A former altar boy at St. Vincent Ferrer Church in River Forest has filed a lawsuit alleging he was sexually molested by a Dominican brother there in the 1980s. Joseph Bitterman, 40, accused Brother Gilbert Hensley of sodomizing him orally and anally on at least four occasions when he was a fourth- and fifth-grader at the school.
According to the lawsuit, filed Oct. 26. Bitterman states in the suit that he repressed any memory of the incidents until July, 2004. Named in the lawsuit are St. Vincent Ferrer Parish, the Dominican Fathers, the Province of St. Albert the Great, and the Order of Preachers.
Bitterman also filed suit against the Cook County Sheriff in May in Chancery court. That suit was settled on June 6.
The suit contends that the Dominican order and others had knowledge that Hensley, who was a teacher and supervisor of altar boys, was a pedophile with “exploitive impulses, but failed to act on that knowledge, thereby increasing the likelihood that [Bitterman] would be harmed.”
The suit claims that Bitterman was not Hensley’s only victim, and that church and Dominican order officials knew that Hensley had suffered a broken jaw after he allegedly tried to molest a 17-year-old boy at the school.
The suit further claims that the school and religious order are legally culpable for Hensley’s behavior due to a fiduciary responsibility to Bitterman based on his “justifiable” trust in Hensley and the church as part his role as a student at the school. St. Vincent Ferrer and the Dominican order, the suit charges, were negligent for not assuring proper supervision of Hensley to assure he provided for the care and physical safety of the youthful Bitterman. In fact, the suit alleges, Hensley’s supervisor at St. Vincent, a Rev. Brice, was also molesting boys.
Officials from St. Vincent did not return a phone call seeking comment Tuesday morning.
A spokesman for the Dominican Province on Chicago’s South Side, Father John Meany, said Tuesday that they had not yet received a copy of the complaint. Meany said the order was first made aware of the situation by Bitterman’s lawyer, Joe Klest, two years ago.
Meany said the Dominicans have retained a lawyer who is working with Bitterman’s attorney “to determine exactly what occurred.”
Meany said Hensley was “immediately moved from where he was working” and assigned to duties not involving contact with minors.
“We deeply regret this happened,” Meany said. “We’re trying to make it right. But it happened so long ago.”
“It’s a recovered memory,” he said. “That’s always dicey.”
Kelli Cameron (married name) attended St. Vincent in the early to mid-1980s and remembers both Hensley and Joe Bitterman.
“I adored him. Everyone did,” said Cameron of Hensley, whom she remembered as skinny with red hair and glasses, a beard and a mustache. “Kids used to hang off him in the playground and all of that.”
Cameron said she remembers Hensley’s jaw being wired shut around 1981.
“It was totally wired shut,” she recalled. “The word was he got attacked. I was flabbergasted when I read the paper.” The school rallied around Hensley, making him soup and sending best wishes.
As for Rev. Brice, Cameron said, he “creeped me out.”
“I always had a feeling about him,” she said. “There was just something about him. Just creepy.”
Cameron remembers the Bitterman family, who lived in Elmwood Park, as “phenomenal people” who sent something like five boys to the school.
“I feel terrible for Joe,” she said of Bitterman, who was two years ahead of her at St. Vincent.