The Jurist
January 17, 2021
By Ananaya Agrawal
https://www.jurist.org/news/2021/01/canada-supreme-court-declines-appeal-by-archdiocese-of-st-johns-for-child-sexual-abuse-at-mount-cashel-orphanage/
The Supreme Court of Canada on Thursday declined to hear the Catholic Church’s appeal against a suit for damages brought by victims of sexual abuse at the Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s Newfoundland. The decision brings finality to the 21-year-long litigation by former students who had suffered sexual abuse by five Brothers from the Christian Brothers Institute Inc, Ireland while they were boys living at the St John’s orphanage.
The Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St. John’s or the archdiocese is now responsible to pay the Christian Brothers’ outstanding damages after the organization declared bankruptcy from settling child abuse claims in 2011. The church had denied responsibility for the Mount Cashel abuses which took place from the 1950s to 1970s. However, the Court of Appeal had concluded in 2020 that the relationship between the archdiocese and the Brothers was “sufficiently close to justify imposing vicarious liability on the Archdiocese.”
Further, the sexual assaults of the victims were sufficiently connected to the Brothers’ responsibility of caring for the boys. The assaults were thus deemed to be a “materialization of the risks created by the Archdiocese.”
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