SSPX Sued for Sex Abuse Cover-Up in California
St. Aloysius Retreat House Sheltered Sex Predator
The Society of St. Pius X (SSPX) is facing a lawsuit for sex abuse cover-up in California.
The lawsuit, filed in Santa Clara County Superior Court, names multiple defendants, including the SSPX, which owns and runs the St. Aloysius Retreat House in Los Gatos, where the abuse allegedly took place.
While the official name of the complaint includes the bishop of the diocese of San Jose, the diocese was dropped as a defendant after it showed it had no control over the SSPX's activities in Los Gatos.
Going by the initials M.K., the plaintiff accuses Fr. Benedict Van Der Putten of molesting her when she was 6–9 years old, while she attended camp at St. Aloysius in 1997–1999.
According to the third amended complaint, filed in January 2024 (warning: graphic), “As part of the summer camp activities, Van Der Putten took Plaintiff on ATV rides. While on the all-terrain vehicle, Van Der Putten would sit behind Plaintiff and fondle her vagina under her clothing.”
“As part of St. Aloysius Holy Communion, Van Der Putten was also left alone with Plaintiff in a room by a St. Aloysius staff member, Maria Lopez,” it continues, “on the St. Aloysius campus while Plaintiff was preparing holy communion, and again Van Der Putten sexually abused Plaintiff by fondling her vagina under her clothing.”
“On multiple occasions, while Plaintiff was under Van Der Putten’s supervision, authority, and control, Van Der Putten sexually abused Plaintiff,” the complaint states.
She claims Van Der Putten’s “inappropriate behavior was well known at St. Aloysius.”
On Sept. 12, 1997, St. Aloysius wrote a letter to Van Der Putten asserting it was concerned with his “familiarity with the smaller girls (7–9 years), all wanting to be next to you, because you take them by the hand, and allow them to lean against you. They also made remarks about your touching and squeezing the older girls, of being too familiar during the conferences, of passing by the cabins in the evenings, passing by the swimming pool while the girls are swimming, and of joining in the game with the older girls (thus obliging the sisters to leave).”
The SSPX asked the court to strike this quote from the record, accusing M.K. of “twisting” it out of context. It remains unclear, however, how verbatim descriptions of Van Der Putten’s conduct, including “touching and squeezing” young girls, allowing them “to lean against” him, taking them “by the hand,” “passing by the swimming pool while the girls are swimming,” etc., can be taken out of context. None of this is appropriate behavior for any priest, regardless of the context.
The court rejected the SSPX’s motion to strike the letter.
According to the complaint, the SSPX did not investigate Van Der Putten’s conduct at the time, and he was allowed to continue working at St. Aloysius, where he allegedly continued to abuse M.K.
Spotlight: SSPX Predator in Our Midst
We first exposed Van Der Putten in our Feb. 11, 2021 Spotlight: SSPX Predator in Our Midst.
Another alleged victim, LouAnn Manwarren, met the priest in 1994, as a naïve 18-year-old teaching at St. Aloysius. She considered him a “saint,” and he told her she had a religious vocation as a nun.
This video is no longer available on YouTube.
He frequently tried to get her alone, telling her “I love you,” and used the Song of Solomon, a romantic allegory to one’s relationship with God, to groom her and sexualize their relationship.
One night he opened his cassock to expose himself to her against her will: “He was standing there in his cassock only. The cassock was open; he was fully erect right in front of my face.”
“And I started screaming at that point and took off running … .”
The next day Van Der Putten scolded Lou Ann for being “puritanical” and failing to be open to “love.” On a later occasion he exposed himself again.
Lou Ann reported the attempted assault to then-U.S. District Superior Fr. Peter Scott.
When confronted by his superiors, Van Der Putten reportedly admitted the sexual advances. But instead of disciplining the priest, SSPX leadership punished Lou Ann, blaming her for being an “occasion of sin” for him and forbidding her to return to St. Aloysius.
Some years later, after Lou Ann had moved to Michigan, she found out Van Der Putten was leading a retreat for girls, and was deeply concerned he might take sexual advantage of them.
She met privately with Fr. John Fullerton, at the time stationed in Michigan, in the hopes he would warn the girls.
“You can’t say anything to anyone because that would be detraction,” he told Lou Ann, preventing her from speaking to the girls.
At least one girl on the retreat ended up being molested by Van Der Putten.
