NEW ORLEANS — Jesuit High School in New Orleans agreed to a seven-figure settlement to resolve a lawsuit alleging child molestation by janitors in the 1970s. The settlement was reached prior to a trial scheduled for June 15 in Louisiana civil district court.
Court staff confirmed the trial was canceled after attorneys informed the judge that the case had settled out of court. A letter filed in the case record on Thursday announced the settlement. The plaintiff, identified as H Doe, alleged abuse by janitors Peter Modica and Gary Sanchez in the school yard during the mid-1970s when H Doe was a preteen. Modica, a custodian at the school during the 1970s, had pleaded guilty in 1963 to molesting boys at a suburban New Orleans playground. The school paid at least seven other settlements related to Modica, who is deceased.
Former school president Rev. Anthony McGinn testified under oath in January that nine of his colleagues were credibly accused of child sexual assault while working at the school. McGinn served as president from 1992 to 2010 and 2014 to 2017. He agreed the school should have conducted a criminal background check on Modica before hiring him and would not have employed him if an adequate check had been completed. When questioned about working with nine colleagues credibly accused of child sexual abuse, McGinn stated, "I have no speculation on that."
Current school president Rev. John Brown acknowledged under oath that he opposed a Washington state legislative effort to require clergy to report abuse information obtained during religious confession. Brown stated, "I would never reveal the content of someone's confession." Brown also said, "I'm not allowed to reveal anything anybody says in confession."
Rev. Christopher Fronk, who served as president between McGinn and Brown, routinely deleted his emails while the school was legally required to preserve them due to pending abuse litigation. Brown testified that Fronk developed this email deletion practice while serving as a U.S. Navy chaplain. Attorneys filed a request for court sanctions against certain school attorneys over the deleted emails, which remained unresolved as of Friday. The plaintiff filed the lawsuit under a pseudonym approximately six years before the settlement. Attorney Richard Trahant, who represents the plaintiff, declined to discuss the specific financial terms.
Another plaintiff, represented by Trahant, has a September 21 trial scheduled against the same school, alleging childhood sexual abuse by a janitor named in the settled lawsuit. This plaintiff, Jayson Doe, alleged he was admitted to Jesuit at age 13 in 1978 when Modica began molesting him. The New Orleans archdiocese filed for bankruptcy protection in 2020 due to a clergy molestation scandal, agreeing with its insurers to pay $305 million to abuse survivors. The lawsuits against Jesuit are legally separate from the proceedings.