Defamation?

Background for Aug 29 post 

Ted made his first call to the Archdiocese hotline and encountered his own perp on the phone, as Monsignor Ray Hebert held reign over the Victim Assistance office in the 1990s.
Ted made several more calls, plus three trips from Chicago to New Orleans, in pursuit of justice, and finally filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of New Orleans in Spring 2005, naming Hebert among a number of perpetrators in Madonna Manor orphanage.
Four other men also named Hebert in lawsuits soon after Ted went public.

Defamation Judgment 2010

Monsignor Hebert immediately responded with four defamation lawsuits against the four men, who were pedophile priest survivors coming forward for the first time. Three years later the men agreed to withdraw Hebert's name from their lawsuits, since it did not affect their claims, which were settled months later.
When his defamation suits got the desired results, Hebert made the rounds of news outlets claiming his name had been cleared through legal proceedings, so he was not guilty. He received community awards and accolades up to his death in Jan 2014.
But Ted Lausche still claims it was Monsignor Ray Hebert, then a young priest, who sodomized him in the Confessional at Madonna Manor.
Hebert died in Jan 2014, the lawyer who filed his defamation lawsuits pro bono died in July of the same year.
And Ted Lausche still says Ray Hebert molested him at Madonna Manor in the 1960s.

Times Picayune on Defamation Suit:

Times Picayune 06.28.06;

Times Picayune 03.18.10;

Here are the stories in full:

Abuse Claims Prompt Defamation Lawsuit

By Bruce Nolan
Times-Picayune (New Orleans)
June 28, 2006

A Marrero Catholic priest named in three sexual abuse suits has sued his accusers, saying their allegations are "pure fabrications."

Monsignor Ray Hebert, 77, filed the defamation suit this month against Stacey Brown of Harvey, Ted Lausche of Lake Geneva, Wis., and Albert P. Miller of Pearl River. 

Hebert said he did so after he spoke with friends both in and out of the priesthood who told him that his silence could be construed as an acknowledgment that the accusations were true -- "and of course there can be no such acknowledgment."

Hebert's accusers, now in their 40s and 50s, spent part of their childhoods in Madonna Manor in Marrero, which once cared for young boys coming out of broken or dysfunctional families.

Brown, Lausche and Miller are among 14 plaintiffs who have sued the Archdiocese of New Orleans, alleging that they underwent beatings and sexual abuse at the institution.

Brown, Lausche and Miller specifically named Hebert among staff members or others who they said sexually assaulted them.

The archdiocese said it believed that Hebert was a victim of mistaken identity by the accusers.

Hebert retired in 2002, his 50th year as a priest, as pastor of Immaculate Conception Parish in Marrero and head of the archdiocese's department of clergy.

He once headed Associated Catholic Charities, the church organization that ran Madonna Manor. Hebert said that during the years when the three men claimed they were molested, he visited Madonna Manor only two or three times a year to consult with the nun who supervised the facility.

Hebert said the men, who believe they have recovered repressed memories of abuse, accused him after learning that he was director of Associated Catholic Charities during their youth. 

THEN

Molestation Allegations against Local Catholic Priest Withdrawn
By Bruce Nolan
The Times-Picayune 
March 18, 2010
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2010/03/molestation_allegations_agains.html 
A local Catholic priest accused of molesting four boys years ago at a church-run shelter in Marrero has cleared his name after the accusers formally withdrew their claims.

Attorneys for the accusers earlier this month filed an acknowledgment in court that Monsignor Ray Hebert did not molest their clients when they were children at Madonna Manor, a Catholic institution Hebert supervised for a time as head of Catholic Charities.

The admission comes four years after Hebert, 81, sued them for defamation.

In the past five years, more than a dozen men who lived at Madonna Manor as children have filed suits against the Archdiocese of New Orleans. They claim that various priests, nuns and lay employees beat, terrorized or sexually abused them. The lawsuits also cover alleged abuses at Hope Haven, a nearby sister institution, mostly during the 1950s and 1960s.

The archdiocese last fall settled a package of lawsuits brought by former residents of Hope Haven and Madonna Manor for $5.2 million, but other claims remain.

Four men, Stacey Brown, Larry Daigle, Ted Lausche and Albert Miller, named Hebert among their many abusers. Hebert, a senior pastor and church administrator, protested his innocence from the beginning and sued to clear his name.

"I really don't know whether any of these men were abused or not," Hebert said Thursday. "I know I did not abuse them, and I know I was never aware they were abused by anyone else."

Shortly after the claims were first made, an archdiocesan review panel set up to examine such accusations advised then-Archbishop Alfred Hughes that the evidence against Hebert was too sketchy to warrant his removal from ministry.

Harold Dearie II, a Metairie lawyer who waived his fee to take Hebert's case, said he was convinced Hebert was the victim of mistaken identity. Hebert visited the institutions only occasionally to deal with staff and administrators, rather than the children, Hebert said in court filings.

In 2008, one accuser, Daigle, said he found a photo indicating his tormentor was not Hebert. Another accuser, Brown, died; a third was found to be too emotionally disabled to proceed; and the fourth elected to withdraw as the defamation suit neared trial.

While Dearie took the case for free, Hebert estimated he paid $3,000 for copying and other fees. He said he paid for his case out of his own pocket, without help from the archdiocese.

Hebert did not seek damages in his defamation suit and collected no money after the accusations were withdrawn, Dearie said.

"This is all I ever asked, to have my name cleared," Hebert said.

Still, other cases involving alleged abuse at the two institutions remain active, and Archbishop Gregory Aymond, in settling some suits last year, said he was convinced some of the abuse claims are authentic.

Hebert's case seems to be the first locally in which accusers have recanted publicly. Nationally, "false reporting of sexual abuse by children is very rare," said Kathleen McChesney, who headed the child protection department established by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops after the national scandal broke.

Hebert said Thursday he had no sense that staff at either of the two places were possibly terrorizing children sent there for safekeeping by courts or dysfunctional families.

"My whole impression, the whole time I was director of Catholic Charities when I worked with those institutions and the superiors of those institutions, was that they were running basically good programs," Hebert said.

Although some plaintiffs' suits contain case workers' notes that children had been beaten by staff, Hebert said state inspectors and church case workers did not sound alarms that caught his attention.

"I have the feeling that if we could gather all the children at Madonna Manor today, the majority would be very positive about their stay there. But to say no child was ever abused, I could not say that.

"But I also know what was said about me, and that was false."
.
As I said, the monsignor took himself on a press tour to clear his name and did not give a damn about the four damaged men. 

-ke