Cameras Track Students At Academy

In Holy Cross Academy, where a nun was murdered last month, video cameras track students as they walk the hallways, study in class, even use the bathrooms – all displayed on a monitor on Father Abbot Gregory Wendt’s desk.

Headmaster Wendt and Father Damian Gibault, founders of the west Kendall school, have been accused by murder suspect Mykhaylo Kofel, 18, of molesting him since he arrived from the Ukraine four years ago for monastic training.

Wendt and Gibault vehemently deny the accusations from Kofel, who is charged with stabbing Sister Michelle Lewis more than 90 times with a kitchen knife and sexually mutilating her with a fireplace poker.

Miami-Dade police detectives and prosecutors have been unable to corroborate Kofel’s claim.

The small private school came into public light on Sunday morning March 25 when Wendt in a calm voice called 911 to report the death. Miami-Dade officers found Sister Michelle’s body, partially nude, in her bedroom.

Some parents, former students and former teachers are now reconsidering the pervasive use of video cameras at Holy Cross Academy, a Byzantine Catholic school known for its discipline, small class sizes and strong academic standards.

Joanna Wragg, a spokeswoman for the school, said there was nothing nefarious about the surveillance. “Most parents send their children to private schools because their main concerns are good academics and security,” she said.

MONITOR AT DESK

Two former teachers, speaking on condition that their names not be used, said Wendt kept a small monitor atop his desk in his private office. A monitor also was placed in the administration office.

“He could look at all the different cameras. Every 10 seconds or so, the picture would switch to another camera, but you could stop and look longer at the picture from a particular camera if you wanted,” said a former teacher, who quit several years ago.

Another former instructor recalled an incident where a video camera caught a student slumping in his chair. The teacher said Wendt’s voice suddenly boomed from the intercom, called the student by name and said: “Sit up straight!”

Miami-Dade Police Director Carlos Alvarez, whose son was graduated from Holy Cross several years ago, told The Herald he initially accepted the school’s explanation for the cameras.

“The school said a student or someone had been caught smoking in the bathroom,” he said.

Now he’s wondering if there was another reason for them.

Alvarez said his son told him that the cameras in the boys’ restrooms were trained primarily on the backs of students using urinals. Another former student said cameras in the girls’ restrooms seemed to be trained on areas just outside the toilet stalls.

Danelys Perera, 17, left the school last year, and is now a junior at Killian High.

“The cameras were pretty much everywhere, including in the bathroom,” she said. “There was one stall next to the camera where none of the girls liked to go because you weren’t sure whether the camera could see you when you were going to the bathroom.

`FOR SECURITY’

”My mom liked the cameras for security,” Perera said. ”She said it would keep me safe, but it made me really uncomfortable. People were always watching you.”

Lucy Hernandez, whose oldest son attended the school last year, said, ”I found [the cameras] quite strange. They told us it was for security for the kids, so they could see what was happening, like if the kids were smoking in the bathroom. When they said it, it seemed sensible. But in hindsight it sounds strange.”

SOME IN SUPPORT

But a couple of parents backed the school.

”That’s one of the reasons I wanted my son there,” said Ana Diaz Cordero, mother of a kindergartner at Holy Cross. ”If anything were to happen, it would be recorded.”

One substitute teacher, who quit after one day at Holy Cross, said the cameras made her so uncomfortable she never went back.

”I didn’t find [the school] at all normal. It was too oppressive.”