Kamehameha therapist accused of abuse was respected member of society

A colleague in 1983 described Dr. Robert Browne as a pioneer of child psychiatry in Hawaii.

Browne also was a prominent civil rights activist, a former Army Reserve captain and an avid tennis player.

He was a lover of art, theater and opera.

A husband, father of four and grandfather of nine.

And an alleged pedophile.

The psychiatrist at the center of the sex abuse controversy engulfing Kamehameha Schools died in 1991 from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Browne killed himself in the woods behind his Manoa home hours after a former student confronted him over the phone about alleged abuse from years earlier.

A suicide note was found in Browne’s mailbox.

A quarter of a century later, it’s difficult to reconcile the Renaissance side of Browne’s public life with the alleged horrors that happened within the privacy of his soundproof therapy room at St. Francis Medical Center, then called St. Francis Hospital.

Thirty-four plaintiffs, most of them former Kamehameha students, have sued the school, St. Francis and Browne’s estate, alleging that the plaintiffs were sexually molested as boys by Browne during counseling sessions mostly from the 1960s into the early ’80s. They say the defendants were grossly negligent in their obligation to keep students safe.

The defendants have denied the allegations, though Kamehameha has acknowledged that the plaintiffs were abused. But it says the psychiatrist concealed his misconduct.

The stark contrast between Browne’s public persona and what he allegedly did behind closed doors fits a pattern commonly found in sex abuse cases, according to Jeff Dion, deputy executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime in Washington, D.C.

PILLAR OF SOCIETY

Sexual predators often set themselves up as pillars of society, charismatic and well-respected, Dion said. “This is a standard practice by pedophiles.”

For the 34 plaintiffs, Browne was the source of what they describe as lifelong emotional pain stemming from childhood molestation, which included fondling, masturbation and penetration. Browne told them the treatment was part of their therapy and to keep it secret, according to the plaintiffs. Many never told a soul until the lawsuit.

“People like him ruin lives,” said Wailua resident Michael Almeida, 53, who says he was molested during his freshman year at Kamehameha in 1979. “We’re left to carry on with these deep scars.”

It’s difficult to get a comprehensive picture of what the 6-foot, 159-pound Browne was like during his adult years because many of his contemporaries are dead.

In some ways, he was reserved and volunteered little about himself, according to some people who dealt with him.

“My impression of Dr. Browne was that he was a fairly private person and he guarded himself, and I never felt like I knew him,” said Thomas Sakamoto, a former Kamehameha counselor who occasionally spoke with Browne about students getting treatment.

Sakamoto made that remark in a deposition he gave last year for the pending lawsuit.

“I think he was just hard to get to know,” agreed Tomi Knaefler, who as a Honolulu Star-Bulletin reporter in 1965 covered Browne’s participation in the famed Selma-­to-Montgomery civil rights march.

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Browne was one of five Hawaii residents who traveled to Alabama with lei that civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. and others wore in leading the protesters on the march.

Knaefler, 88, who was invited to dinner several times at the Brownes’ Manoa residence, remembered the psychiatrist as “always very giving,” with a nice family and a keen interest in civil rights.

His obituary said he was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union in Honolulu.

Beyond their shared civil rights interests, though, Knaefler said she couldn’t recall much else about him. “I never really got to know him at that level,” she told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

Knaefler said she was surprised when she learned that Browne was accused of being a child molester. “I never thought of him as somebody capable of doing that stuff.”

Nona Springle Ferdon, one of the five Selma marchers from Hawaii, likewise was surprised.

“The Robert Browne I knew was a very gentle, caring individual,” Ferdon, a research assistant in psychology in 1965, said in an email to the Star-Advertiser.

Despite Browne’s guarded nature, he welcomed attention in certain areas.

His participation in the Selma protest brought front-page coverage, including photos, in the local newspapers.

“The march showed that nonviolent demonstrations are effective,” Browne told Knaefler in an interview following the 54-mile trek. “Public opinion is a very powerful force.”

Two years later, Browne was in the newspaper again. He and his wife, Mieko, were the subject of a Star-Bulletin article on their extensive Oceanic art collection, parts of which they loaned to the then-Honolulu Academy of Arts for an exhibition. They opened their house, which was filled with hundreds of pieces, to a reporter and photographer for the story.

In addition to his interest in art, the University of Rochester graduate was a founding member of Manoa Valley Theatre and a member of the Hawaii Opera Theatre, according to his obituary. He died at age 65.

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PIONEER IN PSYCHIATRY

Before his body was found on Halloween 1991, his wife told police that her missing husband, retired from psychiatry, showed no signs of depression, played tennis four times a week and joined her every weekend to have dinner with their best friends. She was puzzled by her husband’s sudden disappearance because “things have been so peaceful around the house,” according to the police report on the case.

Mieko Browne died in 2005.

Several of Browne’s adult children did not respond to a Star-Advertiser request for comment relayed through their attorney.

Browne’s tenure as psychiatric consultant to Kamehameha and as chief of psychiatry at St. Francis ended in the early ’80s, about a decade before he killed himself. During his stint as a consultant, which dated to the late ’50s, Browne treated hundreds of Kamehameha students.

In a 1983 letter, Dr. George Mills, the school’s medical director and a longtime colleague of Browne, described him as “one of the pioneers in child psychiatry in Hawaii.”

He said Kamehameha was still using policies that Browne helped establish 20 years earlier, according to transcripts of depositions that former Kamehameha officials gave last year for the lawsuit.

“His ability as a physician has always been at the highest level,” Mills wrote. “This was manifested time and time again in his handling of the very sensitive problems we had at Kamehameha involving students, parents, and students and parents with administration.”

There were some at Kamehameha, though, who did not share Mills’ perspective.

William L. Lee, a former school counselor, told the plaintiffs’ attorneys that he was unimpressed with the psychiatrist and didn’t like him — a sentiment that he said Browne reciprocated.

“The only time I referred (a student) to Dr. Browne was when the kid was in such dire straits that we needed to buy a little more time for the youngster to improve his performance,” he said.

In their lawsuit, the plaintiffs say that Kamehameha was told about accusations against Browne as far back as 1966. The school disputes that.

In the Honolulu medical community, the psychiatric society’s board of review heard rumors in the 1970s or ’80s of inappropriate behavior by Browne, according to Dr. Robert Marvit, who was a member of the board back then.

But the rumors were so general — not even indicating the type of misconduct — that the board couldn’t pursue them, Marvit said. He said he told St. Francis officials about them.

While some who knew Browne were surprised by the abuse accusations, given his public persona, experts say sex offenders are not a homogeneous group.

“Just because a person does good things doesn’t mean they can’t also do horrible things,” said Alex Yufik, a Los Angeles forensic psychologist whose specialties include child sex abuse cases.