Sex-Abuse Victims Face More Delays
By Sue Montgomery
MONTREAL — There were tears, comforting hugs, and exasperated sighs Thursday from men who were sexually abused by members of Congrégation de Ste. Croix as the powerful order once again tried to delay paying out $18 million in compensation more than a year after a settlement was reached. At least 50 victims, who attended prestigious Collège Notre Dame and two other schools run by the Catholic order, spent most of the day in Quebec Superior Court waiting for lawyers from both sides to agree on how to speed up the process. “They are filibustering, plain and simple,” said Sébastien Richard, spokesman for the victims. The victims filed a motion Thursday to speed up the settlement awarding process, after the brothers had sought to delay settling the claims until June. Instead, discussions took place in private outside court and a second adjudicator was named to help move things forward. The case will be back in court March 5. A total of 220 former students are part of the class-action suit against the order, which owns St. Joseph’s Oratory and several other properties. Only 25 cases have been settled since the deal was reached 15 months ago, but no one has received a cent. The victims have to go through a complicated process in which they detail the abuse they suffered, how often and what the impact has been on their lives. The order’s lawyers then decide whether to accept the claim, or send it to an adjudicator. To date they have contested between 70 and 80 per cent of the cases, while others are sitting on their desks. “Right now, we have 150 files ready to be seen by the brothers’ lawyer, but they’ve done nothing,” said Richard, who filed sex-abuse charges against Claude Hurtubise, his former teacher at Collège Notre Dame. A judge acquitted Hurtubise in 2006. He said many of the victims have only recently come to terms with what happened to them after the story came out in The Gazette in 2008 and then later on Radio-Canada. “So they need this money so they can get some therapy,” he said. One of the victims, whose name is protected under a publication ban, has been told he’ll receive $50,000. His single mother worked three jobs to send him to Collège Notre Dame, but after a year and a half of abuse, he dropped out and began taking drugs. Another victim, who attended the college in the 1950s, said he refers to a 20-year period in his life, rife with drug abuse and broken relationships, as the “lost years.” He had to sit before an adjudicator for half a day in order to justify his claim. “The whole process is so complex, it’s demeaning and humiliating,” he said. “It doesn’t solve the vengeance part.” For decades, the order denied and covered up widespread sexual abuse — knowledge of which went all the way to the Vatican. But faced with inside documents showing that some victims had been paid to keep quiet, and how complaints from others were ignored, the order was forced to apologize and pay amends. The settlement is the biggest in Canada to be paid out by a religious order. In Montreal, the order has about $50 million in assets, including investments and property. Recently, the brothers joined together with the province’s Fathers of Holy Cross to create one entity worth close to $100 million. The maximum a victim can receive is $250,000. Parents who entrusted their children to the boys’ private boarding school facing the iconic St. Joseph’s Oratory are also eligible for $10,000 in compensation. Former students and their parents of Collège de St. Césaire, southeast of Montreal, and Notre Dame à Pohénégamook, northeast of Quebec City, are also covered by the settlement. Some of the abusers are still alive and living an expenses-paid, tax-free life in retirement homes owned by the order. But on Dec. 6, Montreal police issued arrest warrants for two brothers, Georges Sarrazin, 91, and Olivain Leblanc, 70, related to sex crimes against former students. Documents from the order show that one student allegedly abused by Leblanc was given $250,000 in 1993 in exchange for silence. The order’s provincial superior, Father Jean-Pierre Aumont, has been absent from most of the legal hearings but was in court Thursday. He left before reporters could ask him questions. When The Gazette confronted him more than four years ago with evidence about the abuse, he brushed it off as intimidation and blackmail by a former religious brother who wasn’t happy with the financial package he’d negotiated before his departure. The order’s lawyer, Eric Simard, said Thursday that the order is keen to settle the files as quickly as possible. As part of the settlement, the René Cornellier Foundation has been set up. Named after one of the brothers’ victims, who died in 1994, the foundation will give a $5,000 donation annually to an organization that helps children. Initially, the money was to cover an annual scholarship to Collège Notre Dame, but Cornellier’s father opposed that. Collège Notre Dame, now a coed private school with 1,600 students and no boarders, was founded by the brothers in 1869. The last brother to teach there left in 1997. Contact: smontgomery@montrealgazette.com
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