Helpline ( Brothers of the Christian Schools in Alfred and Uxbridge Ontario)

Victims of a one of Canada’s largest institutional child sex scandals have cleared a major hurdle in a decade-long battle for justice.

An Ontario judge has approved their bid to launch a class action suit against a Toronto-based Roman Catholic lay order.

The suit, filed by David McCann on behalf of more than 237 victims of abuse, seeks $1.7 million from a Catholic order of Christian Brothers that operated a provincial training school in Uxbridge, north of Toronto.

Ontario Superior Court Justice Bernard Manton certified the class action Sept. 26 although details still have to be worked out.

“This was a huge hurdle to get over – getting certified as a class,” said David McCann, a Vancouver resident who is heading the litigation.

Under Ontario’s decade-old class action legislation, claimants can apply to a special fund to pay for disbursements in their suit.

The victims’ Ottawa lawyer, I.H. Fraser, said most of the members of the class action suit are indigent and don’t have permanent mailing addresses.

Premier Mike Harris said yesterday that he’s sorry about sexual and physical abuse at Roman Catholic reform schools years ago.

He also said he has already fulfilled legal obligations for apologizing in one of the biggest child-abuse scandals in Canadian history.

David McCann, one of the 500 victims of abuse that took place between the 1940s and 1970s at the St. Joseph’s and St. John’s training schools said Monday that he intends to go to court to force an official apology from Mr. Harris.

In 1996, the victims got $13-million in compensation and an apology from the province’s attorney-general. But Mr. McCann said an agreement specified that the Premier had be the one to deliver the apology. CP

THE ABUSE Armand Villemaire suffered at an Ontario training school in the 1960s festers like an open sore, four decades later.

There are days when he has contemplated killing himself and days when he has tried. There are recurring nightmares and vile memories that still bring tears to the eyes of the 48-year-old laborer.

The last few years have been the toughest.

After a lifetime of trying to suppress the memory of violence and abuse he endured at the St. Joseph’s Training School in Alfred, Ont., Villemaire reluctantly came forward three years after The Star broke the story of Canada’s biggest sex abuse scandal.

He was reluctant because he was ashamed of having been sexually abused by men – members of the francophone Christian Brothers order that operated the school – and he doubted anything would come of it.

But as hundreds of other victims came forward and more than a dozen accused Christian Brothers were convicted for abusing the delinquent children in their care, he found the courage to add his name to the list in 1993.

Since then, he says, he has suffered more than three years of hell.

Villemaire, a father of three who has lived here for the past 27 years, is among the last of a group of more than 1,000 victims to seek redress.

The first group of victims who came forward from St. Joseph’s and another Catholic-run school, St. John’s at Uxbridge, formed a powerful alliance and forced the Ontario government, Catholic Church and Christian Brothers to provide compensation and counselling for the abuse they endured.

The second group, following on their heels, continued the fight, often turning to the media to force the other parties to honor their commitments of counselling, compensation and apologies.

But by the time Villemaire came along, the victims’ group Helpline was rife with dissension, and funding for its operation was running out.

When it shut down its offices in early 1996, Villemaire and about 400 other victims were left to fend for themselves.

The province took over the advocacy role of Helpline and the assessment and compensation role of the all-party committee that distributed $16 million among the first victims.

Villemaire, who says he was repeatedly sexually abused by a Christian Brother who received one of the longest sentences handed down for abusing boys at St. Joseph’s, says he feels he has been left to twist in the wind.

The Helpline newsletters that kept victims up to date on the process and the reasons for the many delays stopped coming. Now, when he calls the Ontario government, he is told to be patient; that his day is coming.

A provincial official told The Star his case may be heard next month.

Villemaire says the continual delays are another form of abuse.

“I have been hurt all my life and it looks like I am still being hurt. There’s no end to it.

“Why can’t they just settle this and let us get on with our lives?”

He says the waiting is excruciating. Several other victims actually have killed themselves awaiting the adjudication of their files.

At one point before Helpline disbanded, its president, Patrick Healey, berated officials for forgetting that the whole point of the process was to rebuild the lives of tragically devastated human beings.

“We’re not making washing machines or automobiles here,” he raged.

His wife, Dorit, says the stress of heading the advocacy group was taking an enormous toll on her husband, but cutting off Helpline‘s funding to leave the last victims to fend for themselves is “heartbreak for everybody.”

The negotiated agreement for the first victims to come forward was extended to the second group, but those who came forward after that are being dealt with only through a memorandum of understanding between the parties.

