What happened to you in a Diocese of Lake Charles parish was not okay.

Five civil parishes, Calcasieu and Cameron, Allen, Beauregard, Jefferson Davis, thirty-seven churches, six schools. And a list. The Diocese put it out itself in 2019; there are 14 names on it now. If you were an altar server, a student, a kid in CCD at any of them, and a priest or a teacher or a sister did something you have never quite put down, then yes. This page is about you. It has a date on it too, June 14, 2027, and we'll get to why.

Free
Confidential
No obligation
You never pay a dollar

6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

This applies to you no matter what

It was forty years ago, or more, and you assume that settles it. It doesn't, not anymore: the oldest suit on file dates to 1966, and since 2021 the door has been open again for anyone who was a minor at the time, through June 14, 2027.
The priest is dead. Barras, Burke, Schuster, Soileau, Sister Dexheimer, all named in the current suits, all gone. The cases were never really against them. They're against the Diocese, still at 1201 Ryan Street.
His name isn't on the Diocese's list. Of the seven named in the suits the Advocate counted in January 2026, only two were. A list is a floor, not a ceiling.
You signed something once and took a little money. A man in Vinton got shown a 1999 agreement, $15,000, his name on it, promising he wouldn't sue. Except a judge looked at the signatures in November 2025 and found they were forged. Bring your paper to the call.
You told someone at the parish and it went nowhere. Read the Diocese's own list: first Broussard complaint received 1994, and he wasn't in prison until 2016. A gap like that is part of a case. It is not a mark against yours.
You live in Texas now, or Houston, or Baton Rouge, wherever Laura and Delta sent you. It follows the parish, not your address. Asking for someone who can't ask? Reach out anyway.

The Diocese of Lake Charles lawsuits: what the public record says, and when

None of this is ours. It's the Diocese's own list, the 14th Judicial District Court in Calcasieu Parish, a federal judge in Lake Charles, and the reporters who covered them, and every line links to where it came from. A complaint is an allegation, a name on the Diocese's list is that list's finding, and the Diocese has not admitted liability in any pending case. One man below was convicted; the rest were not.

1994, then 2009

The Diocese's own list first, in its own words. Mark Broussard was ordained for Lake Charles in 1986. You may know the places he was sent. Our Lady Queen of Heaven. St. Henry. Memorial Hospital. St. Eugene, down in Grand Chenier. The accusation, as the list words it: sexual misconduct with minors, roughly 1980 to 1991. As for when, the list gives two dates, a first allegation received in 1994, with removal from ministry that same year, and a second one in 2009. Laicized 2013. Incarcerated 2016. Count it. Twenty-two years from the first complaint on file to the prison sentence. Diocese of Lake Charles, List of Clergy Credibly Accused (PDF, updated April 24, 2024).

February 5 and March 11, 2016

This is the one conviction. Broussard went to trial in the 14th Judicial District Court, Calcasieu Parish, and the jury found him guilty on five counts, 11 to 1: two of aggravated rape, one of molestation of a juvenile, one of aggravated oral sexual battery and one of oral sexual battery, against boys who'd been 10 to 13, with offense dates in the verdict running July 1986 to July 1991 at Our Lady Queen of Heaven and St. Henry. Judge David Ritchie sentenced him March 11 to two life terms without parole plus 15, 15 and 25 years at hard labor, all consecutive. The Third Circuit affirmed it all on June 13, 2017, under docket 16-974. State v. Broussard, La. App. 3 Cir. 16-974 (June 13, 2017).

April 11, 2019, updated 2024

April 2019. Bishop Glen John Provost put out the Diocese's list: clergy credibly accused of sexual misconduct with a minor, going back to 1980, the year the Diocese was carved out of Lafayette. Twelve names, after a review by a retired judge, a retired sheriff and an attorney. Broussard is on it. Charles Soileau too, the old pastor at St. Joseph in Vinton, with three dates beside his name: allegation received 1999, removed 1999, died 2011. The list grew to 14 names with an update on April 24, 2024, and when SNAP asked for four more the Diocese said it had no evidence of allegations against them. KPLC.

