COLUMBIA, S.C.—Three people who say they were molested by a former cadet at The Citadel filed six lawsuits on Monday, taking the military school to task for allegedly failing to report complaints against the former student.
In a lawsuit filed against the school’s president, attorneys for a former camper say that retired U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. John Rosa was told in 2007 that a camper had been molested by a former Citadel cadet working as a camp counselor at the school five years earlier, but that Rosa didn’t report the allegation to police.
Instead, according to the lawsuit, Rosa offered the camper money not to raise the issue in court and only began speaking out about the abuse allegations last year, after media reports surfaced concerning allegations against the counselor, Louis “Skip” ReVille.
According to the lawsuits, ReVille had been working as a contract employee in The Citadel’s writing and learning center in 2007 but abruptly stopped working for the school several months before his contract was set to expire. Paperwork included with the lawsuit shows that ReVille’s contract was to run through the end of June 2007 but that he parted ways with the school in a “mutually satisfactory release” in March of that year.
Had he alerted authorities, Rosa could have potentially prevented ReVille from harming other boys, the lawsuit says. ReVille has been indicted on 22 felony counts of molesting young boys, and his attorney has said his client is sorry for any pain he has caused.
“As a direct and proximate result of John W. Rosa’s conspiracy to conceal, ReVille’s sexual abuse went undetected and ReVille was able to continually trade on his reputation as a trustworthy, honored Citadel alumnus to continually place himself in an optimal position to continue to sexually abuse young boys,” according to the lawsuit.
Rosa has said that The Citadel should have done more after the camper’s 2007 complaint. A Citadel graduate, Rosa was tapped in 2003 by the Pentagon to serve as superintendent of the Air Force Academy in the wake of a sexual assault scandal that found female cadets feared they would be disciplined if they reported rapes. He went to The Citadel in 2006.
Solicitor Scarlett Wilson has said The Citadel faces no criminal liability for not reporting an abuse allegation involving ReVillle. But the lawsuits filed Monday are civil in nature and, while they don’t seek specific dollar amounts, the attorney who filed them said that his clients want The Citadel to set up a program to prevent further abuse.
“They hope to play a small part in the prevention of future sexual abuse,” plaintiffs’ attorney Mullins McLeod said.
An attorney for the school did not return a message Monday.
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