Tom Marshall, a lawyer with the Ministry of the Attorney General and the province’s point man on the case, says that means only victims of the most serious abuse will receive compensation.

“The very low end of the spectrum, the minor physical abuse cases, are likely cases that will not be put through the process,” he explained.

According to the former Helpline officials, that could leave hundreds of victims who came forward after April 1, 1993 “twisting in the wind.”

Vancouver resident David McCann, the founding president of Helpline who negotiated the unprecedented reconciliation deal, says that’s an outrage.

“These people have been essentially ignored by the government and the Catholic Church. There is no one to speak on their behalf. They have no advocates. . . . We have been betrayed again.”

McCann and several other victims are so angry they have launched a series of lawsuits against the Ontario government, the Catholic Church and the Christian Brothers in Ottawa and Toronto over the manner in which the agreement they negotiated was implemented.

According to Douglas Roche, an Edmonton diplomat and author who chaired the committee that implemented the agreement until it was dissolved in June, 1996, 580 of the 595 claimants who came forward before April, 1993 received a share of the $16 million allocated for compensation and counselling.

Despite the Toronto Christian Brothers’ contention that many of the allegations were lies, 97.5 per cent of the cases were deemed valid on the balance of probabilities by an independent assessment panel.

On average, the victims in Groups I and II received about $33,700 in awards, benefits and support costs. The most anyone received was $107,944.

But there are no guarantees for the victims of Group III, except for Marshall’s promise that the remaining cases that are deemed eligible for compensation will be concluded by year’s end.

An official in his office said there are 181 cases outstanding among the 396 victims in Group III who applied for compensation. Marshall says it has yet to be determined how many of those will be included in the process.

Despite numerous problems that arose with the implementation of the agreement – including the refusal of the Toronto Christian Brothers to participate – both Marshall and Roche say that it was a better process for the victims than civil litigation would have been.

“It is indeed a far cry from what most of these men would have been submitted to if they had gone through the civil litigation process,” said Marshall.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that the majority of these men would never have been able to maintain a claim in court.

“I’ve got to tell you that while it isn’t perfect, it has had some substantial benefits. I guess history will be the judge.”

Roche – an ex-MP, Canada’s former United Nations ambassador on nuclear disarmament and the author of 15 books – said handling the St. Joseph’s/St. John’s file was the toughest challenge he has ever faced.

“It was probably the most difficult thing I have ever done in my whole life, including writing a book about nuclear weapons, because of the volatility of the file and the great emotions,” he said.

“But I believe the victims of abuse in our society need to be helped in positive ways and I believe this process helped them. I know it did.”

Roche says the process was neither inordinately slow nor overly bureaucratic given that it involved the expenditure of nearly $20 million, including the expense of operating his committee and Helpline.

Administration costs were kept to 4.5 per cent of the total.

“I considered the whole process, despite all its problems, a great success,” Roche said. “It was a big step forward for society in that (the victims) were not confronted in (civil) court by lawyers trying to destroy their credibility. The process was victim-friendly.”

McCann says that was the plan, but it didn’t turn out that way.

He and other victims claim the province and the Archdiocese of Toronto violated the agreement when the Premier and archbishop recruited delegates to apologize on their behalfs rather than make the apologies themselves.

They are angry that the Toronto Brothers set up their own process of compensation, which they claim short-changed many of the victims, and they are anxious to get the matter into court.

“If we had taken the alternative, we would have been in court, we would have finished these cases and the other parties would be millions of dollars poorer,” insisted McCann. “The process failed. If the process had been implemented in the spirit and the intent it was negotiated, it would have been a great process. That didn’t happen.”

McCann says it will be several more years before disagreements over the settlement are resolved. “I have turned it over to the lawyers and said `sue everybody’ and we’ll let a judge decide where the truth lies.”

“I don’t think the public has any idea of the extent of the abuse that happened in those institutions. Despite the massive public trials, investigations, etc., I think so much of it is hidden, and I think if people knew what was there, they’d be stunned, absolutely stunned”

— Dave McCann, student at St. Joseph’s, 1958, and founder of Helpline, an association of former students.

The abuse was stunning at the two Ontario Catholic reform schools, St. Joseph’s, in Alfred, east of Ottawa, and St. John’s, in Uxbridge, northeast of Toronto. In 1992, public outcry over the victims’ stories of abuse and the years of official coverups of the scandal led to a $19-million reconciliation, believed to be the world’s largest-ever sexual abuse settlement.

