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Friday, September 20, 2002

Sex-abuse settlements may lead Masonic school to close

DALLAS (AP) - A financial crisis caused in part by at least $6.9 million paid to settle lawsuits alleging sex abuse at the Masonic Grand Lodge of Texas' Masonic Home and School has led to a convention this weekend where masons will decide the school's fate.

Masons have been invited to a rare state membership convention Saturday in Waco, where they will decide whether to close the Fort Worth school or dip into its $50 million endowment fund to continue running it.

Texas Masons Board president Joseph Regian, responding to questions about the lawsuits, said the settlements have nearly drained cash reserves and account for "50 percent" of the financial problems.

Masonic leaders have mailed thousands of fund-raising letters seeking more than $6 million in donations to make up shortfalls attributed primarily to declining donations and bequests. The letters did not mention the settlements.

Regian told The Dallas Morning News for its Friday editions that confidentiality agreements had prevented him from mentioning the settlements as a major cause of the shortfall to the group's 122,000 Texas members or discussing abuse allegations at the school dating to the 1970s.

The Masons, a fraternal civic organization that has hundreds of thousands of members worldwide, supports dozens of boarding schools across the country and a network of boys clubs.

Public allegations of abuse at the boarding schools or within the Masons organization are uncommon, a check of news archives shows.

Regian and school officials said that students at the Fort Worth school are not abused and that since 1999, administrative safeguards, including background checks of staff members, have been in place to better monitor staff and protect children.

The boarding school serves about 135 students and employs 85 adult "house parents" who live on campus. It was established more than 100 years ago and now operates as a 206-acre nonprofit school district that is not subject to state child welfare inspections.

Masons officials declined to disclose the amount paid starting in 1999 to settle a lawsuit alleging that school caretakers were permitted to sexually abuse about a dozen students.

One sentence in the 600-page Masons financial statement for fiscal 1999 reports $6.9 million in settlements for litigation "in which the negligent hiring, supervision and retention of child care providers was alleged."

The 1999 lawsuit -- which is sealed except for the original complaint -- was filed against Texas Masons and former school director James Stewart on behalf of former student body president Scott Bickle.

Bickle's lawsuit involved at least a dozen other students, his former attorney said. Stewart left the school shortly before Bickle's lawsuit was settled. The lawsuit alleged that school and Masons leaders "had a significant history of documented child sexual abuse at their facility dating as far back as the 1970s" and refused to seek criminal charges "in every confirmed instance of sexual abuse/assault of children residing at the Masonic Home."

Bickle, now a college student living in Plano, declined to discuss his lawsuit or the settlement. He said he feared angering the Masons, who he said still support him with scholarships and other resources.

Bickle's former attorney, Timothy G. Chovanec of Fort Worth, also declined to discuss the lawsuit, citing the confidentiality agreements. He praised the Masons for taking positive steps to protect children since the settlement.

A separate 1994 lawsuit was filed on behalf of former school employee Bryan Butler and 19 children who lived at the home. Butler, who could not be located to comment, said in his lawsuit that he was fired within two weeks of reporting allegations of physical abuse and neglect and sexual abuse of children at the school.

Fort Worth police began an investigation at the Masonic Home and School in 1994. No criminal charges resulting from that investigation could be found.

Regian, again citing the sealed records, declined to say whether any of the allegations in the lawsuits had merit.

from the Reporter-News