Japan Catholic school sex-abuse victims demand to be heard
ASSOCIATED PRESS
The Roman Catholic Church’s worldwide sex abuse scandal has stretched into one of the world’s least Catholic countries: Japan. Former students at a prestigious all-boys parochial school allege they were molested or raped by religious brothers who taught there decades ago.
TOKYO >> The Roman Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal has stretched into one of the least Catholic countries: Japan, where former students at a prestigious all-boys parochial school allege they were molested or raped by religious brothers who taught there decades ago.
Three former students at St. Mary’s International School in Tokyo told The Associated Press they were sexually abused by brothers there. One described “health checkups” in which a brother touched boys’ testicles. Another says he was raped in the chapel by two brothers at age 11.
That former student received an in-person apology from one of the men, Brother Lawrence Lambert, in 2014. The former student’s account of the meeting suggests Lambert might have initially confused him with yet another victim whose assault went unreported.
The former student said the school sent Lambert away after the 1965 attack, only to have him return to serve as elementary-school principal for nearly two decades.
Allegations from former students have been published in an English-language Tokyo newspaper but otherwise have received little attention in Japan. There are only about 500,000 Catholics in the country of 127 million, and the school is aimed at foreigners like the three former students rather than Japanese.
Many sex-abuse victims choose not to come forward in conservative Japan. Unlike in the U.S., in Japan victims must press charges for cases to proceed. Japan’s statute of limitations is 10 years for rape and seven years for sexual assault.
School officials say they reported the chapel rape allegations to Tokyo police when the victim approached them in 2013. Yet Tokyo police spokesman Satoru Matsunaga said there were no records of the case in their files and no investigation is ongoing.
Though the victim said his family made St. Mary’s aware of the attack in 1965, Saburo Kagei, who has headed the school since 2013, said he had been unaware of them.
In October 2014, St. Mary’s set up an investigative panel to look into sex abuse at the school. Their findings are not ready, and the head of the panel declined to comment.
Kagei acknowledged Lambert’s apology without confirming the attack or any other sexual abuse.
“The last thing we would want any child to go through is any kind of harm,” he said. “We want to uphold and take care of the children who are placed in our care.”
Founded by the Brothers of Christian Instruction in 1954, St. Mary’s runs from first to 12th grade. Its 900 students hail from 60 countries, and it boasts having 13,500 alumni. It bills itself as the “most prestigious international school for boys.”
The Archdiocese of Tokyo declined to comment, saying St. Mary’s is handling the matter. Conrad Lord, a lawyer for The Brothers of Christian Instruction, which runs St. Mary’s, said Lambert’s apology had been obtained by “coercion,” and that both brothers were wrongfully accused, but declined to comment further.
The Vatican does not get involved in specific cases.
Brother Albert Heinrich, who heads the brotherhood in the U.S. and taught at St. Mary’s in the 1980s, said he learned of the abuse only in recent years. “I had no knowledge at that time of any alleged problems at the school,” he said in an email from Alfred, Maine.
Religious brothers are not ordained as priests, but take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and work in a variety of ministries, including education.
Teja Arboleda, 53, a former St. Mary’s student who says he was sexually abused by a brother in the mid-1970s, said students at the time “were told not to say anything. Otherwise, they would do something bad to us.”
Arboleda, a movie producer, is working on a documentary about sex-abuse survivors at Catholic schools around the world, including St. Mary’s, titled “Ring Around the Collar.”
“Most of them will not talk about it for the rest of their lives. Many of them are in denial,” he said in a telephone interview from Dedham, Massachusetts. “People, I think, often believe this only takes place in the United States because Americans are much more vocal.”
Arboleda says he was sexually abused by a brother who died in 1980. Ferdinand Stoer, another former St. Mary’s student, said he was abused by the same teacher.
Stoer, 56, said his class of about 30 students underwent a health checkup in which they were told to take off all their clothes; then the brother touched their testicles while they coughed. He was not a medical doctor.
“It was weird,” said Stoer, who lives in Sacramento, California, and like Arboleda agreed to have his name published. Some of the boys talked about it among themselves, but he did not tell his parents, and the checkup was not taken up as a problem at the school at that time.
In fall 2014, Stoer and some other alumni received an email in which Kagei acknowledged sex abuse allegations had been made against former teachers. Stoer assumed it was about the checkups.
In fact, the email was sent after the former student who said he was raped began reaching out to school and church officials and authorities in Japan and Canada. Police in Quebec, where the Brothers of Christian Instruction are based, said they have no jurisdiction over crimes in Japan.
No lawsuits have been filed over any of the allegations. Now 61, the former student believes he deserves compensation but has little hope that will happen.
