Retired Ontario Priest Pleads Guilty to Sexual Assaults, Vancouver Sun, June 8, 2011

Retired Ontario Priest Pleads Guilty to Sexual Assaults

Vancouver Sun
June 8, 2011

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Retired+Ontario+priest+pleads+guilty+sexual+assaults/4912316/story.html

File photo of Rev. William Hodgson Marshall in Windsor, Ont. on Feb. 23, 1985. The retired priest has pleaded guilty to molesting 15 boys and one girl in Ontario communities where he served dating back to the 1950s.

WINDSOR, Ont. — Retired Catholic priest William Hodgson Marshall pleaded guilty here on Wednesday to sexually assaulting 16 victims in the Sudbury, Toronto and Windsor areas in incidents dating back to 1953.

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.

Marshall's Windsor lawyer, Andrew Bradie has described Marshall as a frail, elderly man battling skin cancer.

Ordained in 1951 at age 28, Marshall was moved around 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.

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.