He now lives quietly – though no longer anonymously – in a Minnesota town, decades removed from his 30-year-plus tenure as a Catholic priest on the American territory of Guam.
Louis Brouillard is now 96 years old.
And he is still lucid. He remembers vividly his close contact with legions of young Guamanian boys from the late 1940s until 1981. That latter year, notes a church official, is when Brouillard was relocated from Guam to a Minnesota diocese for “help with his personal problems.”
Those problems proved highly destructive to many scores of trusting altar boys, Boy Scouts and other island adolescents who Brouillard easily manipulated or otherwise intimidated. The priest essentially carried out a systematic campaign of unremitted child molestation the entire time he was on Guam.
Stories are surfacing now, and they are predictably horrific. A central asterisk that attaches to all of them is that Brouillard will never have a criminal law reckoning on Guam, given that his crimes against children are now time barred under the island’s relevant statute of limitations.
What makes that reality especially stark and poignant is this: Brouillard readily admits to wrongful activity that has scarred high numbers of victims for a lifetime. He recently lamented to a reporter that “I was thinking more of what I wanted to do, rather than what God called me to do.”
What seems frankly damning in Brouillard’s case is an affidavit in which he states he sought church counseling for his behavior early on and was simply told to “say prayers as a penance.”
In total, 122 victims – and of both sexes – accuse Brouillard of sexual misconduct. A stunning 166 lawsuits have been filed against him, the church and the Boy Scouts (Brouillard had a tenure as Guam’s Scout president), notwithstanding the limitations bar on the priest’s criminal conduct.
The litigation is slated for mediation this coming autumn and an eventual settlement.
Hopefully the victims will gain closure through their empowerment in taking action and spotlighting wrongdoing, as well as through securing a maximum legal recovery.
The tale is admittedly sad. Moreover, though, it is merely reminiscent of similar stories that repeatedly emerge regarding adults’ criminal behavior aimed at the sexual exploitation of an innocent and vulnerable demographic.
