Mater Dei Hazing Incident

Scott Reid is a wretched human being trying to make a name for himself. The Mater Dei case has fallen apart, and the Servite case is 46 years old, yet he thinks he's scooping the competition.

Maybe Servite should hire "The Men In Red" to clean up this scandal.

The hazing suit against Mater Dei is falling apart. Rather than admit he jumped the shark on the story, what does Scott Reid do? He comes up with yet another story of sexual abuse at Servite today. Anyone who can get past the O.C. Register's paywall can read the detailed story with all its sordid details.

1980-82. The alleged violator was English teacher Robert Cotton. It's the second sexual abuse case filed this year against Servite, the Diocese of Orange, and the Servants of Mary. The earlier suit was for alleged abuse in 1976 by Father Kevin Fitzpatrick, the school's swimming and water polo coach.

The only thing these stories prove is that Scott Reid is a bottom-feeding scum-sucker who will do anything to get his by-line in the newspaper.

Because the lawsuits were filed this year. But the question remains, why? After all this time, were they somehow encouraged into doing so?

I wanted to drop by to give a unique perspective on the accusations against Father Fitzpatrick. I didn't see a separate thread dedicated to it and this was the only one that popped up in a search. If these comments need to be moved to a different thread, by all means do.

My family participated in competitive aquatics at Los Coyotes Country Club in Buena Park from the time I could crawl. My brothers were 10 years & 8 years older than me and when they attended Servite, they naturally drew the attention of Father Fitz and the other swim coaches. Both of them lettered as Freshmen (diving for one, Butterfly for the other) and the time my parents spent taking them to practices & meets led to a friendship with Father Fitz. This friendship led to Father Fitz being at our house for many Thanksgivings as well as some summertime days at my parents' house at Canyon Lake.

My parents were not naive about pedophiles, they were involved in getting an assistant coach fired from Los Coyotes due to inappropriate contact with some other family's son. My mom spoke to me at an early age about what to do if a man ever attempted to get you to come to his house or ride in his car to "help find his puppy". She wasn't graphic, but she gave me the freedom to get away from such a situation and to speak up about it. It came in handy at a Sears store once when I was about 9 years old watching some kids play the display unit of a brand-new Pong game while my mom was shopping elsewhere in the store. Some 40-year-old dude told another boy standing there that he had this game at his house and that he could take him there to play. My reaction was to immediately walk over to the Sears security guard and tell him what I overheard. The security guy confronted the pedophile, and he was taken away forcefully. I told my mom later on & you could see the relief in her eyes that she had brought the subject up to me earlier.

I say all this because I knew Father Fitz from the time I was 7 years old until I graduated from Servite. There were times where I was around just him, be it watching sports on a TV, down at the dock on the lake or staying after class for some reason. At no time in all those years did Father Fitz ever do or say anything inappropriate to me, nor did he ever act in a manner that made me feel uncomfortable. He was an adult, I was a kid & later a teen, and all interactions we had were completely normal on his part. Of course, lack of evidence is not evidence, but if Father Fitz was the predator that he has been accused of, it is amazing the restraint he showed around me for all those years.

There are a lot of holes in the story the first accuser tells. He claims that Father Fitz caught him cheating on the entrance exam and told him that if he wanted to get into Servite, he would have to submit to him. Father Fitz did not have that kind of power in the administration. He was a math & religion teacher, swim coach & that was it. If a student was caught cheating on the entrance exam, there is no way Father Fitz could have talked the administration into admitting that student. The accuser later claims to have met Fitz at a party after graduation & confronted him. If he was man enough to confront Fitz, why didn't he mention something to the administration? After all, what kind of person lets someone they claim to be a horrible predator stay around innocent boys for years. Lastly, the accuser blames all of his life's failures on his inability to deal with the claimed abuse. Yet in 2020, he decides on a lark to go visit Servite, where he claims he decided then to reveal his accusations. If one is so distraught by events that happened on a campus, how in the world would they ever go back to the scene of the crime?

My opinion is that this is a cash grab that is being nurtured by an ambulance chasing attorney, neither of whom care that they trash a man's reputation well after he is unable to ever defend himself. I am also very disappointed in the current Servite administration for "temporarily" taking his name off of the aquatic center, that is akin to admitting knowledge of the accusation being true. However, I have no influence or relationship with the administration, so they never asked me for my take on the situation.

On a side note, I never had Robert Cotton as a teacher, but was obviously familiar with him on campus. He was a smaller, slight of build man, but was not meek. My take on that accusation against him is if it was true, if Cotton had been a pedophile, there is no way that Larry Toner, Dale Eccleston or Larry McQuiston (long term fellow teachers) would have allowed it. These men not only taught subjects, they taught their students what it meant to be a man and the last thing any of those 3 would have allowed would have been a predator among the student body. Cotton, or any other pedophile, would have been beaten to a pulp.

Excellent posts, RSM and Professor. One of you said, "I think the plaintiff is full of shit", and the other said, "My opinion is that this is a cash grab that is being nurtured by an ambulance chasing attorney, neither of whom care that they trash a man's reputation..." Personally, I couldn't agree more. It just saddens me a little bit that you don't extend the same benefit of the doubt to a rival school.

When the current hazing lawsuit was filed, every two-bit reporter in Southern California - Scott Reid, Eric Sondheimer, Bill Plaschke, Steve Fryer, Mark Whicker, Petros Papadakis and others - jumped in with both self-righteous feet in condemning what "happened", and calling for immediate resignations and terminations. Since then, the plaintiffs' case has fallen apart, with virtually every charge refuted by eye witness accounts, cell phone cameras, emails, text messages and school CCTV cameras. In fact, recognizing this, the plaintiffs have requested an immediate settlement conference in the hopes of getting something out of this sham. Yet not a single word has been written about those developments by the above "journalists" or any others.

It's always more fun and exciting to believe the worst, except that the worst is often not what happened. That's true at Servite, at Mater Dei, and probably every other school as well. It would be better if we could all think that way first.