CANADA
CBC News
By Meghan Grant, CBC News Posted: Jan 29, 2016
For failing to protect a child from sexual abuse at the hands of a predatory priest, the Catholic Church in Alberta should pay one of its former altar boys $4 million, according to a recently launched lawsuit.
Now 52-years-old, the plaintiff — a southern Alberta man — is also suing the estate of Father Robert Joseph Whyte for what he says he suffered between the ages of eight and 15.
“[He] was a young, vulnerable and innocent child who trusted that he was safe and secure with a priest of the Catholic Church,” reads the statement of claim filed at the Calgary Courts Centre.
In 1990, Whyte pleaded guilty to 18 charges of sexual abuse against boys aged 11 to 17 for crimes committed between 1962 to 1982 but the plaintiff was not one of the complainants. Whyte died in 2014.
The allegations outlined in the document took place at St. Mary’s and Water Valley Churches between 1972 to 1979.
The pair sometimes travelled together with the worst of the alleged sexual abuse taking place on a trip to Radium Hot Springs when the priest made the boy sleep in his bed and tried to have sex with him, according to the document.
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