The claim says that six abusers were moved from a notorious orphanage in St. John’s to schools in the Vancouver area
A lawsuit alleging nearly 40 years of systemic abuse at two Catholic schools in B.C. has been approved by the courts as a class action. Lawyers say this could make it easier for as many as 65 possible survivors to seek compensation from the Catholic order that is accused of sending the abusers to their schools.
The original claim said that the Christian Brothers of Ireland sent abusive clergymen from a notorious orphanage in Newfoundland to Vancouver College and St. Thomas More Collegiate, where they continued to sexually and physically abuse more children from 1976 to 2013.
A B.C. Supreme Court justice decided Wednesday that a class action would be the best way to move the case forward, instead of having each alleged victim file their own lawsuit.
“The decision creates a single lawsuit that can fight over the issues that all of those people have in common,” said the lawyer for the alleged victims, Reidar Mogerman.
“This is a very significant step.”
What happened at the orphanage at Mount Cashel
The lawsuit goes back to the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, where “cruel and sadistic” men in charge of the care of hundreds of vulnerable children abused them for decades. Several people were found guilty of crimes after multiple investigations.
A public inquiry found that senior public servants, church leaders, top police officers, and politicians helped cover up the crimes. This made the case one of the biggest sex abuse scandals in Canadian history.
What are the Christian Brothers
A religious group called the Christian Brothers of Ireland is based in Rome. In the early 1800s, the group spread into Canada.
Before it closed in 1990, the order ran many schools around the world, including the Mount Cashel orphanage.
It started at Vancouver College and St. Thomas More Collegiate in Burnaby, which is close by.
What kinds of wrongdoing are said to have happened in B.C.
The B.C. claim said that between 1976 and 1983, the Christian Brothers sent six people from Mount Cashel to schools in the Vancouver area.
All six were later found guilty of sexually or physically abusing orphans at the Newfoundland facility. Two of them had already admitted to abuse before being sent west.
In 2004, a judge found that the Catholic order made a deal with investigators in 1975: the members who did bad things at Mount Cashel would not be charged with a crime if they left the province and got help.
The main plaintiff in British Columbia, Darren Liptrot, says that one of the brothers, Edward English, sexually abused him when he was in grades 9 and 10 at Vancouver College from 1981 to 1983.
He said he tried to tell his vice principal about the abuse, but they didn’t listen.
None of the accusations have been proven in court, and there have been no statements of defense.
Why did BC approve the class action
Since Liptrot filed his claim, his lawyers told the court that more than 65 men have come forward to say that clergymen from Mount Cashel abused them at schools in the Vancouver area.
The lawyer for Liptrot said that a class-action lawsuit makes it easier for victims to get justice. They said that anyone who says they were abused between 1976 and 2013, when the last of the six men retired, should be able to use it.
“There are really big reasons why victims don’t come forward, and a class action like this breaks down those reasons,” said Mogerman, the lawyer for the plaintiffs.
The defense said that individual trials would be better, but the judge said that the lawyers “provided no useful, concrete examples” of why their model would be better in cases of systemic abuse like this one.
The lawyers for the defense also said that the time period of 1976 to 2013 was too long, but the judge didn’t agree.
Joseph Burke, David Burton, Edward English, Edward French, Douglas Kenny, and Kevin Short were all sent to British Columbia and later found guilty of sexual or physical abuse.
The lawsuit says that the former students have suffered a lot of damage, such as pain and suffering, mental injuries, addiction problems, not being able to develop sexually normally and healthily, and spiritual trauma, such as losing faith.
In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say that they want a court to say that they were abused and that the defendants are responsible for it. They also want damages for negligence, past and future health care costs, and punitive and aggravated damages.