At what was perceived to be the height of the clerical child abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, I had some good priests and involved laypeople tell me that the next shoe to drop was going to drop overseas, in the Catholic missions to remote areas in places like Africa and the islands of the Pacific Ocean. Surely, they told me, if predatory priests were enabled to commit their crimes in the crowded urban areas of the United States, the same thing, or worse, must have been going on in distant places beyond the reach of the spotlight, or of Spotlight.

The sound you just heard was that other shoe, dropping. From The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Brouillard's peaceful life stands in stark contrast to the torment of 122 men and two women–all middle-age or retired now—who accuse him of sexually molesting them as children on the island of Guam. They have broken long-held silences and filed lawsuits. Some have protested and begged for justice. Some have left the church. A long time ago, some of them complained. Brouillard confessed, and was told to pray and try harder. Eventually, the island's Catholic church simply sent Brouillard away.

It gets worse because it always gets worse. This guy also was a Boy Scout leader.

Guam Getty Images

At that time on Guam, the church required altar boys to join the Boy Scouts. In an affidavit filed with the court in Guam, Brouillard described “managing the Boy Scouts, where I served as president for the Scouts on Guam.” Felix Manglona's lawsuit describes his time as an altar boy and Boy Scout in 1971 when he was 13. He recalled Brouillard walking naked around the church rectory and showing the boys pornography. Manglona accuses Brouillard of assaulting him at a Boy Scout campout as the priest went from tent to tent conducting a head count. Brouillard, the lawsuit says, performed oral sex on the boy and his tentmate. Years later, when Manglona was a police cadet, he recalled seeing a complaint involving Brouillard and a minor boy at another church. Now, decades later, any complaints are lost to time. The statute of limitations has expired and police on Guam said last year they could locate no records involving Brouillard nor could they confirm that any parents or children ever filed a complaint.

It…always…gets…worse.

Three of the lawsuits filed on Guam last year accuse Brouillard of paying to bring boys from Guam to Minnesota, where he continued to abuse them. One of the lawsuits alleges he moved a boy into a two-bedroom retirement home apartment in Pine City where he lived with his elderly parents. Brouillard would have been about 60 at the time.

There are hundreds more of whom we never will hear anything, because their crimes are lost in the jungle somewhere. This never will be over.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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