Now, as part of that settlement, McCann’s and other victims’ stories are detailed in a newly-released account of the abuse written by Ben Hoffman, an Ottawa dispute-resolution specialist, as a way of ensuring that such abuse never happens again. Hoffman’s 300-page report is the most complete record yet of the abuse and its aftermath.

It tells of how boys scarcely into puberty were raped, molested or forced to perform sexual favors for the Christian Brothers who were their warders from the 1940s through the 1970s.

Many of the 8,700 boys who went through the two Catholic reform schools told of being beaten with hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks, and heavy straps. Some passed out before the beatings ended.

Others said they were forced to run for hours on end, or to carry barbells with them, or beaten and then left naked and without blankets or heat in wintertime isolation cells. Their average age when they entered the schools was 12 1/2.

Among the stories was this excerpt from an anonymous victim’s hearing before the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board:

On his first night at the training school, he squirted toothpaste at another student and a “Brother came from behind and punched him on the side of the head…. The Brother struck him with a closed fist on his shoulder, he fell on one knee and he was punched. Later on, the Brother came and took him to another Brother’s where he was sexually assaulted and buggered by both Brothers. Thereafter, this would occur on a regular basis two or three times a week…. At times instruments would be inserted in his rectum.”

Hoffman’s report was mailed to all of the 1,000 victims who were once part of the Helpline association of former students, which insisted on it as part of their legal settlement.

But, as Gerry Deane, an Ottawa member of the Helpline executive puts it, few of the former students have read the report. “It brings back too many memories we’re still trying to get over.” Deane says the report was really intended to show the world what happened.

As one anonymous student from St. Joseph’s, in Alfred, explained in the report: “The sexual abuse is not the real story. The `concentration camp,’ the church, that’s what needs to be told. They would punch your face in. The ones that broke got sexually assaulted, the others got physically assaulted. And if you weren’t assaulted, you watched others.”

The boys had been sent to the reform schools for “crimes” as simple as playing hooky from school, or because their parents couldn’t care for them.

Joseph Lorne Siple, a student at St. Joseph’s in 1962, is one of the many who tells his story in Hoffman’s report.

“When I got up, some of my first thoughts were `Will I get beat up today? If so by who? Or will someone try to get his hands down my pants or prick up my rear?’… I was raped. I was beaten with a pool cue and still have headaches and neck aches that are related to this. I was beaten with fists, knees, boots. I witnessed this to the point I thought it was normal behavior.”

All the boys sent to St. Joseph’s and St. John’s were Catholic, and most ended up like Siple, who says: “I learned to hate church and deny the existence of Christ.”

Now, says Siple, he’s still suffering. He’s had surgery for damages likely caused by his treatment by the Brothers. He has what he calls “disgusting homosexual nightmares,” takes pills to sleep, and has attempted suicide on a number of occasions.

“I wish someone could explain to me what I did that was so terrible and wrong to have deserved to live this life,” writes Siple, who now lives in Kapuskasing.

Some of the details of this abuse came out piece by piece at the many criminal trials that have so far convicted 16 Christian Brothers in Canada’s largest-ever sexual assault investigation.

The report is just one of many attempts to bring healing to the victims. Through an agreement with the provincial government, the Ottawa and Toronto archdioceses and the Ottawa Brothers of the Christian Schools, 565 of the victims from both schools have already received cash settlements, counselling, vocational rehabilitation and other benefits, as well as official apologies. Another 232 victims are expected to receive settlements soon, as the reconciliation agreement comes to an end.

The Toronto Brothers of the Christian Schools refused to participate in the four-year-old reconciliation process but have concluded settlements over the last year with more than 400 of the St. John’s victims, which Mike Watters, one of the organizers, estimates have cost the order $7 million.

Included in Hoffman’s report is an assessment of the victims by social workers Elizabeth Anthony and Deborah Hoffman. They write that even 30 or 40 years later many of the men remain in the grip of “a complex state of psychological terror and guilt.”

Even in a first meeting, they also show “obvious physical features such as missing teeth, scars, nervous mannerisms, evident discomfort in walking and sitting, and faces beyond their years; as well, their very postures emanated tension, hostility and distrust.”

All have also experienced many problems in life they believe are related to the abuse they suffered at the schools.

