CANADA
The Telegram
Barb Sweet
Published on June 10, 2016
A chilling number from the 1957 roster of Mount Cashel was read out in Courtroom No. 2 at Newfoundland Supreme Court this morning.
Among the 10 Christian Brothers serving at Mount Cashel in February of that year, four were ultimately convicted of crimes against children.
Outside court, one of the John Does in the civil lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s was not shocked by the number because of what he has said were his experiences with physical and sexual abuse at the hands of certain members of the lay order Christian Brothers. He left the orphanage a couple years before 1957.
“I think it’s old news,” he said.
He reflected on his own disclosure after the scandal that broke in the late 1980s and of subsequently learning the extent of abuse — the boys didn’t talk of it to each while at the orphanage.
“Later on, when I looked back and saw the number, it’s not that there were sexual perpetrators, but that there were so many,” he said. “There’s the thing — it was systemic. It’s not just an odd one, a mutant personality there.”
In court, Geoff Budden, lawyer for former residents of the orphanage during the period late 1940s to early ’60s, and Mark Frederick, a lawyer representing the Episcopal Corp., read into the record the transcript of a current day high-ranking Christian Brothers’ official Anthony Murphy.
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