What happened to you at Holy Cross School, or anywhere the Holy Cross brothers ran, was not okay.

This is not the Archdiocese of New Orleans page. The Archdiocese spent more than five years in bankruptcy and that door has its own rules. This is about a religious order, the Brothers of Holy Cross, the men who ran Holy Cross School on Dauphine Street, its boarding halls and its summer camp, and who still sponsor the school on Paris Avenue today. Their corporation was sued in federal court in 2021 over one brother and one camp dormitory, and on June 25, 2025 a jury in New Orleans said the order was responsible. If you were a boy there, in any decade, this page is about you. There's a date attached to it, June 14, 2027. We get to that further down.

WatchingThe $2,375,000 verdict against the Holy Cross brothers was returned June 25, 2025 in the Eastern District of Louisiana. The order said it was evaluating its options; whether it appealed, and whether the judgment has been paid, is not in any public record we have found. A second Holy Cross School suit, sent back to Civil District Court in 2023, has no public update. Updated September 15, 2026.

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

Whatever year it was. The man who won in June 2025 was ten, maybe eleven, at the summer camp when it happened, on a campus the school hasn't used since Katrina, and he was 68 by the time the jury came back. His claim had expired (the lawyer's word is prescribed) when he was twelve. Louisiana brought it back anyway, and 1968 or 1958 makes no difference to that. The same law reaches back that far for anyone, but only until June 14, 2027, and that's the date to hold onto.
The brother is dead. Stanley Repucci died years before anyone sued over him, and the case went to a jury anyway, because the case was never against him. It was against the corporation that assigned him, kept his file and could have removed him. That corporation is still in business, in Austin.
You reported it, once, and it went nowhere. The 2021 complaint says a Holy Cross representative sat down with the plaintiff in June 2020, called his account credible, promised an investigation and therapy, and then the order stopped answering. That went into the case. It isn't held against you.
It was the boarding hall, not the camp. Or the classroom, or a bus trip, or the Waveland camp before Camille took it. The record on this page names one dormitory. It does not mean the dormitory was the only place.
You live in Houston or Biloxi or Baton Rouge now. Holy Cross boarded boys from across the South until the early 1970s. The claim is a Louisiana claim wherever you live. It follows the order, not your address.
You're a wife, a brother, a grown son asking for a man who won't. Reach out anyway. The second Holy Cross School suit, the one in Civil District Court, was carried on by the plaintiff's family after he died.

The Holy Cross brothers lawsuits: what the public record says, and when

None of this is ours. It's the federal court in New Orleans, the Fifth Circuit, the Louisiana Supreme Court, the order's own testimony under oath, and the reporters who covered them, mostly David Hammer at WWL and Ramon Antonio Vargas at The Guardian, and every line links to where it came from. We don't add to it. A complaint is an allegation. A jury verdict is a jury verdict, and there is one here, on June 25, 2025, against the Congregation of Holy Cross Moreau Province, Inc. (sued as the Southern Province) and Holy Cross College, Inc., which is the school's corporate name. Nobody on this page was convicted of a crime; the brother named in both suits died before either was filed. And because it matters for the first question above: the records here name one place, Holy Cross School in New Orleans, its dormitory and its summer camp. Holy Cross of San Antonio and every other ministry on this page is listed because the same province of brothers ran it. No separate record on them is cited here.

August 1, 2021

John Lousteau, 63, of Florida, filed suit in the Eastern District of Louisiana, No. 2:21-cv-01457, against the Congregation of Holy Cross Southern Province, Inc. and Holy Cross College, Inc., the corporation behind Holy Cross School. The complaint alleges that Brother Stanley Repucci, a teacher at the school from 1964 to 1969 who ran the boys' summer camp on the campus, sexually assaulted him twice in the camp dormitory during nightly room inspections, in 1968 or 1969, when he was 10 or 11. He filed on the very first day the new Louisiana law allowed a suit like his. There's more in the complaint: on June 17, 2020, it alleges, he sat through a detailed interview with Holy Cross representatives, who told him his account seemed credible and promised him an investigation and therapy. Then, it says, they cut off contact. The school's response was that nobody now running it had been there in the late 1960s. WWL-TV, August 2, 2021, via BishopAccountability.

