MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe
By Ralph Ranalli, Globe Staff | February 4, 2006
A group of lawsuits in which the now-defunct Boston School for the Deaf was portrayed as being rife with cruelty and abuse was reduced yesterday to a single complaint that a male student was made to wait in his underwear while a nun washed his pants, a lawyer for the defense said.
The plaintiffs in the case voluntarily withdrew 13 claims for damages yesterday against the Sisters of St. Joseph, the nuns who administered and taught at the school in Randolph until it closed a decade ago.
Four of the original 18 claims were either withdrawn or dismissed last year, leaving just one after yesterday, said attorney Joseph L. Doherty Jr., who represents three former supervisors and one nun named in the lawsuits.
Doherty said the nuns were pleased by the outcome and thought that some of their reputation has been restored.
''They feel that the lawsuits were unfair," Doherty said. ''But I don't think the word resentment is even in their vocabulary. From my perspective, the Sisters of St. Joseph are the kindest women I have ever had the pleasure to represent."