Mater Dei, Ex-Teacher Sued in Alleged Abuse

A former student at Mater Dei in Santa Ana has sued the Roman Catholic high school and her former driver education teacher, saying he molested her for two years in the mid-1990s, starting when she was 16.

Her attorney, John C. Manly, said the girl reported the incidents at the time to police in Westminster, where the defendant lives, but no charges were filed.

Defendant Jeffrey Andrade, 44, said he was unaware of the suit. He said police had investigated the case and “didn’t find anything.”

The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court, charges that Mater Dei and the Bishop of Orange “engaged in a pattern and practice of hiring sexual abusers as faculty and staff administration” at Mater Dei. It says that since 1976 the high school has hired at least 10 people who sexually abused students.

“What happened to my client is part and parcel of acceptance in the diocese of adults sexually accessing minors and using positions of trust and authority to do it,” said Manly, a Mater Dei graduate who has filed several abuse lawsuits against Catholic churches.

The suit does not ask for a specific amount of dollar damages.

Unlike most others accused in the Catholic church molestation scandal, Andrade is not a priest. According to the suit, he was a counselor, teacher and assistant boys basketball coach.

Mater Dei referred calls to Father Joe Fenton, a spokesman for the Diocese of Orange, who said Andrade no longer worked at Mater Dei. He did not know why or when Andrade left.

Fenton said the diocese could not comment until it had been served with the suit.

The Diocese of Orange this year agreed to pay abuse victims $100 million and to make its files public. The settlement was the largest in the nation between the church and sexual abuse victims.

Mater Dei has had its own problems with alleged abuse. Nine men sued the diocese in 2003, alleging they were molested by Msgr. Michael A. Harris, a principal of the high school and one of the county’s most recognized Catholic educators. Harris left the priesthood in 2001 after the Los Angeles and Orange County dioceses paid $5.2 million to one of his alleged victims.

Another lawsuit filed that same year alleged that pedophiles at Mater Dei preyed on students in the 1970s.

The girl in the latest suit is not named and is referred to as Jane C.R. Doe.

The suit says Andrade began sexually abusing Doe in 1995, shortly after she began taking a driver education class from him. The suit says the abuse continued until 1997, when she was 17. The suit does not allege rape. It charges that Andrade took trips to Las Vegas, where Doe had traveled for school activities, so the two could meet; and that he would drive her from school to a park where they would have sex.

The suit says that as a result of the alleged abuse, Doe has difficulty trusting others and engaging in relationships. It says she feels “incapable, helpless and valueless because she is unable to maintain a stable home and feels as if she is [an] unstable mother” and “not a good role model or example for her daughter.”