June 8, 2022

Judge Jay Zainey threw the case out, and not because he doubted it (his order recites the complaint's account of Repucci, the dormitory, and the 2020 interview) but because he read Louisiana's 2021 revival law as unconstitutional: once a claim had prescribed, he held, the defendant had a vested right to say so, and the Legislature could not take that right away. The order names the defendants as Congregation of Holy Cross, Moreau Province, Inc. and Holy Cross College, Inc. Lousteau appealed. E.D. La., Order and Reasons, Rec. Doc. 51.

June 27, 2023

A second Holy Cross School case reached the Louisiana Supreme Court first. T.S. v. Congregation of Holy Cross Southern Province, Inc. and Holy Cross College, Inc., No. 2022-CA-01826, was filed in Orleans Parish Civil District Court in August 2021 by a man who alleged that Repucci abused him in the school's dormitory in 1964 or 1965, when he was eleven, and who died while the case was pending; his family carried it on. The trial judge had called the revival law unconstitutional. The Supreme Court, Justice Genovese writing, wouldn't reach that: it held that the 2021 act, as written, did not clearly revive claims from before 1993, vacated the constitutional ruling, and sent the family back to amend under the 2022 act that fixed the wording. Louisiana Supreme Court, No. 2022-CA-01826.

August 28, 2023

The Fifth Circuit vacated Judge Zainey's dismissal in Lousteau's case, No. 22-30407, on the same logic as T.S., and sent it back so the complaint could be amended to plead the 2022 act. A footnote records that the plaintiff had sued the Congregation of Holy Cross Moreau Province, Inc. under its old name, Southern Province. Same corporation. Fifth Circuit, Lousteau v. Holy Cross College, No. 22-30407.

June 12, 2024

Bienvenu v. Defendant 1, No. 2023-CC-01194. On rehearing, the Louisiana Supreme Court split 5-2 and upheld the revival: Act 322 of 2021, read together with Act 386 of 2022, is constitutional, and for the period it states it brings back every claim for sexual abuse of a minor that had prescribed under any Louisiana rule. That took away the ground Judge Zainey had ruled on. One more thing about the period. The window had first been set to close June 14, 2024, and by the time this ruling came down the Legislature had already carried it out to June 14, 2027 (Act 481 of 2024). Louisiana Supreme Court, No. 2023-CC-01194 (rehearing).

May 19, 2025

Judge Jane Triche Milazzo ruled before trial that the Moreau Province could be held liable as Repucci's employer. Her order sets out what the province's own representative, Brother Stephen LaMendola, testified to: Holy Cross is a 'property' school of the province, the headmaster reports to the province, the province assigned Repucci to the school and would have signed off on his placement at the camp, kept his personnel file, evaluated his teaching, and could dismiss him. The province had also admitted in discovery that it had a duty of reasonable care in hiring, retaining, training and supervising him. On that record the court found the employer relationship as a matter of law, and that the assault, in the dormitory, during camp hours, as camp director, was within the scope of his work. E.D. La., Order and Reasons, Rec. Doc. 124.

June 25, 2025

The jury came back for Lousteau: $2,375,000 for pain, suffering and mental anguish, against Holy Cross and the school, on a finding that they failed to supervise and monitor clergy and to ensure that minors would not be abused by brothers in their charge. It was the first Louisiana revival-window case to reach a verdict. Lousteau was 68. A spokesman for the order said it was 'evaluating its options moving forward.' Louisiana Record.

June 27, 2025

The Guardian's account, carried by the National Catholic Reporter, put the number at $2.38 million and the finding plainly: the jury decided by a preponderance of the evidence that Lousteau was molested as a child by Repucci and that Holy Cross officials, as the abuser's employer, were liable to him for damages. The order's statement was the same one sentence. Whether it appealed is not in any public record we have found, and it is the thing we are watching. The Guardian / NCR, via BishopAccountability.