“Some 70 per cent are unemployed; the average education is Grade 8, many have been dysfunctional all their lives and have relied on social assistance; 83 per cent have been convicted of a criminal offence; they have very poor life skills, such as anger and stress management,” say the social workers.

The report also details years of official complaints about both schools, and investigations of physical or sexual assault by Brothers, none of which produced any criminal charges.

The warnings from provincial officials began in 1940, when St. Joseph’s was warned that it was not permissible to use a lash on the boys. Periodic investigations and warnings continued into the 1970s, but the problems were at their worst in 1960 when Ottawa’s Archbishop M.J. Lemieux and other church officials were warned the province would shut down St. Joseph’s if the Brothers continued to maltreat the boys.

School officials complained the province did not give them enough money to operate the schools, and that they were forced to operate St. Joseph’s with 23 staff while a provincial reform school with a comparable enrolment of students had 87 staff members.

Hoffman concludes: “Boys at St. John’s and St. Joseph’s Training schools were abused. People knew, including those in authority…. Attempts were made to stop the abuse…. The abuse continued…the violence spread and has hurt many people and cost society in general.”

Southam Newspapers

OTTAWA — Former students from two Ontario reform schools have called for a public inquiry into what they say is a tragic end to a $19-million reconciliation agreement believed to be the largest sexual abuse settlement in the world.

Pat Healey, chair of Helpline, an association of more than 1,000 victims of physical and sexual abuse at Catholic schools in Uxbridge, northeast of Toronto, and Alfred, east of Ottawa, said the group is planning to launch a class action lawsuit against the Toronto Brothers of the Christian Schools, which refused to participate in the reconciliation process with the provincial government and other branches of the Catholic church.

He says the Toronto Brothers launched their own settlement process and many of the 400 former St. John’s students who took cash settlements have since complained they were forced to accept much lower awards than those obtained by former students from St. Joseph’s in Alfred.

Healey said another 100 former St. John’s students have refused to settle and are considering legal action.

He and David McCann, the St. Joseph’s victim who founded Helpline six years ago, said in telephone interviews only a public inquiry can resolve controversies that now surround the reconciliation process.

Earlier this week, all parties in the Ontario legislature passed a unanimous motion apologizing to former students for the abuse they suffered.

Lawyer Melville O’Donohue, an official with the Toronto Christian Brothers, said the brothers have nothing to hide and would not object to a public inquiry.

Sixteen Christian Brothers, 11 from St. Joseph’s and five from St. John’s, have already been convicted of assault, buggery or indecent assault relating to incidents in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

At least eight other cases are still before the courts.

IT TOOK six years to offer an apology. Three decades to acknowledge the responsibility. And less than five minutes to shoulder even a fraction of the blame.

From the pulpit at St. Michael’s Cathedral yesterday, and concurrently in the Archdiocese of Ottawa, the Catholic Church said it was sorry, regretful, for the abuse inflicted by Christian Brothers on hundreds of children entrusted to the care of two Ontario training schools: St. John’s in Uxbridge, Saint Joseph’s in Alfred.

More than 1,100 of these horribly damaged youngsters – now damaged adults – have come forward with pitiful stories of physical and sexual abuse. Some 580 have already been awarded payment, their claims “validated” by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Board.

It does not, can not, undo the harm.

Just as the pastoral letter, read yesterday, can do little to alleviate the suffering caused by a church hierarchy that for so long ignored the accusations, discredited the complainants and absolved the abusers.

This is not a mea culpa by the Catholic Church. (For one thing, neither the Toronto nor the Ottawa archdioceses operated or administered the schools in question.) And the pastoral letter mournfully decries the “scourge” of child abuse in the home, the school, social agencies, sports and recreation groups serving youth, clearly implying the church is no different. It is also quick to insist such abuse would never have been tolerated. The record suggests otherwise.

Says the missive: “The damage done is sometimes seen by the victim to have been authorized by the religious order or by the Church, even though that is not the case.”

It is an after-the-fact exculpation, even though the two dioceses participated in a “reconciliation process” with the Ontario government, the Brothers of the Christian Schools of Ottawa and a group called Helpline, which represents the former wards of the two schools. The Brothers of the Christian Schools in Toronto – who ran St. John’s – refused to participate in the reconciliation package negotiated in 1992.

Several survivors of the two training schools were on hand yesterday, having accepted the archdiocese’s invitation to attend. But at least one of them, John Kenny, didn’t make it to the end of the service. After the official apology, during communion, Kenny made his way slowly up the aisle and outside, leaning against the front of the cathedral, where he wept for a long time in his girlfriend’s arms.