June 14, 2024, ruled on February 28, 2025

A man identified as C.P. filed suit in state court on the last day of the original window. He says that in 1996 and 1997, when he was about five, a religion teacher called "David" abused him weekly at Sacred Heart Elementary and Sacred Heart Church in Lake Charles. The Diocese moved the case to federal court and asked to have it thrown out: prescribed, and the revival law an unconstitutional taking. Judge James D. Cain Jr., with the Attorney General on C.P.'s side, denied the motion on every ground, No. 2:24-cv-01615, and in April 2025 certified the question for the Fifth Circuit. C.P. v. Society of the Roman Catholic Church of the Diocese of Lake Charles, W.D. La. memorandum ruling (via CourtListener).

November 2025

The Soileau case. The complaint says he began abusing a 10-year-old altar boy at St. Joseph in Vinton in 1990 and kept on for about six years. The Diocese's lawyers put a 1999 agreement into evidence, $15,000 in exchange for no further action. Judge Michael Canaday of the 14th JDC heard sworn statements from the man and from a witness named on the paper and ruled the signatures were forged. In the same case, WWL and the Guardian reported, Canaday rejected the Diocese's argument that the lookback law is unconstitutional. The Advocate / nola.com, via BishopAccountability.

January 18, 2026

The Advocate counted ten lawsuits in the 14th Judicial District Court since 2021 over Lake Charles-area clergy, seven of the accused named: Michael Barras, St. Paul in Elton, around 1991; James Burke, Immaculate Heart of Mary, a girl of five to nine, 1985 to 1989; Sister Thelma Dexheimer, Our Lady Immaculate School in Jennings, 1966; Deacon Saunier, Our Lady of Prompt Succor in Sulphur, 1970; Herbert Schuster, Immaculate Heart of Mary, 1966; Broussard; Soileau. Two more unnamed, both 1993. Only Broussard and Soileau are on the Diocese's list. The Diocese's attorney, James Sudduth III, had filed exceptions to stop the suits; so far, the paper wrote, 14th JDC judges had denied them all. The Advocate / nola.com, via BishopAccountability.

March 31 to April 28, 2026

Then one judge went the other way. In the Burke case, 14th JDC Judge Kendrick Guidry ruled on March 31 that letting a forty-year-old claim proceed was an unconstitutional taking of the church's property. On April 15 the plaintiff's lawyers moved to recuse him: he had joined the finance committee at Immaculate Heart of Mary, the parish in the suit, and hadn't said so. Guidry stepped down; it "slipped my mind at the recent hearing." The case went to Judge Canaday, who had ruled the other way in November. KPLC.

We checked this on September 12, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from March 31 to April 28, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Diocese of Lake Charles lawsuit

Not the priest, or not only him. Every suit above names the Society of the Roman Catholic Church of the Diocese of Lake Charles. The corporation. The one at 1201 Ryan Street that assigned these men, kept their files, and decided what to do when someone spoke up. The theory is not complicated. Put an adult in charge of children and you have to watch him. When a kid says something, you have to act. The complaints allege the Diocese didn't. Its own list gives you the shape of it: a Broussard allegation received in 1994, another in 2009, a conviction in 2016. And in Vinton, a $15,000 paper from 1999 that a judge found carried forged signatures.

One thing to know before you call. The Diocese of Lake Charles has not filed for bankruptcy. Not as of this writing. Alexandria did, on October 31, 2025, and from that day every Alexandria claim became a race against a court-set deadline. New Orleans filed in 2020; its claims deadline is long past. Lake Charles is still answering these suits one by one, and its only public word on them is that it is "precluded from commenting." It is also a small diocese, about 91,000 Catholics by its own count. That is the honest reason not to wait until 2027. Second thing: before January 29, 1980, this was the Diocese of Lafayette; by KPLC's May 2026 count three of the area suits are Lafayette's for that reason. Lafayette has its own page here. Say the year and the right door opens.

