Zuzu, that's awful! Maybe you could don your gauntlet gloves, pick some poison oak leaves (if you have some in your area), and place them within the new roses' foliage. You might even spot the culprit in your neighborhood that way - whoever is walking around scratching themselves, with a rash on their hands and arms!
As for roses I would not recommend, I would include Queen Elizabeth the climber (not the grandiflora) on my list. Its canes are enormous and rigid and climb straight up, sort of like bamboo, with merciless thorns, and it's a stingy bloomer to boot. I shovel pruned four of them years ago, and it nearly required a backhoe to pull them out of the ground. The bases were as big around as small trees.
