LONDON (ONTARIO, CANADA)
The Toronto Star
February 18, 2018
By Mary Ormsby and Sandro Contenta
The diocese of London, Ont., is suing AXA Insurance for breach of contract. The insurer is pushing back, saying priests’ sex abuse of minors was covered up decades ago.
One of Canada’s largest liability insurance companies wants the Roman Catholic diocese of London, Ont., to return $10 million paid to the diocese for settlements to victims sexually abused by priests.
AXA Insurance, now owned by Intact Financial Corp., accuses the diocese of hiding pedophile priests by moving them to different parishes or duties for decades, thereby misleading the insurance company and exposing it to greater financial risk.
In documents filed with Superior Court in London, the company cites the cases of five notorious offenders, including serial predators Charles Sylvestre and John Harper, for sexual assaults against children and teens from the 1960s to the 1970s.
“The Diocese of London, consistent with the policies and practices of the Roman Catholic church more broadly, engaged in a practice of concealing reports of child sexual abuse by members of the diocese’s clergy, and then assigning the priests in question to different parishes in the Diocese, thereby providing the priests with further opportunity to commit sexual assaults upon children within the new parish,” AXA court documents allege.
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