinkman allegedly “had a reputation for being mean and abusive with students” and disciplined them, “including plaintiff, by shoving and punching them in full view of other students and faculty.”Īn official with the Salesians said Brinkman appears to have had no prior accusations against him.ĭon Bosco Prep in Ramsey, N.J. The accuser, who identified as a boy at the time, was “hysterical and crying” as Brinkman held him down and raped him, according to court filings. The teacher, Michael Brinkman, who now lives at a Salesian residence center in Florida, had not been included in the order’s list of accused brothers. ![]() Most recently, a transgender woman alleged in a lawsuit filed this month that she was sexually assaulted by a religious brother who was her algebra teacher at Don Bosco Prep in the 1970s. At least 22 were assigned to work in New Jersey at some point in their careers, including 10 at Don Bosco Prep. The eastern province of the Salesians of Don Bosco, a Catholic order headquartered in New York, has published on its website a list of 40 members who have been credibly accused of abusing children. At least five sex abuse lawsuits have been filed over the past 15 months against the religious order that runs Don Bosco Preparatory School in Ramsey, a group that has faced a significant number of accusations in other parts of the country but that so far has received little attention in New Jersey.
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