“Nothing can be done,” he told the AP. “They decided to do nothing.”
The AP generally does not identify victims of sexual abuse who do not wish to be named.
The former student remembers many details of the rape, down to what his mother had made him for lunch that day: rollmops, or pickled herring held with wooden skewers. He is Jewish, and the school lunches served at St. Mary’s weren’t kosher.
He decided to eat alone, in the chapel. The two brothers walked in, making signs of the cross, and announced he had to be punished for eating there.
He was forced to face a table. His pants were pulled down. He was quiet. He thought maybe he was going to be spanked.
He didn’t know what was happening. All he remembers is the pain.
One brother raped him, and then the other man pulled his T-shirt over his head and raped him again.
When he was finally alone, he looked down and saw he had been clenching his fist so hard a rollmops skewer had stabbed through the skin of his palm.
He did not tell anyone, but his family’s maid found his bloodied underwear in the laundry. He initially refused to tell his parents who attacked him, but finally said he could not tell because “Brother Lawrence” might do the same thing to his 4-year-old brother.
The former student said his family did not pursue charges but demanded that Lambert be kept away from children. They were told he was reassigned to Canada after the rape.
Decades later, he learned that Lambert returned to St. Mary’s, serving as principal of its elementary school from 1982 until retiring in 2011. After that, he lived at a brothers’ residence in Japan.
The Brothers of Christian Instruction declined to reveal Lambert’s current whereabouts; Kagei said in his 2014 letter to alumni that he was no longer in Japan.
The AP found the second brother the former student accuses of rape, at a Japanese school in Yokohama where he continues to teach. He declined to comment.
The former student left Japan with his family back to his native Australia soon after the rape. He did not return until January 2014, when he met Lambert in Tokyo. The meeting was set in a synagogue with a rabbi present. The former student did not feel safe anywhere else.
Lambert, accompanied by a fellow brother, brought two letters of apology. He read them aloud and signed them at the meeting. The former student was also handed a letter from Kagei’s predecessor as school head, who apologized on the school’s behalf without confirming any specific allegations. That official, also a brother, did not come to the meeting and did not lead the school at the time of the alleged rape.
“The simple truth is that still today I cannot understand the fact that I raped you,” one of Lambert’s letters read. “It was the first time that I did that in my life, and I did not do that again. I was on my way to my bedroom upstairs when I saw you and saw nothing wrong with talking to you on the way. But then somehow passion suddenly took over…”
That account did not match the victim’s at all. An explanation might be found in Lambert’s reaction when he first saw the former student at the start of the meeting.
“Oh,” he recalled Lambert saying, “you were the one in the chapel.”
20 responses to “Japan Catholic school sex-abuse victims demand to be heard”
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Get rid of the vow of chastity. No normal person would go for that.
GOD-LESS PRIESTS.
The Church has lost its way! Instead of ousting the pervert priests they were reassigned hide the crime. Add insult to injury in this case later promoted to a principal’s position. Hope Pope Francis takes a positive and aggressive role on the perverts.
Wow, two days in a row the SA bashing religious facilities molesting and abusing children/adults. Fun factoid, in hawaii you have more chance of being molested in a public school than by any religious organization. Sin and perversion knows no boundaries and can be found anyplace. Probably even at newspaper organizations. Thankfully aberrant behavior is always brought to the light of day sooner or later and luckily in our state it is also criminal and punishable.
Sorry, what’s the point of your first three sentences?
Just waiting for all those muslim , hindu, buddhist , Jehovah’s witness, mormon, and other non christian philosophies to come under the same scrutiny as the korean and japan ” christian” abuse stories by the SA. Should be treated like any criminal case and the underlying theme is christians are hypocrites and perverts. The fact still remains, less abuse(of any nature) takes place in these christian organizations than other public institutions providing the same service. But if you were to look at muslim or hindu culture towards children and women for example, you would be thankful you were lucky enough to live in a country with christian and capitalistic values no matter what your religious belief or non belief is. You directly benefit ,by pure dumb luck, to be living in a land based on values of christianity and capitalism.
Thanks for the response. Question, just because there are injustices committed by other cultures and religions, does that mean we shouldn’t document these? Isn’t the allegation, let’s even call it a fact, that these acts were committed by this school’s officials? So, reporting where it happened and by whom is not being biased.
Advertiser 1, not sure if I am claiming more biased or just lazy journalism on your part . It is an AP release. Did you analyze the facts? Maybe consider some counter points? Probably not, because you are lazy and love slamming christianity, because christians turn the other cheek. But lets look at the facts.
