HARTFORD, Conn.—Fairfield University said it cannot account for more than $120,000 from its own money and chapel donations for a Haitian school where a former Connecticut man is accused of sexually abusing boys.
The money is part of nearly $776,000 raised at the Jesuit university from 1997 to 2008 for Project Pierre Toussaint. The Haitian school was co-founded and directed by Douglas Perlitz, a 1992 Fairfield graduate who was charged in September with sexual abuse.
The college on Wednesday released the results of a five-month investigation into its involvement with the program. The university said it commissioned the investigation after Perlitz’s indictment.
The report detailed problems with the handling of the money by the Rev. Paul Carrier, the school’s former chaplain and head of its Campus Ministry for 18 years. It also said school officials didn’t learn of the sex-abuse allegations against Perlitz until May 2008.
Carrier has not been charged with any crime. A message seeking comment was left Thursday morning with his attorney.
In 2006, Father Thomas Regan—the Jesuit Provincial for the New England Province at the time—asked Carrier to complete his ministry at Fairfield and begin a sabbatical, said Alice Poltorick, a New England Province spokeswoman.
Poltorick would not provide details, saying that “assignment decisions are private matters between a provincial and the individual Jesuit.” The university did not say where Carrier was transferred, but Regan said the decision was “in no way based on any allegation or suspicion of sexual misconduct in connection” with Project Pierre Toussaint.
About $700,000 for Project Pierre Toussaint was collected by the university, primarily during daily Mass at the campus chapel, the university said. As the weekly contributions increased, “the financial controls in Campus Ministry didn’t keep up,” university board Chairman Paul J. Huston said in a statement.
Besides those donations, Fairfield directly contributed $51,000 to the project, the school said.
About $120,500 in payments to Carrier are undocumented. Of that amount, $23,000 was from university funds and $97,000 from the Campus Ministry, according to the report.
Stanley A. Twardy Jr., a former Connecticut U.S. attorney and partner in Day Pitney, a Stamford law firm hired to investigate the school’s financial involvement in Project Pierre Toussaint, said funding at the chapel was autonomous.
Carrier told donors he cashed their checks, rather than wire or otherwise send the money to Haiti, because the “banking system is so rudimentary we need money down there,” Twardy said.
The university said that, in the future, charitable donations collected on behalf of outside organizations will immediately be distributed directly to the groups.
Federal authorities in Connecticut accused Perlitz of enticing children at the school in Cap-Haitien into sex acts by promising them food, shelter, cash, electronics and shoes. They also say he threatened to expel boys if they refused his wishes.
Perlitz, of Eagle, Colo., has pleaded not guilty to nine counts of traveling outside the United States with the intent to engage in sexual conduct with minors and 10 counts of engaging in sexual conduct in foreign places with minors.
The university said it learned of the allegations of sexual misconduct in a phone call from a representative of the Haiti Fund to university President Jeffrey von Arx on May 2, 2008.