Fullerton is current U.S. District Superior and has never responded to queries about his role in silencing Lou Ann or allowing Van Der Putten to lead the retreat, directly leading to further sex abuse.
Van Der Putten was later also accused of grooming and attempting sexual assault against a young woman, as revealed by the girl’s mother, Julie Swehla, in Spotlight: SSPX Predator in Our Midst.
Swehla also went to then-U.S. District Superior Fr. Peter Scott, who told her, “I’ll take care of it. But don’t tell anyone because that’s a sin, a mortal sin of detraction.”
“Detraction” is a common refrain used by the SSPX to silence victims and whistleblowers and prevent the public from learning of priestly abuse.
It was Swehla’s letters to the Vatican that eventually resulted in Van Der Putten's defrocking in 2005. He was later named in the 2018 Pennsylvania Grand Jury Report as a predator.
In the lawsuit, filed 10 months after the Spotlight aired, M.K. accused the SSPX, among other things, of foreseeability: “Not only did other children report to Defendant Van Der Putten’s sexual abuse prior to Van Der Putten sexually abusing Plaintiff, but Defendant produced documents showing they were aware of and concerned about Van Der Putten being around young girls.”
The SSPX filed motions opposing the complaint, claiming it could not have foreseen Van Der Putten’s abuse, nor was it responsible for his abuse. The court rejected the SSPX’s arguments.
Fr. Rostand Criminal Case
The lawsuit comes in the midst of news that French SSPX priest Fr. Arnaud Rostand is being criminally charged with molesting seven boys over the course of 15 years. He admitted to his crimes in court and apologized to victims.
The news has troubled both French and American traditionalists, as he was a high-ranking priest in the Society, having served as U.S. district superior for six years.
More troubling still is Rostand’s testimony in court that he notified his superiors on four separate occasions – 1998, 2000, 2006 and 2016 — of his pedophilic tendencies, yet his superiors kept placing him in schools and positions of authority.
While the SSPX U.S. district has issued an official statement denying cover-up, it has not denied this specific claim.
The SSPX asserts Rostand had been suspended from ministry since 2014, but records show Superior General Fr. Davide Pagliarani appointed him pastor of the local chapel in Menzingen, Switzerland in 2018, where he would have had access to children.
The SSPX has since scrubbed the evidence from its website, but a 2018 bulletin can be viewed here naming Rostand as prior (“prieur”) on its penultimate page.
Canadians also claim when Rostand was district secretary in Canada in 2020–2022 that he was allowed to baptize children and lead Sunday Mass, while parents were kept in the dark about his predatory past.
It has since come to light that some of Rostand's victims are from prominent families in France, namely Puga and Doutrebente.
Track Record of Abuse
The SSPX has been wracked with sex abuse scandals throughout its history, with more recent news of convictions:
In the same year, French priest Fr. Jacques Berrou appeared in court and confessed to sexually abusing a boy in 1990. The case was dropped owing to the statute of limitations. According to Berrou's own attorney, SSPX hierarchy had been aware of this abuse for more than 20 years but waited until past the statute of limitations to report him to police.
In 2022, American SSPX priest Fr. Matthew Stafki pleaded guilty to molesting his six-year-old niece over the course of three years.
In December 2020, an SSPX teacher in France was convicted for abusing 13 children, and just two months prior, in October 2020, SSPX priest Fr. Frederic Abbet was apprehended and imprisoned in Switzerland for abusing at least five boys in his care.
In 2017, SSPX priest Fr. Christophe Roisnel was sentenced to 19 years in prison for raping and torturing three female teachers at an SSPX academy in France.
A number of other cases of abuse allegations also exist.
Former U.S. District Superior Fr. Jürgen Wegner admitted in a leaked phone call that he knew of "hundreds of cases" of abuse within the Society.
According to Swiss journal Le Temps, "We find the same system: abuse, denunciation to the Society, heavy silence, relocation, fresh abuse, finishing off with isolation in Montgardin," nicknamed the "Golden Prison" ("prison d'orée") because it is the retreat house where troubled SSPX clergy, including sexual predators, are sent for prayer and penance.
Because victims are largely shunned and ostracized by their SSPX community if they accuse a priest, and leadership has used heavyhanded tactics to silence witnesses, it remains unknown how many actual victims exist, and how many SSPX priests have abused their flock.