Kenny was removed from his parents as a child, placed in a foster home – where he says he was first sexually abused – sent to Thistletown as an emotionally disturbed youngster, and then shuffled to St. John’s at age 12. He was there for just under two years of both physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the Brothers.

As a young teen, he was finally reunited with his mother in Winnipeg, but the Brothers never forwarded his file to the appropriate social agencies. He never received the counselling he so desperately needed.

In March, 1966, Kenny killed his 10-year-old half-brother and was charged with manslaughter. He admits he committed the crime.

“I had started to have sexual thoughts about my brother. I was terrified and confused. I felt that I was becoming like the Brothers, that I would do to my own brother what they had done to me. I developed the theory that my brother would be better off dead than to go through what I had gone through.

“Yes, I did it. I was guilty. But I believe that those Brothers – those bastards – should have been standing there next to me, because they were as guilty as I was.”

Kenny spent the remainder of his juvenile life in an institution, a further eight years at Penetanguishene – nearly 20 years, in all, in some form of mental custody.

He has no faith.

Kenny attended yesterday’s service in his capacity as an executive board member of Helpline, and to provide support for his fellow victims. He hopes that it will help to salve the wounds. And he appreciates the church’s gesture. But, truly, it has little significance for him.

“With the church’s long history of not paying any attention to this, I see it as a positive step, just bringing the subject of abuse out in the open.

“But, for me, it’s not even a question of forgiveness any more. It’s about acceptance.”

Regular churchgoers came face-to-face with the devastating results of child sexual abuse Sunday as Ottawa Roman Catholic Archbishop Marcel Gervais publicly apologized for the hurts inflicted upon hundreds of former students at Catholic-run training schools.

While stunned members of the Notre Dame Cathedral congregation looked on, Gervais’ homily was repeatedly interrupted by tearful, angry men haunted by memories of abuses suffered at St. Joseph’s training school in Alfred, east of Ottawa and St. John’s in Uxbridge, north of Toronto.

“I don’t want an apology from you. I want an apology from the brothers that ruined my life. I want an apology from those two dogs — those two pedophiles,” Paul Gagnon thundered from the first row of pews.

Only a few dozen of the approximately 500 former students abused by the Brothers of the Christian Schools came to hear the apology, delivered as part of the regular noon mass.

Some came in suits and ties, others in jeans and T-shirts. Many had faces that spoke of terrible childhoods and difficult lives. Most were conspicuously alone.

During another interruption in the service, a former student demanded that the graves of those who died at the training schools be moved to other cemeteries.

Then, in another spontaneous act, Debbie Graveline stood up, joined Gervais at the pulpit, and spoke of the pain and embarrassment her family has suffered in the six years since her husband Edmond, now 53, acknowledged he was among the abused boys.

The apology is one result of a three-year reconciliation process undertaken by the church and former students after incidents of physical and sexual abuses at the schools came to light. The crimes date back to the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

During his homily and in a pastoral letter distributed at the end of the service, Gervais said “we want to express our own personal sorrow and deep regret at the abuse that occurred … We express this sorrow and regret on behalf of the people of God in our archdioceses. We apologize for the hurt caused by individuals who seemed to be acting in the name of their religious order or the church but were not.”

Archbishop Aloysius Ambrozic apologized Sunday in Toronto to former students of St. John’s.

As well as public apologies from the two archdioceses, the province of Ontario and the Christian Brothers who ran the schools on behalf of the province, the former students have received financial settlements.

“I’m very glad I came,” said David McCann, one of the first men to come forward with stories of abuse at St. Joseph’s and the founder of Helpline, a group that represented ex-students in the reconciliation process.

“For me, it was a real confirmation of what we’ve been saying for so long” about the need for victims’ hurt and pain to be formally acknowledged, said McCann, who hugged Gervais during an emotional moment at a reception after the service.

For many others, however, the church’s apology Sunday is only one step in a healing process that may never be completed.

Many of the ex-students expressed anger and disappointment about the role of the Toronto branch of the Christian Brothers, who operated St. John’s. The Toronto brothers’ refusal to participate in the 1992 reconciliation agreement has led to an ongoing dispute over compensation awarded to former students of the Uxbridge school.

Other men, however, wiped away tears and told more personal stories.

“All of this brings back memories. It’s never really done,” Jimmy Toal of Ottawa said in an interview.

