Fourth Minnesota Lawsuit Involving Brother Raimond Rose

By Patrick Noaker

Another courageous client filed a lawsuit against Brother Raimond Rose, the Brothers of the Christian Schools and Cretin High School today. It is difficult to quantify the positive impact that occurs when a courageous survivor of sexual abuse takes a stand and files a lawsuit. One major impact is that others who have also been sexually abused may read about the lawsuit and come forward to get the help that they need and deserve. Another impact is that a parent or caretaker of a child who is exposed to the perpetrator may terminate that contact to protect that child. This is very real in the case of Bro. Raimond Rose because Fr. Rose currently lives without supervision in a Chicago neighborhood with lots of kids. Hopefully the outreach by the victims groups and maybe the media will get the word out that Brother Rose is dangerous and protect your children from him.

Further, and the topic of this posting is that filing a sexual abuse lawsuit has the effect of encouraging institutions who care for children to insure that they do not have child abusers on their payroll and insure that all employees who have contact with children are properly supervised. I recognize that this last point is difficult at times. We have all felt that twinge when we are volunteering at our child’s school, coaching a little league team or supervising a camp out, when we are informed of the rules relating to contact with children. No physical contact, even pats on the back. No one-on-one interactions with a child. Don’t enter a tent. These restrictions cause us to think about when we were young, they didn’t have any of these rules. It must be those trial lawyers making life difficult for all of us. Unfortunately, this case filed today reveals that the old days were not necessarily the good old days for an awful lot of kids. The boy in today’s lawsuit was 15 years old when Bro. Rose took him on a trip to Chicago with a group of other boys from Cretin High School in 1969. While at the hotel, Bro. Rose purchased liquor for the boys and then isolated and sexually assaulted the boy. Had there been rules about who and when an adult could interact with the children on the Chicago trip back in 1969, this boy would have probably been spared the pain of being sexually abused. This boy, who is now a man, is doing his part to make kids safer. I hope that we all can make that same commitment and remember this boy when we are being subjected to a lot of rules and procedures surrounding the time that we spend volunteering in our child’s kindergarten class.


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