PUEBLO (CO)
The Pueblo Chieftain
By PATRICK MALONE
THE PUEBLO CHIEFTAIN
COLORADO SPRINGS - He's torn.
The head of a religious order targeted by more than a dozen lawsuits over allegations of sexual abuse by a former brother who taught at Roncalli High School in Pueblo said he's divided by concern for the former students who claim they were molested and protecting the organization he heads.
Brother Stephen Glodek, provincial of the St. Louis-based Marianist Province of the United States, will be in Pueblo today to hold a retreat for "spiritual affiliates" of the order, mostly former Roncalli students and their parents. About 50 of the affiliates still live in Pueblo.
Lawsuits brought by former Roncalli students against the Marianist order and the Catholic Diocese of Pueblo numbered 13 as of Friday, and more filings are expected. At the heart of each suit are allegations that former Marianist Brother William Mueller, a religion and music teacher at the high school for boys between 1966 and its closure in 1971, rendered students helpless with ether and sexually molested them. The suits accuse the religious order and the diocese of failing to intervene when they had knowledge of Mueller's behavior.