CANADA
The Telegram
Barb Sweet
Published on April 06, 2016
In excruciating testimony this morning at the Mount Cashel civil trial, a man in his late 70s told how he tried as a boy in the 1950s to get a Roman Catholic official to help orphanage residents who were being beaten constantly by Christian Brothers.
But while promises were made, nothing was done, the witness said in Newfoundland Supreme Court.
The Roman Catholic Church is now fighting four test cases, representing 60 claimants, because it says it did not operate the orphanage.
The man, the second former orphanage resident to testify in the trial in which abuse claimants assert that the RC Episcopal Corp. of St. John’s should be liable for physical and sexual abuse of orphanage boys from the 1940s to 1960s by certain members of the Christian lay order, said he pleaded the boys’ case.
Then he showed welts on his body to a Christian Brothers official.
This was after the man said he was belted by Christian Brother Ronald J. Lasik while he was nude and wet. He said Lasik, known by the boys to have a collection of straps, was frustrated because the boy had missed shower time for his class.
The man said there was something wrong with a grown man watching naked boys shower, referring to the Brothers who supervised the classes of boys during their turns in the shower room.
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