We checked this on September 15, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from June 27, 2025. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Holy Cross brothers lawsuit

Not the brother, or not only him. The defendant in both Holy Cross School cases is a corporation: the Congregation of Holy Cross Moreau Province, Inc., which the courts note is the same body that was sued as the Southern Province, plus Holy Cross College, Inc., the school's own corporation. This is a religious order, not a diocese. The Brothers of Holy Cross are a society of men under vows who take assignments from a provincial, remit their pay to the province, and answer to it; their provincial house is at 1101 St. Edward's Drive in Austin, on the St. Edward's University campus, and their ministries today include Holy Cross School in New Orleans, Holy Cross High School in San Antonio and St. Edward's. The theory isn't complicated. Put a grown man in charge of a dormitory of boys and you have to watch him. The 2025 order lays out, from the province's own testimony, that it chose Repucci for the school, approved him for the camp, kept his file, graded his teaching and could have removed him. A jury then found the order and the school failed to supervise and to keep the boys safe. Where the record shows what the province controlled, the case is against the institution, and the institution is the one that answers.

Still here, and not in bankruptcy. That's the order. No petition by the province appears on the Eastern District's bankruptcy docket or on the Penn State tracker of the 44 Catholic bodies that have filed, as of March 2026, and the Lousteau case was tried, to a jury, in open court, against a defendant that is still answering. People mix the order up with the Archdiocese of New Orleans, which is another corporation altogether, did go bankrupt, and is the one you've probably read about. That one filed Chapter 11 in 2020, its claims deadline ran out the following year, and its plan wasn't confirmed until late 2025, more than five years in; the exact dates and the figure are in the questions further down. If you've heard the New Orleans door is shut, that's the door they mean, and none of it binds the Holy Cross brothers. One more distinction a lawyer will make for you: the Holy Cross priests are a separate corporation, the United States Province, at Notre Dame, which absorbed the priests' old Southern Province in 2011 and keeps its own list of credibly accused members. If your years were with a Holy Cross priest at a parish or at St. Edward's, say so; the lawyer sorts out which corporation answers. Neither closes the door. Both matter.

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

Louisiana took the clock off in 2021, and then reached backward, and the Holy Cross brothers fought that all the way. Under La. R.S. 9:2800.9 a civil action for sexual abuse of a minor does not prescribe. Lawyer's word. It means no deadline, and that was Act 322 of 2021. The harder part was the reach-back: the same act, plus Act 386 in 2022, brought back claims the old rule had already killed off. Holy Cross argued that was unconstitutional, and for a while it won, in Judge Zainey's court in June 2022 and, on a different ground, in the T.S. case a year later. Then on June 12, 2024 the Louisiana Supreme Court went 5-2 the other way in Bienvenu, and a year after that a jury in the same federal courthouse returned $2,375,000 against the order. The revival stands. Revived, though, is the key word, since that kind of claim, unlike one that never expired, runs out, and the day it runs out is June 14, 2027, the date Act 481 of 2024 set.

Most people reading this, anyone who was a boy at Holy Cross before the early 1990s, should assume the revived kind, and June 14, 2027. Lousteau's claim had prescribed when he was twelve; that is exactly the kind the window is for. Younger people, whose claims mostly never expired to begin with, have no date at all. One honest thing: a judge in Lake Charles ruled on March 31, 2026 that the reach-back was an unconstitutional taking as applied to that diocese, then stepped off the case in April over an undisclosed tie to the parish, and the case went to a judge who had rejected the same argument. Nobody else has ruled that way since Bienvenu. The Supreme Court's decision is the law until it says otherwise, and the 2027 date is the date.

That is why we ask whether you were under 18. If you were 18 or older at the time, it is a different rule (La. Civil Code art. 3496.2, three years from the injury or from being told who did it) and honestly a harder road. A lawyer has to look at your dates before anyone can tell you anything. One more Louisiana thing: for a plaintiff 21 or older, the statute requires a certificate from a licensed mental health practitioner, reviewed by the judge in chambers, before the order can even be named. That is why the lawyer will ask, gently, whether you have ever talked to a counselor. Plainly, then. Under 18 at the time, the door is open now and closes June 14, 2027 for older claims. Over 18, a lawyer decides. Not us.

