CANADA
The Telegram
Barb Sweet bsweet@thetelegram.com
Published on December 14, 2016
On the Supreme Court of Newfoundland and Labrador steps, a John Doe former Mount Cashel resident now in his 70s held out hope for atonement from the Roman Catholic Church that he is convinced could have helped boys abused long ago at the infamous orphanage.
“How could you hurt a child?” asked the man, who detailed at the Mount Cashel civil trial earlier this year the horrific childhood physical and sexual abuse he said he suffered at the hands of Irish Christian Brothers in the 1950s.
Church officials and priests are not implicated in any of the abuse allegations connected to the case, but he is convinced the church had a role in the operations of the Christian Brothers’ orphanage and could have intervened.
In his mind, the answer is one of clear responsibility.
But the question of liability before Justice Alphonsus Faour is infinitely more complex and tied up in a long and winding history of the archdiocese — involved in the case through the Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s — and the lay order Christian Brothers, as well as legal precedent.
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