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	U.S. Wants Perlitz behind Bars for Almost 20 Years By Michael P. Mayko CT Post December 17, 2010 http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/U-S-wants-Perlitz-behind-bars-for-almost-20-years-904825.php Federal prosecutors blasted Douglas Perlitz's explanations for his conduct with homeless Haitian boys, calling him "a sexual predator" who traveled to the impoverished country because that's where "some of the world's most defenseless children reside." The prosecution team is asking U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton on Dec. 21 to sentence Perlitz, 40, an honored Fairfield University graduate whose humanitarian works once led one of his supporters to call him "the face of Christ on earth," to 19 years and seven months in prison. On Monday, David Grudberg and William F. Dow, III, Perlitz's lawyers, dropped a bombshell in reasoning how their client came to sexually abuse students at his Project Pierre Toussaint, a program to educate, feed and clothe homeless street boys in Cap-Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. The reasons, the lawyers wrote, include a "dark and abusive relationship," both "physical and spiritual," with an unnamed Fairfield University priest that began in 1988 and continued through the Haiti years. No individual was identified in the court papers filed by Perlitz's lawyers. But the Society of Jesus, New England Province and Fairfield University announced investigations into the Rev. Paul Carrier, who spent 20 years at the school as an instructor, chaplain and director of campus ministry. Carrier has not been charged with any crime. The prosecution team did not name Carrier in its claim that Perlitz used his connections with a religious leader to run Project Pierre Toussaint to the point where he (Perlitz) could control and access children and be protected from discovery. "It is simply inexplicable how any of those three purported explanations (sexual abuse by a priest, stress of working in Haiti and living up to being the face of Christ on earth) could cause anyone, let alone a person who professes to devote his life to those less fortunate, to sexually exploit children," prosecutors responded Thursday. "Rather, the evidence demonstrates that Perlitz began abusing minors in or about 1998 even before the school he founded was constructed." "Given the evidence in this case, the more plausible explanation is that Perlitz is a sexual predator who traveled to Haiti because that is where some of world's most defenseless children reside; that his relationship with the religious leader provided him with ... connections ... (to) run his own charity where he could control and access children; that the protection Perlitz received from the religious leader and the money that he received in Haiti decreased the likelihood of discovery ... and that Perlitz's position in a community that regarded him as the `face of Christ on Earth' would ensure continued donations and supports of the school," the prosecution team maintained. "Perlitz used his position of authority to abuse some of the most vulnerable children in the world so that he could satisfy his own sexually deviant desires," wrote Assistant U.S. Attorneys Krishna Patel, Richard Schechter and Stephen Reynolds. "Perlitz traded on their most basic needs to ensure their compliance and their silence." They said three of the victims said Perlitz showed them homosexual pornographic videos before engaging in sex with them. Meanwhile, Ezili Danto and Henri Alexandre, head of the Haitian Lawyers Leadership Network, have mounted an e-mail campaign urging Haitian Nationals living in the U.S. to attend the sentencing or to write Arterton demanding a lengthy sentence. "Most Haitians know that sexual abuse by foreign tourists, charity workers and priests in Haiti is pandemic," Danto wrote in an e-mail. "This generation of Haitians must put a stop to this vile abuse and it begins right here on Dec. 21."
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