Kamehameha Schools and St. Francis lock horns over sex abuse settlement

Two of Hawaii’s charitable heavy-hitters are engaged in a fierce legal battle over the $80 million settlement of a sex abuse case that has roiled both organizations.

Kamehameha Schools, an educator of Native Hawaiian students, and St. Francis Medical Center, a nonprofit health care provider, are embroiled in litigation over the settlement Kamehameha reached last year with 32 plaintiffs who accused the late Dr. Robert Browne of sexually abusing them decades ago.

Most were Kamehameha students at the time. Browne, then a psychiatric consultant for Kamehameha, was employed by St. Francis and treated the students at his St. Francis office.

The former patients sued Kamehameha, St. Francis and Browne’s estate, alleging their negligence allowed the abuse to happen from the late 1950s to the early 1980s at St. Francis, on the school’s Kapalama campus and elsewhere.

Browne killed himself in 1991 after being confronted by one of the former students who threatened to expose the alleged abuse.

Kamehameha has paid most of the $80 million — the final $7.5 million is due by March — but is pursuing legal action against St. Francis to recover some of that money.

The school claims Browne concealed the abuse from Kamehameha, that St. Francis was the only party in a position to see through his deception and that St. Francis is responsible for covering part of the settlement tab.

“Even though St. Francis harbored Dr. Browne for decades and enabled the abuse he inflicted on students in its own facility, it has refused to take any responsibility for the harm inflicted on the survivors,” Kamehameha Chief Executive Officer Jack Wong told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser.

“We are disappointed that the leaders of St. Francis have not stepped forward to do their part to provide support and redress to victims of their employee’s abuse.”

Attorney Paul Alston, who represents Kamehameha, said the school entrusted its students to Browne and St. Francis, and St. Francis had a responsibility to ensure the students were provided safe and appropriate care.

“We’re more than unhappy with St. Francis because it refused to contribute a dime for the settlements,” Alston said.

St. Francis representatives bristled at the Kamehameha comments.

“They’re playing fast and loose with the facts,” said Bill McCorriston, one of the attorneys for the health care provider.

The students were treated by Browne through his private practice, not as part of his St. Francis job to provide psychiatric services for hospitalized patients, according to McCorriston.

St. Francis did not oversee his private practice and was even prohibited under confidentiality regulations from accessing the files of Browne’s private-practice patients, McCorriston added.

And even though Kamehameha officials were told of abuse allegations in the 1990s and even earlier, according to some plaintiffs, no one from the school informed St. Francis, he said. The nonprofit first learned of the accusations when the lawsuits were filed in 2014, McCorriston said.

The health care provider participated in the mediation talks and made many settlement offers, but Kamehameha kept increasing the amounts it wanted St. Francis to contribute, ultimately rejected the offers and reached agreement with the plaintiffs without informing or including St. Francis in those discussions, according to McCorriston.

St. Francis is appealing the court’s approval of the settlement, arguing that the agreement was collusive and not made in good faith.