CANADA
iPolitics
By Michael Harris | Nov 2, 2014
Sex, lies, and perhaps videotape.
The Jian Ghomeshi story took me on a bullet train back to the past — to Easter Sunday 1989 to be precise.
On that day, the newspaper I was managing in St. John’s, the Sunday Express, broke the Mount Cashel orphanage story.
It was the story of children at the orphanage and their sexual and physical abuse at the hands of a lay order of the Roman Catholic Church. The Irish Christian Brothers were legendary across the province as teachers and caregivers. They had also, as it turned out, been infiltrated by a coven of pedophiles.
It was a story of abused innocence versus overwhelming institutional authority — for in the Newfoundland of those days, still a denominational society, there was no more powerful institution beyond government itself than the Roman Catholic Church.
The nightmare of Mount Cashel began as a sensational newspaper story and ended in a police investigation, a court case, federal prison terms for the perpetrators, a royal commission, and multi-million dollar compensation for 422 victims across North America. And yes, finally, after 25 years, an apology to the victims from the Irish Christian Brothers. I should also say that it all started with a single victim whom I happened to believe: Shane Earle.
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