VANCOUVER (CANADA)
Bernadette Howell's Blog [North Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada]
May 28, 2024
By Bernadette Howell, Sandra L. Kovacs, and D.H.
Breaking silence. Confronting clergy abuse.
Dear blog readers,
There is so much to reflect on in this Press Release just issued and detailed in full below.
I did promise last week that I’d follow up and share more information and reflections on this particular case and I most certainly will do in the coming days.
But for now, I wish to honor the plaintiff, D.H., for his courageous actions in this landmark case by making it an express term of his settlement that the defendants (the Roman Catholic Archbishop and Westminster Abbey) will “make public all documents disclosed by them in this litigation.”
Financial compensation was never D.H.’s primary motivator. Truth and transparency were.
I especially wish to honor D.H.’s own words here through this blog post and allow them to stand alone and resonate with you.
The voice of the victim-survivor is so rarely heard.
May you thoughtfully read on…
Bernadette
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Contact: Sandra L. Kovacs
KazLaw Injury Lawyers
1900 – 570 Granville St.
Vancouver, BC
778-991-3335
sk@kazlaw.ca
www.kazlaw.ca
ROMAN CATHOLIC ARCHBISHOP and WESTMINSTER ABBEY SETTLE with plaintiff for childhood sexual abuse perpetrated by Fr. Placidus, deceased
(BC Supreme Court Action No. S2010708, Vancouver Registry)
Vancouver, B.C. 28/MAY/2024 – Roman Catholic Church and Westminster Abbey settle with D.H. before June 3, 2024 trial date.
In advance of a seven-week trial scheduled to commence June 3, 2024, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Vancouver, Westminster Abbey, and Seminary of Christ the King have settled with the plaintiff, anonymized as D.H.
D.H. was raped at age 13 by Fr. Placidus aka Harold Vincent Sander, a Benedictine priest, when he was a grade eight boarding student at the Seminary of Christ the King (“SCK”) in 1977-1978.
SCK still operates today: it is the last remaining Minor Seminary in Canada and has been operated by Benedictine monks since 1939. The Benedictines are a monastic religious order within the Roman Catholic Church. The purpose of a seminary is to form priests for service in the Roman Catholic Church. SCK Minor is a boarding school intended to prepare adolescent boys for the Roman Catholic priesthood. Currently, SCK Minor invites male children in grades 9 through 12 to live in dormitories in the cloistered environment at Westminster Abbey, high on the hill in Mission, British Columbia.
Of significance, Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that 21.5% of the Benedictine Community at New Norcia, Australia were alleged perpetrators of historical child sexual abuse. To date, Canada has not held any similar public inquiry and the data specific to the Benedictine Community at Westminster Abbey in Mission is unknown.
In 1997, Placidus was acquitted of sexual offences involving D.H. and two other complainants after having been vigorously defended with the support of his Benedictine community.
On October 15, 2021, Placidus died, and was celebrated with a 2-page tribute in Pax Regis, which noted only that “not everyone had such a positive experience of [Placidus]”. This celebration of his life was published despite extant litigation brought by another survivor, Mark O’Neill.
The monetary terms of the settlement are not disclosed at this time, at the election of D.H., but reflect the twin goals of restitution for harms and losses suffered, and a punitive damages component intended to have a deterrent effect on the defendants. Importantly, D.H. made it an express term of his settlement that the defendants will make public all documents disclosed by them in this litigation, akin to the Minnesota Transparency Initiative. D.H. is hopeful that this public disclosure of information will herald a new era of improved transparency between Roman Catholic institutions, survivors, and the Canadian public.
From D.H. himself:
I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Mark O’Neill, another survivor of Placidus, who alone courageously carried the torch for survivors for decades. It has been Mark’s sincere tenacity, along with the help of my family, friends, and the professionalism of those in their respective disciplines, that has enabled me to twice unwittingly break from my silence and step-up, first participating in Placidus Sander’s criminal trial in 1997, and again by supporting Mark in his recent case which ended in an underwhelming and overshadowed settlement in 2022. Additionally, I know that I’m unaware of all those who have helped me during my lifetime, and I want to thank them for my life by recognizing that it is their active support, and chance (luck and timing) that has brought me here today and, as a result of my own active settlement agreement which focuses on the non-monetary conditions of settlement, I now humbly carry the torch on behalf of survivors’ past, present, and future.
Since the founding of Christianity twenty-one centuries ago, the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church (the defendant) has always insisted on a culture of silence. Only when under civil scrutiny or when a trial has produced a favourable outcome for the Church has it chosen to then expand and go beyond merely reporting on a notice of settlement. The practice of merely reporting that a settlement has been reached provides no context whatsoever to the public. Nor does it offer disclosure of any of the facts raised during each litigation process. This only serves to suppress the survivor’s voice, and essentially relieves the defendant of accountability, allowing for the continued abuse of children to go unchecked.
To me this practice flies in the face of the first survivor who was persecuted for his refusal to settle for anything less than the redemption of our souls, and in whose namesake Christians worldwide strive today to hold themselves accountable for their actions. My hope is that practicing Roman Catholics and the wider community can recognize this self-serving behaviour by the Roman Catholic Church and, that my refusal to accept a monetary settlement alone will be understood and strengthen the resolve of the community at large to demand change where change is necessary.