Your deadline: the Louisiana statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims

Louisiana took the deadline off in 2021, and then reached back. Act 322 of 2021, now La. R.S. 9:2800.9, said a civil claim over the sexual abuse of a minor no longer has a time limit. Then it did the rarer thing. It brought back claims that had already run out, though only for a set stretch of time, and that stretch was due to close in 2024 until the Legislature pushed it, with Act 481 (Senate Bill 246), out to June 14, 2027. There was a scare in between. On March 22, 2024 the Louisiana Supreme Court struck the revival down, then agreed to rehear it, and on June 12, 2024, in Bienvenu v. Defendant 1, upheld it. So the law stands. Under 18 when it happened? You can file now. And if yours is one of the revived ones, from the 1960s, 70s, 80s or 90s, it has to be in before June 14, 2027.

Here is what's honest to add. The Diocese is contesting the law itself, case by case, as a taking of its property. It lost that argument in front of a federal judge in Lake Charles in February 2025, who then sent the question up to the Fifth Circuit, and lost it again before a 14th JDC judge in November 2025. Another agreed with the Diocese in March 2026, then stepped aside over his ties to the parish. So the route is open, tested, and being fought over at the same time. A claim filed inside the window is inside it whatever the appeals do.

And the other clock, for anyone who was 18 or older at the time, because the revival doesn't reach you. Adults are on La. C.C. art. 3496.2, three years, with its own rules on when the three years start. Not a closed door, a different one, and it turns on dates only you know. A lawyer decides it, not us. Before 1980, when these parishes were Lafayette's? Same statute, same window, different defendant.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never said it out loud. Not to your wife, your husband, a priest. Nobody.
You don't have a word for what it was. Half of you is convinced it wouldn't count.
You stayed in the Church. Went back to that parish. Sent your own kids to the school.
The priest died years ago. So had five of the seven named in the current suits.
It was a sister, a lay teacher, a deacon, not a priest. Three of the current suits are exactly that.
The name is on nobody's list. Five of the seven named in the January 2026 count weren't either.

Parishes and schools covered

Our Lady Queen of Heaven, Lake Charles · St. Henry, Lake Charles · Immaculate Heart of Mary, Lake Charles · Sacred Heart Church and School, Lake Charles · St. Louis Catholic High School · St. Joseph, Vinton · Our Lady of Prompt Succor, Sulphur · Our Lady Help of Christians and Our Lady Immaculate School, Jennings · Our Lady of the Lake, Lake Arthur · St. Paul, Elton · Immaculate Conception, Jefferson Davis Parish · St. Eugene, Grand Chenier. Those are the ones named so far, in filings or on the Diocese's list. But this page covers any parish, school or program the Diocese of Lake Charles runs or ran, any year since January 29, 1980, in Calcasieu, Cameron, Allen, Beauregard or Jefferson Davis Parish (before 1980 these churches were Lafayette's). Yours isn't here? Nobody has filed yet. It does not mean nothing happened. Say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue the Diocese of Lake Charles?

People are. Ten suits in the 14th Judicial District Court since 2021 by the Advocate's count, plus one in federal court, and so far the Diocese's efforts to stop them have mostly failed. Whether you can starts with one question, your age at the time; under 18, and the window is yours, through June 14, 2027.

Mine was before 1980, when this was still Lafayette's diocese. Does that change things?

Then the defendant changes, and that's about all that does. Until January 29, 1980 these parishes were Lafayette's, so the Diocese of Lafayette is the one you'd be suing, under the same law and with the same June 14, 2027 date. Three of the area suits on file are exactly that. Say the year and we route you.

How much is a Diocese of Lake Charles settlement?

We won't put a number on this page, and be wary of anyone who does. The only figure in the Lake Charles record is a $15,000 paper from 1999 that a judge found was forged, which tells you nothing about today, so let a lawyer who has actually read your facts be the one to tell you plainly.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Nothing, here, and not later either. It's contingency: the lawyer is paid out of what's recovered, only that, and if nothing's recovered you owe nothing at all. Not fees, not costs.

I thought Louisiana had a statute of limitations on child sexual abuse?

Not for a minor's claim, not since 2021. The catch is that word, minor. Older claims that had already expired were brought back too, but only for a window, and the window runs to June 14, 2027 (that's La. R.S. 9:2800.9 as extended by Act 481 of 2024; the Louisiana Supreme Court struck the revival in March 2024 and then upheld it that June). If you were an adult at the time you're on a three-year rule instead, and a lawyer has to look at your dates, not us.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed Louisiana attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.