Malia Case Spurs Apology
Cheverus emphasizes that it never tried to cover up allegations of sex abuse

By David Hench
Portland Press Herald
March 7, 2000

[See other articles about Charles Malia.]

Cheverus High School officials issued a public apology Monday for alleged abuses by former teacher Charles Malia, as new details emerged about how the school and ultimately law enforcement learned about the allegations.

District Attorney Stephanie Anderson said Monday she might not have learned about the accusations if the school had not contacted her office in July 1998. Even then, an investigation was not launched until May 1999, when the school reported that a second man had accused Malia of molesting him more than two decades earlier.

As required by law, the school had notified the Department of Human Services in 1997 that a former student had complained of sexual abuse by Malia 25 years ago and assumed the department would take appropriate action. DHS passed along the report to the Department of Education, but neither state agency contacted the District Attorney's Office.

It was not until that summer, while working on an unrelated case of sexual abuse, that Cheverus officials and their lawyers realized that the allegations about Malia had not been forwarded to investigators.

The Rev. John Keegan, president of the Jesuit school, said Monday the school did not intentionally delay notifying authorities and that the timing of the 1998 report -- after the school year and one month before Malia took early retirement -- was coincidental.

"DHS told us they would report it to the Department of Education," Keegan said. "At least my understanding, correct or incorrect, was that the Department of Education would take it wherever it should go."

The Department of Education has refused to release files pertaining to the case. But Anderson said the department did not alert the District Attorney's Office.

Malia admitted last week to the Portland Press Herald that he had sexual contact with some of the students he taught and coached at the private all-boys school during a career that started in the 1960s.

His admission came after after a number of former students alleging abuse had begun meeting to talk about their experiences. They had also talked with police and lobbied the Legislature to eliminate the statute of limitations on suing sex offenders.

The acknowledgment seemed to take school officials by surprise. They said that Malia had denied the allegations to them.

In issuing an apology Monday, Keegan emphasized the school never tried to cover up any complaints. At the same time, Keegan said Malia's name would be removed from the scoreboard at the school's track.

Even with the school's effort to reassure the public, questions persist about how the allegations were handled by school and state officials.

Cheverus, as required by state law, did notify the Department of Human Services in 1997, when a former student alleged that Malia had abused him years ago. The man, now middle-aged, was concerned about the welfare of his own son, who was enrolling at the school.

Anderson said the unwillingness of the original accuser to make a formal complaint and the age of the charges also led her to decide not to pursue the allegation in the summer of 1998. But on May 3, 1999 she received another letter from Cheverus about a second person alleging sexual abuse by Malia many years ago. Combined, the two reports were enough to trigger an investigation, she said.

"It may be there are victims out there that were assaulted and against whom the statute of limitations has not run out," Anderson said. A law enacted last year eliminated the statute of limitations on incidents of child sexual abuse that occurred after September 1993.

"This is a course of conduct that even though it's 25 years old, we have to satisfy ourselves the situation was not going on in 1993, 1994, 1995 and 1996," Anderson said.

School officials defend their decision to keep Malia on during his final year, given what they knew at the time. They say a psychological evaluation showed Malia posed no threat to children. Also, they had to weigh Malia's long, unblemished career against the credibility of an accuser who would not sign a complaint about conduct 25 years old.

"Charlie Malia was a 30-year employee," said Peter Turner, chairman of the Cheverus board of trustees. "No allegation of any kind of activity had been made to the school against Charlie Malia prior to that. . . . He was an icon."

David Winslow, DHS spokesman, explained that because the allegations did not suggest an imminent threat to a child's welfare, the department was not involved.

The department's authority extends only to instances where a child is being abused by a family member, he said.

State officials and law enforcement need to investigate further when even such old allegations surface, say child welfare advocates.

"Often these disclosures start with an adult who is now safe, and is now ready to talk about it," said Lucky Hollander of the Child Abuse and Neglect Council. "Once they start talking . . . other people start talking, too. It's not uncommon for that to be the tip of the iceberg."

Investigators continue to look for victims who may have been abused since 1993, cases which could still be prosecuted, Anderson said.

Meanwhile, Malia is undergoing treatment at a local hospital, according to Peter O'Donnell, regional director of the Maine Department of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse and a former Cheverus administrator.

Staff Writer David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at: dhench@pressherald.com