DENVER – A popular teacher at the Diocese of Pueblo’s Roncalli High School drugged boys with ether and sodomized them in “science experiments,” three plaintiffs claim in federal lawsuits against the Diocese and the Marianists Province of the United States.

The boys – now men – claim Brother William Mueller abused them in the late 1960s and the Diocese covered it up by failing to disclose the attacks to law enforcement agencies, maintaining “secret archives” about sex abusers, destroying evidence, threatening victims and their families, and paying hush money. These complaints allege that Mueller was never even reprimanded.