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Former Sudbury student wins $2.5M settlement

Sudbury Star
April 28, 2018

http://www.thesudburystar.com/2018/04/28/former-sudbury-student-wins-25m-settlement

Rev. William Hodgson Marshall

A man who was abused by a priest in Sudbury five decades ago has won a $2.5-million settlement against the Basilian Fathers of Toronto.

“I hope this outcome will cause the Basilians to rethink their position on how they treat sex abuse victims; stop listening to their legal experts and listen to their hearts and the teachings of Jesus Christ,” Rod MacLeod, now 68, said in a statement.

A Toronto civil jury awarded the damages, believed to be the largest civil award in Canada given to a victim of priest abuse.

MacLeod said he never fully overcame the psychological damaged Father William Hodgson Marshall caused so many years ago.

“The problem was I was came from a very strong Catholic family and was taught the priest could do no wrong,” MacLeod told Postmedia.

When Marshall would come to their home to pick up MacLeod, his parents were “overjoyed,” he recalled

Throughout his life, the emotional and psychological pain from the abuse “bubbles up inside me.”

He abruptly left what would have been a successful, long career in the military. He had a strong career in the construction business but never felt worthy.

“That’s been the story of my life. I have great success and then it just falls apart because of this energy inside that says, ‘Look, you are not worth anything,’” he said.

The court process was gruelling and forced MacLeod to re-visit the abuse over and over again. “Finally, we’ve reached the end here,” he said.

The Basilians are a Roman Catholic religious order of priests who operate on three continents, including all of Canada and the United States, with their headquarters located in Toronto.

MacLeod was a student at St. Charles College high school in Sudbury from 1963-1967. At the time, St. Charles was an all-boys school.

Marshall was a Basilian priest when he abused the young MacLeod. In 2011, Marshall was convicted of abusing 17 young people over his 38-year career, including in Sudbury, Windsor and Sault Ste. Marie. He was given a two-year sentence for his crimes.

Marshall at one point was principal at St. Charles, which the Basilians ran at the time. He was later defrocked as a priest, after the sexual abuse surfaced. He died in 2014.

Evidence at Marshall’s criminal trial detailed how he abused children — the youngest was seven years old — in his office, in school showers, in dormitories and the church rectory. Victims told of other priests walking in on the assaults, but never reporting what they saw.

He was given the nickname “Happy Hands” in the 1950s for his tendency to touch students.

“Shockingly, it was disclosed in the trial that the Basilians had in fact received at least three complaints of sexual misconduct by Father Marshall before he was assigned to St. Charles College,” Beckett Personal Injury Lawyers said in a release. “The Basilian pattern of response to such complaints appeared to simply be to transfer Marshall.”

Rob Talach of Beckett Personal Injury Lawyers, who represented McLeod, has handled a number of other cases in which Sudbury men were sexually abused by priests when they were boys.

Beckett Personal Injury Lawyers said punitive damages are a rare and exceptional device only used by the courts” to note reprehensible conduct which offends society’s sense of decency. The goal of punitive damages is to punish, denounce and deter.

“This represents the largest award of punitive damages against the Catholic Church in Canada and is the first time that a jury of average citizens has judged the Church’s handling of sexual abusive priests. It marks a turning point for the Church in Canada who to date have only been required to pay for the damage they caused victims but have never been fined or punished for their institutional conduct and complicity.”

The jury awarded $350,000 in general damages, $75,000 in aggravated damages. $1,588,781 in lump sum income loss, $56,400 for special damages, and $500,000 in punitive damages, for a total of $2,570,181.

“This changes everything,” Talach said of the jury’s decision to award punitive damages. “Victims are not going to walk out with little pieces of silver anymore from settlements. This changes everything for people who have been hurt by the church.”

In this case, he said the jury specifically spelled out in its decision why it was awarding punitive damages. They included:

- The “silent shuffle to divert in conjunction with complaints” to avoid scandal.

- Neglected to document offences.

- Put children in harm’s way, something the jury said was “grossly negligent.”

- No reconciliation with victims.

- Betrayal of trust in the community.

Talach said the total judgment “is larger than all the other judgements I’ve attained at trial ever.”

The jury heard evidence that Father Marshall who also served in Rochester, Saskatoon and Toronto, as well as Sudbury, Windsor, and Sault Ste. Marie, was reported six times over his career, but was allowed to continue in his role as a priest and teacher.

The reports of sexual abuse of boys started in 1947, occurred twice in the 1950s, twice in the 1970s and again in 1989 around the time of his retirement from teaching.

“A further report in 1996 was the most disturbing,” Beckett Personal Injury Lawyers said. “Father Marshall, then ministering on the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, ultimately admitted to his Basilian superiors that he had abused upwards of almost 90 boys over his career.

“The Basilian response was limited with no effort at outreach to the boys, no involvement of police and no publication of the fact that one of their own had left such a wake of devastation across the land.

“The hope is that this outcome will motivate change within the Catholic Church.”

In 2016, a $4.25-million lawsuit filed by another former Sudbury student against Marshall, the Basilian Fathers of Toronto and the Diocese of Sault Ste. Marie was settled.

Talach said the matter was settled in the man’s favour, but could not go into details due to a confidentiality condition. The victim was 67 at the time the agreement was reached.

“The family was involved,” he said told The Sudbury Star at the time. “There was a lot of fatigue, psychological fatigue. It was resolved at the pre-trial.”

The victim said he was forced to engage in masturbation, fondling and oral sex with Marshall, starting when he was 14.

Contact: sud.editorial@sunmedia.ca




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