New Orleans Jesuit High Reaches Second Recent Settlement Over Decades-Old Abuse Allegations

A prominent Catholic boys' school in New Orleans has reached a second out-of-court settlement in two months to resolve a lawsuit alleging decades-old sexual abuse by a school janitor.

Legal filings dated 27 July and reviewed by the Guardian show the plaintiff and Jesuit High School agreed to settle ahead of a trial that had been scheduled for late September in the Civil District Court in New Orleans. The agreement follows a separate settlement involving the same janitor and another plaintiff, for which the parties filed notice on 4 June that the matter had been resolved outside court.

Allegations and Plaintiffs

The July settlement was filed by a plaintiff using the pseudonym Jayson Doe. In deposition testimony, Doe said he was 13 and newly admitted to Jesuit in 1978 when janitor Pete Modica began sexually abusing him on campus. According to a transcript excerpt filed in court, Doe said his father admired Modica because Modica had once been a professional baseball player and that Doe had been led to believe Modica helped secure his admission to the school.

"He said that I really should be appreciative of what he did for me," Doe said in his deposition. "And eventually he told me to drop my pants. And he began a sexual assault."

Related Cases and Background

The separate June settlement involved allegations that Modica, who has since died, and another janitor, Gary Sanchez, abused a boy who lived near the school and played on its grounds in the mid-1970s. Court and criminal records show Modica previously pleaded guilty to molesting boys at a suburban New Orleans playground where he worked as a supervisor. Sanchez pleaded guilty in 2002 to attempted rape of a five-year-old and received a 30-year prison sentence.

Both the June and July suits trace back to a broader clergy-abuse scandal that prompted the Archdiocese of New Orleans to seek bankruptcy protection in 2020. The archdiocese and its insurers moved in December to largely resolve that bankruptcy with a $305 million plan to compensate hundreds of survivors, but court filings indicate many claimants were still awaiting payments as of late July.

Other Accusers and Settlements

The recent civil actions followed public accusations in September 2018 by Richard Windmann, who said he had been abused at Jesuit in the late 1970s by Modica and a now-deceased priest, Neil Carr. Jesuit settled Windmann's claims in 2012 for $450,000. The Society of Jesus later acknowledged that Carr was among several priests, seminarians and religious brothers credibly accused of molesting children while working at the school.

Court filings show Jesuit has paid at least nine settlements tied to abuse by Modica, six of which were reached after Windmann went public. Most settlement amounts have not been disclosed. Separately, an unrelated lawsuit alleges the late priest Claude Boudreaux sexually abused a student on campus in the early 1980s; that case was tentatively set for trial on 2 November.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs — including Richard Trahant and co-counsel Soren Giselson and John Denenea — and lawyers for Jesuit declined to comment publicly on the monetary terms of the July settlement.

What remains clear: multiple survivors have reached civil settlements with Jesuit High School related to abuse by staff and clergy over several decades, and several related legal and bankruptcy processes continue to be resolved in court.