ADDENDUM::TV Exclusive: Investigator details bust of pedophile ring tied to New Orleans Boy Scout troop

Mason Spong had no idea that the case he worked in 1976 as a young NOPD detective would change his life. "A man saw some sexually explicit pictures of young children and he reported it," Spong said. Spong says that tip would lead investigators to a pedophile ring connected to Boy Scout Troop 137.

"These guys moved in and were able to gain control of this Scout troop,” Spong said. “They took these kids across the lake to K Bar B Ranch and they had sexual acts over in St Tammany,…and this went on for a while, a couple of years before we even came on to these pictures that were turned over to us…

"…They were very young and very angelic children, very friendly, outgoing most of the times. The common denominator was a single parent home, basically poor."

Spong says men traveled to New Orleans to have sex with the boys - and the children were even taken across state lines.

"These adults had money to some degree, you know, they were middle class, and those pedophiles would come in from out of town and have that sexual contact here in New Orleans in the homes of these other pedophiles. That’s how it happened,” Spong said.

As part of his investigation, Spong met a little boy named Ricky.

TV Exclusive: Investigator details bust of pedophile ring tied to New Orleans Boy Scout troop

Jesuit High sex abuse settlements kept quiet; 1 victim speaks out for first time | News | theadvocate.com

Ricky Windmann wasn’t nervous when he accompanied janitor Peter Modica to his ground-floor maintenance office at Jesuit High School on an otherwise unremarkable day in the late 1970s.

After all, Modica – a former semipro baseball player – had let the skinny, light-haired boy play basketball on the school’s grounds several times, even though he wasn’t a student. He also bought Windmann a bike and stopped by the boy’s house, which was a couple blocks from the school’s Mid-City campus, to meet Windmann’s mother.

But any feeling of safety was replaced by paralyzing fear when Modica suddenly pulled Windmann’s pants down and forcibly performed oral sex on him. Windmann doesn’t recall his exact age at the time, but he said he believes he was in his early teens.

The janitor would go on to sexually abuse the adolescent several more times in the ensuing years – once in concert with a Jesuit priest and teacher, Neil Carr – only stopping when Windmann grew big enough to protect himself.

Six years ago, Jesuit’s leadership paid Windmann $450,000 to settle his abuse claim. The agreement came on the heels of the school’s settling two other sets of abuse claims from the same era involving Donald Dickerson, a Jesuit scholastic, and religious brother Claude Ory, according to interviews and records obtained by The Advocate.

Jesuit High sex abuse settlements kept quiet; 1 victim speaks out for first time | News | theadvocate.com