Sister Alexis-du-Sacre-Coeur | Louise Delisle

As a result of a lawsuit by Blethen Maine Newspapers, the Maine Attorney General was compelled to release information and documents on accused priests and religious, including a 2005 letter from diocesan counsel to the AG, reporting that a man had notified the diocese that he had been sexually abused at age 8 or 9 in 1948 or 1949 by Sister Alexis-du-Sacre-Coeur in the 2nd or 3rd grade of St. Andre school in Biddeford. The 1949 Official Catholic Directory states that 26 Sisters of the Presentation of Mary and 11 Brothers of the Sacred Heart worked at the school, which had 478 boys and 664 girls studying there. St. Andre’s also had a girls’ high school with 104 pupils. The pastor was a diocesan consultor, Msgr. A.M. Decary. Counsel wrote: “Sister Alexis would punish students by having them sit under her desk. While under the desk, the Sister would put her dress over the child’s head. [Redacted] reports that this happened to him often, and that she made him push his hands into her genitals while he was under her dress. She was not wearing underwear. Apparently this form of punishment was common and many students were placed under her desk. [Redacted] believes that at least one family, [Redacted] moved as a result of Sister Alexis’ punishment of their child. At the time of the incidents, [Redacted] [redacted] parents, who reported them to the school. The school administrators urged the family not to say anything and there is some confusion regarding whether the police were informed. [Redacted] recalls the police coming to his home, but his older sister, [Redacted] did not share that recollection.” See a 1946 photograph of Sister Alexis in her habit. By 1963, according to newspaper articles, Sister Alexis was teaching second grade at St. Augustine Catholic School in Augusta, where the 1963 Official Catholic Directory reports 18 Sisters of the Presentation of Mary were teaching 362 boys and 378 girls. Note that the 1949 Directory confuses Sister Alexis’ order with the Sisters of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but the 1963 Directory assigns St. Augustine’s correctly to the Sisters of the Presentation of Mary, founded in France with a motherhouse in Methuen MA. Sister Alexis-du-Sacre-Coeur’s unusual religious name apparently derives from the name of her father, Alexis Delisle, Sr. Her gravestone at the former provincialate of her order in Methuen MA indicates that she was born Louise Delisle in 1904 and died in 1986.