By Sarah Sacheli
The Windsor
April 29, 2011
http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Retired+priest+plead+guilty+Windsor+molestation/4693308/story.html
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| File photo of Rev. William Hodgson Marshall when he was principal at Holy Names Catholic High School in Windsor, Ont. on Aug. 12, 1986. The retired Basilian priest will plead guilty in a Windsor courtroom in June 2011 to molesting 15 boys and one girl in Ontario communities where he served dating back to the 1950s. |
A retired Basilian priest will plead guilty in a Windsor courtroom in June to molesting 15 boys and one girl in Ontario communities where he served dating back to the 1950s.
William Hodgson Marshall, 88, is facing charges laid in Windsor, Sudbury and Toronto. Most of his accusers are former students at Catholic schools were Marshall was assigned.
Marshall’s Windsor lawyer, Andrew Bradie, appeared in a Windsor courtroom Thursday to speak to the case. Charges related to five alleged victims from the Toronto area have been transferred to Windsor to be dealt with here, court heard. The same is expected to happen next month with charges laid by Sudbury police.
All the charges will then be dealt with together in a plea-bargain agreement during a two-day hearing scheduled for June 8 and 9. With 16 alleged victims, their supporters, reporters and others expected to attend the hearing, preparations are underway to find a larger courtroom than those available in the Ontario Court of Justice building. In the past, hearings attracting large crowds have been moved across the street to the Superior Court of Justice where the courtrooms can hold 100 people or more in the public gallery. The hearing would still be presided over by a judge of the lower court.
Marshall was first charged in May 2010 with one count of sexual assault related to alleged incidents in Windsor in the early 1980s. In the ensuing months 14 more men and one woman from cities where Marshall was assigned during his five decades as an active priest came forward to say they too had been abused by him.
Bradie has described Marshall as a frail, elderly man battling skin cancer.
Ordained in 1951 at the age of 28, Marshall was moved from school to school before settling in at St. Charles College in Sudbury for almost 17 years. One of his earliest postings was as a teacher at Windsor’s Assumption College Catholic high school in 1955.
Marshall returned to Windsor in 1985 where he was the founding principal of Holy Names high school, shepherding the school into the former Centennial building in the early days of full funding for Catholic education.
He carried out missionary work in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia from 1989 to 1996.
Upon his return from St. Lucia, he was placed in the Saint Luke Institute in Silver Springs. Md. which offers treatment programs for clerics with psychological or spiritual problems.
The Basilian order was founded in France and specializes in education. The earliest school founded by the Basilian order in Canada is St. Michael’s College in Toronto which dates to 1852. Information on a sexual abuse policy is included in the Basilian Fathers’ website.
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