I am cautious in the face of this agreement reached between the local Roman Catholic leadership (the defendants) and myself in advance of the trial commencement date of June 3, 2024. Until all the terms of the agreement have been fully completed, the question of sincere reconciliation by the defendants remains to be seen.
Had the defendants disregarded the non-monetary conditions of my settlement terms there would have been a trial.
To fully facilitate my settlement, it is imperative that the defendants follow through on the non-monetary conditions of my settlement by: 1) acknowledging my credibility, 2) admit to my rape, 3) apologize in the next editions of the Pax Regis news bulletin and the BC Catholic for the forty seven years of harm that has tainted and soured my relationships with family and friends alike, and that continues to inflict generational trauma on my children (the passing-on of the psychological consequences of an injury to subsequent generations), 4) listing of Placidus as credibly accused in the RCAV Clergy Sexual Abuse Report and, 5) for time immemorial the publishing of the unredacted documents disclosing the full details of this litigation.
In light of his now known many victims, and as further extension of good will and, although not stipulated in the non-monetary conditions of the settlement agreement, I respectfully ask the defendants to include the posthumous defrocking of Harold Vincent Sander – currently recognized as Father Placidus: including a written retraction of the celebration of his priestly life that was published by Christ the King Seminary in its Pax Regis news bulletin, and the BC Catholic, upon his passing in 2021.
While I appreciate that monetary settlements or judgments alone are intended to validate a survivors’ harms and losses, I have struggled with the practice of financial awards being the only way survivors’ injuries can be recognized and compensated for through civil court proceedings. There is no award for being raped. There is however the reality of a financial penalty which would clearly place responsibility where it lies; in this case on the local Catholic Church for their continued denial and harbouring of a sex offender(s).
From my perspective, this settlement exposes the fact that the protection of sexual predators –and Placidus was protected for decades – makes us all complicit in silence. What is particularly egregious is that this practice attempts to avoid further public scandal yet achieves the opposite as it only manages to inflict further injury on survivors, by placing shame on the Roman Catholic Church, its clergy, and parishioners alike (practicing or otherwise). To my mind this is untenable with respect to the survival of the Christian faith as currently practiced by the Roman Catholics Church (RCC), and its demise is not something I want to see happen. It has been inferred that I hold ill will for the RCC. This could not be further from the truth, and as I write my statement, I want to make it abundantly clear that I am not an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. However, I am averse to their systemic denial of child sexual abuse by the bad actors amongst them.
Over the past forty-seven years, which includes more than seven years plus of active litigation (and still counting as I pursue the non-monetary component of my litigation), I have twice before been persuaded that actions are and would be taken to keep minors reasonably safe at Christ the King Seminary boarding school (SCK). Each time however, I have been severely disappointed to learn that this has not been the case, as any reporting mechanisms introduced as a consequence of similar actions have gone no further than the Church authority. This has only made me skeptical and has led me to sincerely believe that the Church authorities cannot be trusted to monitor themselves. As a matter of fact, the Church continues to archive what I assume are damning documents protected by the diplomatic immunity afforded by the Vatican as a nation state, and when these documents are briefly exposed through the litigation process, they are then buried and kept hidden in settlement.
When combined with the consistent reporting of sexual abuse scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church by adopting the use of the words: the victim was awarded a settlement as proffered by the court, instead of the defendant was penalized for their actions in defense of a credibly accused individual(s), essentially the media at large has often managed to only further victimize survivors by villainizing their intentions through recognizing only the financial component of their action as expressed in the choice of words used to report the outcome of their litigation. The importance of the language used to report a settlement cannot be overstated in consideration of the true intent of survivors pursuing civil action when criminal actions fall short of holding the offender and, the institution responsible for enabling them to offend. This brings to the forefront my concern in having taken this action: will my efforts in the fulness of time fall short of realizing the necessity for the immediate action needed to all but eliminate the sexual abuse of minors at Christ the King Seminary Boarding School (SCK)?
This egregious behavior by the defendants has only strengthened my resolve to find a way to end the harm of young innocent boys seeking to give their life to the honest service of humanity by attending SCK for the purpose of early formation leading to priesthood. Unfortunately, prayer alone has not worked and does not work in isolation.
We can all agree that child abuse is unacceptable, as perhaps we can all agree that having no minors attend the seminary at Christ the King Seminary boarding school (SCK), is the only way we can be reasonably assured that minors will not be subjected to sexual abuse by either clergy and / or senior students: grades eleven and twelve, and / or college and university students who also live at the SCK major seminary. I like to think that the non-monetary conditions of my settlement, which go beyond the historical practice of silence through settlement by the local Church authority(s), will expose the inherent danger of hosting minors at SCK, and that knowing what we know today will result in the closure of the SCK minor seminary sooner rather than later, bringing society at large one step closer to ending the global sexual abuse crisis of children and youth.
I deeply appreciate that the defendants in my case now appear to be committed to public transparency, and are, through example, showing leadership among the worlds’ religious communities as agreed upon with the timely publication of their statement which recognizes and gives credence to the non-monetary conditions outlined in my settlement.
D.H. “Placidus may have murdered my soul, yet he was unable to kill my spirit.”
I invite you all to visit and subscribe to BernadetteHowell.com where you will find further information and insight into how each of us, and together as a community, can work towards and foster greater transparency within the Catholic Church.