Suspect Claims Sexual Abuse

Investigators are looking into allegations by a monk-in-training charged with murdering a nun that he was molested by the two highest-ranking officials at the Byzantine Catholic school, according to sources close to the investigation.

Mykhaylo Kofel told homicide detectives after he was arrested that Father Abbot Gregory Wendt and Father Damian Gibault sexually abused him during a period of years at Holy Cross Academy, those sources said.

But the 18-year-old student monk told detectives he was afraid to report the abuse because he thought they would send him back to his native Ukraine.

Neither Wendt nor Gibault has been charged. They deny the accusations.

”He is emphatic that this is not true,” Wendt’s attorney, Mel Black, said Saturday. ”He did not sexually abuse [Kofel]. We are confident that at the end of the investigation, there will be no basis for these allegations.”

Gibault’s attorney dismissed Kofel’s accusations as bizarre.
”They are absolutely unfounded,” said attorney Richard Hersch.

The school’s insurance company recently hired lawyers who conducted an internal investigation into whether there was sexual abuse, school officials said. That internal probe turned up nothing, they said.

But law enforcement investigators are also in the process of talking to four other Ukrainian student monks. They want to know if the trainees, who range in age from 17 to 20, knew of any abuse of Kofel or had themselves been sexually molested.

The school’s insurance company has offered to provide lawyers for the trainees – and all school personnel – to ”help guide them through this ordeal,” according to board member Joseph Blonsky.

Last week, Kofel’s court-appointed attorney, Assistant Public Defender Edith Georgi, complained in court that Gibault was ”frustrating” investigators’ attempts to contact the trainees. Prosecutors have since questioned the students, but would not comment on what they learned.

”This is a very complex case,” Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said Saturday. ”We’re investigating it thoroughly.”

The probe into possible sexual abuse at the West Kendall school began after homicide detectives questioned Kofel about the murder of Sister Michelle Lewis. Kofel said he got drunk and stabbed the nun to death in a convent bedroom two weeks ago because she had been verbally abusive to him.

Charged with first-degree murder, Kofel is being held without bail at the Miami-Dade County Jail.

The state attorney’s office reiterated Saturday that it had not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty against him.

In the meantime, homicide detectives have been looking into who had access to the house on the academy grounds where Lewis lived with another nun, sources said.

The school’s chief maintenance officer told detectives that one day a few months ago, he glanced in through a sliding glass door and saw a student monk inside, sources close to the investigation said.

He told detectives he thought it looked like another trainee, and not Kofel. Neither of the nuns was home at the time, the maintenance officer told detectives, and the house was supposed to be locked.

Homicide detectives questioned the maintenance officer about missing keys, sources said. His lawyer, attorney Terence Lenamon, would not comment and referred all questions to a public relations company representing the school.

Kofel arrived in the United States five years ago as part of a program sponsored by the Holy Cross monastery, 12425 SW 72nd St. in Kendall.

Holy Cross is affiliated with a monastery in the Transcarpathian region of southwest Ukraine.

A select group of Ukrainian children – Kofel was one – was chosen by Wendt to come to Holy Cross to study.

On Saturday, school officials adamantly denied rumors that Kofel and the other Ukrainian student monks were virtually kept prisoner at Holy Cross.

Kofel ”was a student at a local university, he had his own car, he had a driver’s license – he traveled back to the Ukraine last year,” said Blonsky, who is also representing the school as an attorney. ”Any candidate at the monastery is free to leave at their request.”

Kofel’s accusations of sexual abuse – coming on the heels of the nun’s killing – have devastated the school’s morale, Blonsky said.

”We hoped the memorial service [Friday] would put the grieving behind us,” he said, ”so we could go back to being a whole school together.”