Court Denies Appeal from Basilian Fathers

By Trevor Wilhelm
Windsor Star
May 2, 2020

https://www.saultstar.com/news/local-news/court-denies-appeal-from-basilian-fathers

Rev. William Hodgson Marshall when he was principal at Holy Names Catholic High School in Windsor in 1986. POSTMEDIA FILE PHOTO

The Supreme Court of Canada has shot down the appeal of a $2.5 million judgment against the Basilian Fathers of Toronto for sexual abuse inflicted by Rev. William “Hod” Hodgson Marshall.

The country’s highest court handed down its decision against the Basilians, a Roman Catholic Religious Order of priests, on Thursday.

“I hope this final victory will give hope to other sexual abuse victims to come forward and seek justice through the courts,” said abuse survivor Rod MacLeod, who sued the Basilians for the abuse he suffered at the hands of Marshall. “It is possible to achieve justice in Canada.”

On April 26, 2018, a Toronto jury awarded a judgment of $2,570,181, including $500,000 in punitive damages, against the Basilians for abuse Hodgson inflicted against MacLeod.

MacLeod was abused between 1963 and 1967 when he was a student at St. Charles College high school in Sudbury.

MacLeod was a victim of about 50 acts of oral sex and fondling by Marshall.

Marshall, who died in 2014 at the age of 92, was a Basilian priest and Catholic teacher in Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie, Toronto and Windsor.

He was convicted in 2011 of abusing 17 young people, including some in Sudbury, over his 38-year career.

Windsor-born filmmaker Matt Gallagher produced a documentary called Prey focusing on McLeod’s fight for justice.

“It was always a game of cat and mouse,” MacLeod says in Prey, screened at Sudbury’s Cinefest last year and on TVO. “I was the mouse.”

MacLeod didn’t speak about the abuse by Marshall for several decades, making his experience as a teenager “an albatross around his neck” resulting in “difficulty” with family life, said Gallagher.

“He made a decision” when preparing for his trial that “he was going to let everything out – and he did.”

Gallagher wants his 84-minute film to get sexual abuse survivors “to talk about this stuff.”

After the judgment against the Basilians in the McLeod case, the religious order went to the Ontario Court of Appeal, which upheld the jury verdict on Oct. 25, 2019.

The Basilians then took their appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, which refused to look at the case any further.