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	Settlement Not Enough for Abuse Victim's Father By Sue Montgomery Montreal Gazette October 6, 2011 http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/canada/Settlement+enough+abuse+victim+father/5514947/story.html If he'd been alone at the negotiating table, Rene Cornellier says he would have fought much harder to force the religious brothers who abused his son and dozens of his fellow schoolmates to confess and atone for their sins. But at the end of the day, he said, the Congregation Ste. Croix and its lawyer "bought an acquittal" for the pedophiles in their midst, with an $18-million out-of-court settlement, announced Thursday. Cornellier sat through months of the closed-door talks, never once acknowledging the man sitting on the opposite side of the table — Jean-Pierre Aumont, the order's provincial superior. Except once. "You killed my son," Cornellier, 79, says he told the priest, his voice catching with emotion. "He was robbed of a normal life and no money can ever compensate for that." Before dying of AIDS in 1994 at the age of 35, Rene Cornellier Jr. wrote letters to College Notre Dame, which he attended in the 1970s, imploring its directors to stop "sticking their heads in the sand, either by sending recalcitrant brothers to the Third World . . . or in handing out precious sums of money to shield the guilty." He alluded to a plan he and other students came up with in the 1970s to make their abuse public but were warned to keep it quiet by then director of educational services Brother Charles E. Smith. The Cornellier family never knew what young Rene had endured — and had always wondered why he lived such an unsettled life — until The Montreal Gazette wrote in 2008 about the widespread sexual abuse by Les Freres de Ste. Croix (Brothers of Holy Cross), who used to run College Notre Dame. (They still own it, but no longer teach there). When the religious order and college refused to apologize to the Cornelliers for the harm they'd caused — which is all they'd asked for — Rene Sr. filed a class-action suit. He knew his son had written in one of his letters to the college that he had no intention of suing his abusers "because no amount of money could repair the damage done, and my silence is not for sale." The senior Cornellier felt the same way, but reluctantly signed the settlement anyway, along with victim representatives from College Notre Dame and two other Quebec schools run by the brothers. "I did it for all the victims who were abused, not just for my son," he said. "But I was ready to fight harder than that if I'd been alone (at the negotiating table)." For one, he would have liked the abusers to have been named. And he disagrees with the complicated formula for figuring out how much each victim will receive — a process he thinks will revictimize the former students, many of whom have never spoken about their abuse. To be eligible, each former student must fill out a 30-page questionnaire, detailing his abuse in terms of frequency and severity of the after effects, which will be vetted by lawyers from both sides. If they can't agree, it will be decided by an adjudicator. Amounts awarded will range from $10,000 to $250,000. "There will be those to whom it happened maybe 10 times but who weren't affected as badly as someone to whom it happened just once," he said. "Who is capable of evaluating that?" "It's an appreciable amount with conditions attached that are unattainable." He would rather have seen an equal amount awarded for each year of attendance at the school and is scandalized that any money left over of the $18 million will be returned to the religious order. Cornellier consoles himself knowing that the settlement will no doubt open the door to more victims coming forward and dealing with their abuse, but his anger towards the Roman Catholic order is palpable. "Rene was bigger than that whole congregation put together."
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