Krouse, William “Jay” (Fr.)

Father William “Jay” Krouse was ordained in 1973. In 1995, Prince George’s County police learned that Father Krouse had sexually abused six deaf boys between 1970 and 1978 while working as a teacher and pastor at the Maryland School for the Deaf and the St. Frances Catholic Deaf Center. The survivors, aged ten to fourteen, were befriended by Krouse, who then engaged in various forms of sexual abuse, including masturbation, fondling, and fellatio. He would take the boys to the wrestling room at the University of Maryland, where he would exploit their vulnerability and manipulate them into sexual acts. Krouse used biblical quotes to justify his actions. In 1996, he received a prison sentence of six ten-year terms for his crimes but does not appear on the Maryland Sex Offender Registry.

In 2018, a woman reported that her husband, who is deaf, was sexually abused by Krouse in the 1970s at the Catholic Deaf Center in Landover. Following the report, the Archdiocese of Baltimore notified the Archdiocese of Washington and made the mandated reports to authorities.