BishopAccountability.org
	Experts Say Fairfield U Avoids Black Eye in Perlitz Scandal By Michael P. Mayko Stamford Advocate January 22, 2011 http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/local/article/Experts-say-Fairfield-U-avoids-black-eye-in-972282.php Take an honored graduate, a respected Jesuit priest and a humanitarian program funded with nearly a million dollars to assist homeless Haitian boys. Then add a sex scandal, an international investigation, a federal conviction and $120,500 in unaccounted expenses. It's the recipe for a public relations' nightmare. Except crisis experts, school alumni and some professors believe Fairfield University properly handled the issues involving Douglas Perlitz, a 1992 graduate and 2002 commencement speaker; and the Rev. Paul Carrier, the school's former chaplain and director of campus ministry and their Project Pierre Toussaint humanitarian effort in Haiti. Perlitz pleaded guilty to sexually abusing some of his students and was sentenced Dec. 21 to 19 years and eight months in federal prison. Carrier, who has not been charged with a crime, has been suspended by the Society of Jesus, which is investigating his relationship with students. "It's obviously an embarrassment," said David Bartlett, a senior vice president and public relations crisis consultant at Levick Strategic Communications in Washington, D.C. "How you handle it makes all the difference." Babak "Bobby" Zafarnia, president of Praecere Public Relations, also in Washington, said Fairfield has been out in front of the scandal. "In the last three years, the school has released three statements expressing concern, acknowledging financial controls could have been better and committing to help the victims," Zafarnia said. "That's more than most institutions do." Twardy's hiring praised Zafarnia also commended the school for hiring attorney Stanley A. Twardy Jr. to oversee an internal audit of the missing funds. Twardy served nearly two terms as the state's chief federal prosecutor and later as consul to a governor. "When you hire an attorney with that kind of background who has a lot of respect in the legal community, that goes a long way in creating credibility," Zafarnia said. The audit was unable to determine how $120,500 of the $775,000 raised by the Fairfield University community for Perlitz' Project Pierre Toussaint was spent. As a result, Twardy's team recommended proposals, which Fairfield adopted, that included calling for a second level of approval for financial advances and wiring or writing checks directly to the charity for which the donations were collected. Now the school has retained Twardy to look into Carrier's actions at the school and Perlitz's claims that he had been "physically and spiritually" abused by an unnamed campus priest. In the meantime, the school has pledged to financially support a program developed by Kids Alive International to provide schooling, job training, meals and clothing to the 82 students displaced by the closing of the residential school in Perlitz's program. Both Zafarnia and Bartlett agree that the public and the media will be watching to see if the school lives up to this promise. "Once they start taking actual concrete steps they need to announce that boldly," Zafarnia said. But some said Fairfield University took too long to help the Haitian boys. Fairfield just last month announced it was negotiating with Kids Alive International. The critics weigh in Paul Kendrick, a 1972 graduate and advocate for victims of clergy sexual abuse, criticizes the school for preaching a Jesuit education yet doing little to help the Haitian victims who were thrown back onto the street when a lack of funding closed Perlitz's project during the summer of 2009. "When the first whiff of scandal raised its ugly head, Fairfield University, the Jesuits of New England and the Order of Malta quickly scrambled to create as much distance as possible between them and the school in Haiti"when they could have used their bully pulpits to keep the school open and the boys cared for," he said. --I can't tell you how many e-mails I sent to (Fairfield President Jeffrey) von Arx advising him that the victims need help, they need counseling, they need food." What they did, Kendrick said, is the same thing Perlitz had threatened to do to the victims if they went public -- "toss them back onto the streets." Following an Oct. 23, 2010 homecoming week demonstration at the University entrance, Kendrick got a brief audience with von Arx. "There I was begging and pleading with the Jesuit Catholic priest for assistance in providing food, shelter, clothing and school payments for just 20 boys who were raped and sodomized by Perlitz...But not once during the meeting did von Arx lean over and ask me how the boys were doing," Kendrick said. Fairfield University vice president of marketing Rama Sudhakar said the university was searching for an organization it could work with to help the boys. Several sources attributed the delay to finding an organization familiar with Haiti willing to take on this project in the wake of all the other issues facing that country including the devastating January, 2010 earthquake, an ineffective government and almost non-existent paved roadway system. help to the Haitians Michael McCooey, the chairman of the Haiti Fund, which raised the majority of money for Perlitz's project through charitable events, helped put Fairfield in touch with Kids Alive, which has an organization in place in Haiti and employs Robenson Gedeus, a former PPT supervisor. "We worked hard over the past year to find an organization on the ground in Haiti that could provide sustainable help for the boys," said Sudhakar. "We're pleased that the University along with the Order of Malta and other partners is now working with Kids Alive International...They're expanding their work in Cap-Haitien in order to care for the PPT boys and provide them with meals, medical attention, tutoring and counseling." Some say there should have been more of an outcry about the scandal. Experts say the muted public outcry may stem from the fact that the public is numb to clergy abuse cases. That there have been so many cases -- particularly in the Bridgeport Catholic Diocese over the years -- may have actually helped Fairfield University, experts say. Also, the international distance of the victims may have stemmed some of the outrage. Mike Paul, who bills himself as "the Reputation Doctor" as head of MGP and Associates, a public relations strategy firm in New York, believes more attention would have been paid if the victims were "blonde, blue-eyed" kids from Fairfield County and not homeless, abandoned blacks from Haiti. Paul said if the Board of Trustees did not call an emergency meeting once this scandal broke and immediately contacted law enforcement "that would be an abomination." Whether or not Fairfield University called an emergency meeting of its Board of Trustees once the scandal broke is unknown. E-mails and telephone calls to several board members were not returned. Soon after Perlitz's September, 2009, the school did say it was cooperating with law enforcement. Ethan Fry, a 2004 Fairfield University graduate, editor of the school newspaper and former Danbury News Times reporter who is now a law student, questioned the delay in investigating Carrier's role, involvement with students and spending practices. "While the new probe (into Carrier's involvement with students) is to be commended, it's stunning to me that they waited so long-again-and pursued it only after the braying protestations of a serial rapist, not after a very competent law firm uncovered possible wrongdoing by a former official. Of course sexual misconduct is far graver than financial misconduct," said Fry, now a law school student. Some alumni like Frank Riccio II, a local defense lawyer, Thomas McCarthy, Bridgeport City Council president and Angel DePara Jr., a Bridgeport councilman, believe their alma mater weathered the storm well. "Whenever a university is placed in a bad light it is a cause for concern," said Riccio. "What Fairfield didn't do is rush to judgment like Duke University in the wake of their lacrosse scandal." In 2006, Duke suspended its lacrosse program and forced the coach to resign after three players were arrested on charges of raping a stripper. The allegations were found to be false. "That blemish will forever stain Duke's reputation," Riccio believes. DePara admits what happened at Project Pierre Toussaint was terrible "but I can't see it washing away decades of good service" Fairfield University has provided. McCarthy said Fairfield erred by relying "on just one priest (Carrier) to oversee the Fairfield contribution to the mission...I think in the future you will see that the University will be much more careful about going all in with a charity without having the proper monitoring."
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