CANADA
APTN
September 7, 2016
Jorge Barrera
APTN National News
Everyone agreed the priest raped the child, the only question was whether it happened before or after the Spanish Boys Indian Residential School, near Spanish, Ont., closed in 1958.
The federal government’s lawyers held documented proof the rape happened before the school closed. The official tasked with determining the legitimacy of the claim and compensation—the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) adjudicator—also possessed a file that referred to the same document.
Yet, the adjudicator rejected the claim in a January 2012 hearing after determining the boy was raped following the school’s closure in a decision based on a “perverse finding of fact.” The decision was upheld twice in successive IAP appeals in rulings based on “myopic logic,” according to an Ontario judge.
The man who filed the claim, identified only as “M.F,” took his case before the Ontario Superior Court after the IAP losses. This past July Justice Paul Perell sided with M.F. in a ruling that eviscerated the reasoning of the officials involved in the multi-tiered IAP adjudication process that rejected M.F.’s claim.
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