Fear of Horrific Abuse Is Clearest Mount Cashel Memory: Former Resident

680 News
June 6, 2016

http://www.680news.com/2016/06/06/three-mount-cashel-boys-told-of-50s-abuse-in-confession-civil-trial-told/

There is one thing the elderly man most remembers about living at the Mount Cashel orphanage more than 60 years ago: fear.

“They had complete control over you,” he said of the Irish Christian Brothers, a Roman Catholic order that ran the once-iconic institution in St. John’s, N.L. “You were beaten continually.

“They’d come to your bed at night,” said the man, now in his ’70s, who can’t be identified under a court-ordered publication ban.

“They’d masturbate you and lie on top of you, rub you and kiss you and all of that. I used to try and say a prayer and, you know, it didn’t work.”

He was in court Monday as a civil trial resumed in provincial Supreme Court involving about 60 claimants. They’re arguing the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s should compensate victims for alleged abuse dating back to the 1940s.

They are among former residents who came forward when Mount Cashel horrors at last became a public scandal with criminal convictions and an inquiry starting in 1989. It examined over 156 days how complaints to police and social service officials were for so long downplayed or ignored.

“I didn’t tell anybody until the Hughes Commission,” the former resident said Monday outside court. “What those kids went through, I went through.

“It would be meaningful to me that the church would finally own up to the negligence toward the responsibility that they had for the most vulnerable members of society. They just protect themselves.”

The Archdiocese of St. John’s says it was never responsible for the operations of the orphanage or school, though it sympathizes with those who suffered.

“The archdiocese remains focused on our daily work and service giving generously in the community, and promoting social justice,” it said in an emailed statement.

Lawyer Geoff Budden, representing about 60 claimants, says the archdiocese knew or ought to have known about sexual and physical abuse but didn’t stop it. The statement of claim, which has not been proven in court, says the Roman Catholic Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s had “direct authority over Mount Cashel because it was a pastoral work within the geographic territory of the corporation.”

About 20 more men represented by other law firms could be affected by a decision expected later this year or early next year.

Mount Cashel was closed in 1990 and torn down two years later.

The civil trial heard Monday that three boys separately told the same priest during confession they were being abused by Christian Brothers.

The boys lived at the orphanage in the 1950s and also can’t be named under the publication ban. Sometimes children became wards of the state because their parents had both died, other times because a single parent struggled to raise them.

The agreed statements of fact were entered Monday as part of the lawsuit.

One of them refers to physical abuse by one Christian Brother, and sexual abuse by another described as “sodomy.”

“Other than some general remarks to his mother that Mount Cashel was a rough place and that Brothers were beating the boys, he told nobody else about the abuse,” it says.

The statement also says the former resident had expected the priest — “while respecting the confidentiality of the confessional” — would speak to at least one of the Christian Brothers about what was happening.

Watching in court Monday was Gemma Hickey. She founded The Pathways Foundation in St. John’s in 2013, which offers support to survivors of religious institutional abuse.

Hickey, 39, reached a confidential agreement out of court several years ago for abuse at the hands of a Roman Catholic priest when she was young, she said in an interview.

“I think there was another way forward,” she said of the Mount Cashel lawsuit. “I encouraged the bishop … to settle.”

The lawsuit and related media coverage force survivors to re-live that pain, Hickey said.

“It triggers us, and it also re-traumatizes us as a province.”

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