Founder of Haiti Boys School Gets 20 Years for Sex Abuse

Douglas Perlitz was hailed as a hero for founding a school that got homeless boys off the streets of Haiti—until it came out that he had been sexually abusing those boys for more than a decade. Perlitz, 40, founded the Project Pierre Toussaint in 1997 and seemed “like Jesus Christ himself come to rescue us,” says one former student. But the boys quickly learned to fear Perlitz, and tried to bring attention to his abuse for years before he was finally arrested in 2009. He was sentenced yesterday to nearly 20 years in prison, CNN reports.
(More Haiti stories.)