Fact: 1 in every 2,252 priests over a thirty year period was afflicted with pedophilia. Pedophilia is a particular type of compulsive sexual disorder in which an adult man or woman abuses prepubescent children. The homosexual attraction to adolescent boys, which this article refers to, is ephebophilia. In the catholic church, this tendency is less than 2% which is comparable to married men and those men in other faiths or with jobs having authority or power over children. I personally think this is aberrant behavior, as homosexuality, bestiality, FILL IN SEXUAL FETISH ___________. Not right by any means.
What is my point????? You glorify same sex marriage as an organization at the SA. All on board. Why is ephebophilia somehow wrong to you???? In Hawaii with the current age of consent laws, a one day short of 20 year old can have relations with a late blooming 14 year old and be totally safe from prosecution. NOT AGAINST THE LAW IN HAWAII.
You seem to have drawn a line in the sand that you moved from my standards of decency and now you are crying foul??? I am glad you posted the story. I think the perps should be hung, the statute of limitations be waived and people be held accountable. But lets not fool each other on your liberal bias.
The day you start posting stories about female castration, boy sex slaves and the total disregard for females in the muslim faith, I think you will choose the turn the other cheek theology on christianity to pick on rather than putting a target on your head.
Typical,typical, soooooooo predictable. Please don’t let the facts get in your way of posting AP stories in the future.
Yo, advertiser1 is a nickname for the board…I’m not associated with the paper.
Honest question, do public schools deliberately hide molesters and shuttle them from school to school never prosecuting the guilty for decades?
Because the Catholic Church did that.
Yes public schools do cover up molestation starting with the perpetrator to administrators. It’s called not wanting to get caught and not wanting to be held liable and it applies to all. But facts are facts. You have a greater chance of being molested in a public school than at church. Hiding and covering it up, paying off victims, shuttling perps to other jobs happens not just in the catholic church, but at schools at all levels of private and public education, boy scouts, soccer camp, band camp, vacation bible school, aloha 50th state fair.
Please provide references or something for the claimed facts.
That is a ridiculous statement. Read the headlines… Read these boards and see how much support the DOE gets from the media and average Hawaii people. Anyone who isn’t completely non-sentient will conclude that it would be impossible for them to “cover up” institutional abuse of any kind.
Students, parents and other state and city agencies would have to be complicit in a scheme like that and how do you suppose they get all of these entities to cooperate? Is there some DOE hit squad, or do they pay people off with more than they would win as plaintiffs in a suit?
Point is that the prevalence of sexual misconduct of children at this japanese catholic school is no greater than any other similar situation in japan were adults have authoritative positions over children.
Because our DOE is tax payer funded, all pay outs are made public. 24feb2013 5.75 million awarded because hawaii DOE found liable in sexual misconduct case of student. Literally a story from 2 days ago 19 Apr 2016, suit underway alleging hawaii DOE liable for girl raped by classmate.
Private schools in hawaii have the ability to hide law suits unless criminal charges are placed but 19Jan 2016 the SA story “former Kamehameha students alleged abuse by school psychiatrist.
To the degree of something being covered up, it is human nature to suspect and not say anything because the consequences of being wrong and the ostracized to the extreme case of administrators knowing and not acting on it quickly or effectively. The law suit pay outs speak for themselves. There are dozens of other examples that occurred over the past decade in hawaii schools. Look for yourself
Stand by my statements. No higher incidence of abuse of children in the catholic school systems than other similar situations.
Currently going on right now in the hawaii public schools and only time will reveal is just like it has in the past.
Yes a story from two days ago that you read about in these pages. The newspaper. Covered also on other media including television so… Not much of a cover up is it?
Stand by your statements all you want, that won’t make them any less ridiculous.
I get it: you’re Catholic and you want someone else to look worse than you.
I am not a mackerel snapper or have anything to do with the catholic church. Cover ups are done by the perps and the institutions they work for not the news paper that post the article. Just think of me every article you read about another public school employee abusing a student in one way or another. The school official probably is catholic right?
Obviously there has been a worldwide tradition of supposedly “celibate” Catholic priests having sex with boys under their supervision for a very long time, possibly centuries. Apparently the Catholic priesthood has been a way for homosexual men to survive as a high status person in societies that did not allow open homosexuality. As more societies allow open homosexuality, hopefully gay men will find other occupations besides the Catholic priesthood, and leave the priesthood to those who have a legitimate spiritual calling.
what we need is a true Punisher…
As parents, we would never leave our children alone with a Catholic priest or bishop.
Wow! What is it with Catholic Priests anyway? Untold numbers of them have committed sexual abuses against the people they were trying to lead righteously. Huge hypocrits of the worse type!!!