NEW YORK
New York Daily News
BY NICK DIVITO and OWEN MORITZ
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
A defrocked priest who fled charges that he molested a student at a tony Manhattan school, the headmaster who hired him and the school itself were slapped with a lawsuit in Brooklyn Supreme Court.
The suit, filed by an attorney for the boy's parents, charges the Robert Louis Stevenson School on W. 74th St. with negligence and reckless disregard in hiring and failing to supervise Bruce Jacques, 57.
The suit charges that the school hired Jacques as a development director and fund-raiser without investigating his background, which included dismissal as a priest by the Episcopal Church in New Milford, Conn., seven years ago for allegedly propositioning a 13-year-old boy.
"We're still shocked," school headmaster Bud Henrichsen said Thursday. "We have been working with the district attorney's office" to locate the missing Jacques.