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	Investigation Opened into Decades-old Sex Scandal By Jessica Murphy Toronto Sun October 3, 2010 http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/10/02/15558726.html MONTREAL — Montreal police are asking people who may have been sexually abused at a private Montreal Catholic school in the 1960s and 1970s to come forward. Recent media reports on the abuse of former students at College Notre-Dame by priests and brothers of the religious congregation spurred the force into action. On Friday, the Congregation of the Holy Cross, which founded the Montreal school in 1869, issued a public apology to victims and promised to cooperate fully with authorities. “I wish to express our profound compassion and our most sincere apologies for the suffering caused by those who have abused their position of trust and authority,” said Jean-Pierre Aumont, Canadian provincial superior for the religious order. “These acts should never have occurred.” The congregation has also negotiated out of court settlements with some of the victims, and last spring, also put in place a confidential therapy line for abused former students. The school, which has been fully independent of the religious order since 2004, is also expressing shock at the sexual abuse allegations. College spokesman Vincent Gregoire, who was once a student there, said he’s saddened by what happened to some of his former schoolmates. “I’m very, very profoundly shocked,” he said. “One victim is one victim too many.” But Robert Cornellier, whose late brother Rene claimed he was abused at the school, isn’t satisfied with the reaction. “It’s very much too little and very much too late,” he said. In 2009, he launched a request for a class action lawsuit against the brothers of the Congregation of the Holy Cross. About 20 former students have joined the request, which will go before the courts in December. “Now we know the breadth of the abuse and it is much worse than we previously thought,” Cornellier said. “It needs more than an apology, it needs action.”
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