Your situation still qualifies even if

You never said it out loud. Not to your wife, your brothers, your own kids. Nobody.
You don't have a word for what it was. Half of you is convinced it wouldn't even count. The jury didn't need a word; it needed the dormitory and the room inspections.
You sent your own son to Holy Cross. Plenty of alumni have.
It wasn't a brother. A lay teacher, a coach, a counselor, an older boarder. The order's duty ran to the whole campus.
Nobody ever put his name on a list. The Brothers of Holy Cross have published no list that we have found. Repucci was never on one, and a jury found the order liable for him anyway.
You read that the Archdiocese went bankrupt and the deadline passed and figured that was that. Different corporation. The order never filed, and the courthouse is open.

Schools, camps and ministries covered

Holy Cross School in New Orleans is the one place the records on this page actually name, and we mean the whole of it. The classrooms. The boarding halls, where boys from across the South slept until the early 1970s. The Holy Cross Resident Camp for boys 7 to 14, run on the campus every summer, which is where the assault in the verdict happened, in 1968 or 1969. The campus then was on Dauphine Street in the Lower Ninth Ward, where the school had been since 1871; Katrina ended that, and since 2010 the school has been at 5500 Paris Avenue in Gentilly, 802 boys today. Everywhere else is here only because the same province of brothers ran it, and we cite no separate record on it: Holy Cross of San Antonio, the high school the brothers opened in 1957 on North San Felipe; the Waveland, Mississippi camp the school used until Hurricane Camille destroyed it in 1969; the brothers' houses and any school, camp or retreat the Southern, South-West or Moreau Province staffed in Louisiana, Texas or Mississippi in any year. Yours isn't named? That means nobody has filed on it, or we haven't found it. It does not mean nothing happened. Answer the questions and say where.

Questions people are asking

The brother is dead. Can I still bring a claim?

Yes. Both Holy Cross School suits were filed over a brother who had already died, and one of them went to a jury and won. The claim is against the order, the corporation that assigned him and kept his file, and that corporation is very much still here.

So can I actually sue the Holy Cross brothers?

One man did. Federal court, New Orleans, and on June 25, 2025 the jury came back with $2,375,000 for him. A second family's case, over the same brother and the same school, was sent back to Civil District Court to be re-pleaded in 2023. For you it turns on your age at the time, and for most people on filing before June 14, 2027. That's what the questions above sort out.

I heard the Archdiocese of New Orleans went bankrupt. Doesn't that cover Holy Cross?

No, and this trips people up. The Archdiocese is a separate corporation. Its Chapter 11 case began May 1, 2020 and ended with a $230 million plan, confirmed December 8, 2025; the deadline to claim there shut back in 2021. The Brothers of Holy Cross never filed. Their case was tried in open court in 2025 while the Archdiocese was still in bankruptcy down the street. If the order ever does file, everything stops and a federal judge sets a new claims deadline; as of this writing it has not, and we check.

Doesn't Louisiana have a statute of limitations for child sexual abuse?

Yes and no. A claim for abuse of a minor doesn't prescribe anymore, the lawyer's way of saying no deadline; that's been La. R.S. 9:2800.9 since 2021. But there's a window: the older claims, the ones already dead under the old rule, were brought back for a window only, and that window shuts June 14, 2027 (Act 481 of 2024 moved it from June 14, 2024). Holy Cross fought the window and lost at the Louisiana Supreme Court in June 2024, in a decision that undid a ruling it had won in its own case. If you were an adult when it happened, that's a separate three-year rule, and where you stand on it is a lawyer's call, not ours.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Nothing, here. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing, not fees and not costs. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

How much is a Holy Cross settlement?

We won't put a number on your case, and be wary of anyone who does. The one public number is a jury's, $2,375,000 to one man for one camp summer, and it is his, not a promise to anyone else; whether the order appealed it we don't know. Louisiana doesn't allow the kind of punitive award you may have read about from other states. It depends on what happened, what the province knew or controlled, and when, and a lawyer will tell you plainly after they've looked at your facts.

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.