DENVER (CO)
Denver Post
March 10, 2019
By Elis Schmelzer
For five years in the late 1960s and early ’70s, a Catholic brother used ether to subdue at least 23 teenage boys at a Catholic high school in Pueblo. He told them he was conducting an “experiment.” Instead, they alleged in a lawsuit, he molested and raped them in the band room.
The Marianist brother, William Mueller, was later transferred to schools in St. Louis, where lawsuits claim he continued to abuse students. Some of the boys later said in lawsuits that they told the Diocese of Pueblo and school leaders at Roncalli High School about the abuse, but nothing was done.
Mueller’s case is one of the most high-profile Catholic clergy abuse cases in Colorado — it resulted in a settlement with the Diocese of Pueblo and Mueller’s religious order for $4 million.
But Mueller’s case and at least eight others like it will not be included in the third-party review announced last month by the state attorney general and the Catholic Church in Colorado because Mueller was supervised by a religious order, not a diocese. His victims will not have access to the recently announced reparations fund or reconciliation services, because he was under the supervision of a religious order and not one of Colorado’s three dioceses.
A spokesman for Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser did not respond to an emailed question about why religious-order priests and brothers were excluded from the review, which was initiated by Weiser’s predecessor and finalized after he took office.
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