To date, about a dozen former Christian brothers have been convicted of crimes ranging from assault to gross indecency while another five still face criminal charges, said Patrick Healey, the current chairman of Helpline.

One of 18 children, Toal said he was sent to St. Joseph’s for truancy in 1949 because he and his siblings had to work in the bush to get enough for the family to eat.

“I actually wanted to go to Alfred because a friend of mine was there and I was told there was lots of food. The worst for me was when they sent us to work for farmers who knew that we were from Alfred and that they could starve and beat us.” Toal arrived at the training school when he was nine and left 18 months later.

Another man, who refused to give his name, said that during the service “all that kept going through my mind was how I used to go to church as a kid and all the things that happened after. I was put in Alfred for truancy when I was nine years old — I didn’t even know what truancy meant. I was a bad kid. But I didn’t deserve what I got.”

Former students from two Ontario Catholic reform schools have called for a public inquiry into what they say is a tragic end to a $19-million reconciliation agreement, believed to be the largest sexual abuse settlement in the world.

A spokesman for the students said the group is planning to launch a class-action lawsuit against the Toronto Brothers of the Christian Schools, which refused to participate in the reconciliation process with the provincial government and other branches of the Catholic church.

The Toronto brothers opted out of the huge 1992 agreement, and said they wanted to negotiate a separate settlement with the students. But, four years later, those negotiations have not satisfied all the students, and they say the brothers must pay up. About 400 former students from St. John’s, in Uxbridge northeast of Toronto, say they’ve received cash settlements much lower than those obtained by students from St. Joseph’s, in Alfred east of Ottawa, according to Pat Healey.

Healey, chairman of Helpline, an association of more than 1,000 victims of physical and sexual abuse at the schools, said another 100 former St. John’s students have refused to settle and are considering legal action.

He and David McCann, the St. Joseph’s victim who founded Helpline six years ago, said in telephone interviews that only a public inquiry can resolve controversies that now surround the reconciliation process.

Ontario legislature offers apology

Last week, all parties in the Ontario legislature passed a unanimous motion apologizing to former students for the abuse they suffered. Similar apologies were made in April by the Ottawa and Toronto archdioceses, as well as the Ottawa brothers who ran St. Joseph’s. Sixteen Christian Brothers, 11 from St. Joseph’s and five from St. John’s, have already been convicted of criminal charges of assault, buggery or indecent assault relating to incidents in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. At least eight other cases are still before the courts.

McCann said Helpline members now consider the four-year-old reconciliation agreement to be a failure. “What we were trying to avoid in the first place was litigation, and that’s where we’re going to end up.”

Under the agreement between Helpline, the provincial government, the Catholic archdioceses of Toronto and Ottawa, and the Ottawa Christian brothers, 565 abuse victims have received counselling, vocational rehabilitation, cash settlements and other benefits that cost the institutions more than $19 million. Another 232 ex-students are also expected to receive settlements soon.

Healey said that under an internal Helpline agreement, some of the St. Joseph’s victims shared $1.7 million of their cash awards with St. John’s victims, in the belief they would be repaid when legal action forced the Toronto brothers to pay comparable awards to their former students.

However, the Toronto brothers launched their own settlement process and the larger reconciliation process is now being officially wound up by the province and the Catholic participants.

Now Helpline members are split in two angry camps. St. Joseph’s students haven’t been repaid the money owed them by St. John’s students, and some are out anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000 each. Healey says he personally has lost $7,000 of the money he expected to receive.

St. John’s students are also angry because about $1 million of the money they were expecting has been held in trust until the dispute between Helpline and the Toronto Brothers is worked out.

Doug Roche, Canada’s former disarmament commissioner and chairman of the reconciliation process, said he’s confident the St. Joseph’s students will eventually receive the money loaned to St. John’s students, and that everything possible is being done to resolve the legal problems involved.

“To magnify the defects in what happened is to eclipse the tremendous amount of good the agreement has done,” he said.

Former students from two Ontario reform schools have called for a public inquiry into what they say is a tragic end to a $19-million reconciliation agreement believed to be the largest sexual-abuse settlement in the world.

Pat Healey, chairman of Helpline, an association of more than 1,000 victims of physical and sexual abuse at Catholic schools in Uxbridge, northeast of Toronto, and Alfred, east of Ottawa, said the group is planning to launch a class-action lawsuit against the Toronto Brothers of the Christian Schools, which refused to participate in the reconciliation process with the provincial government and other branches of the Catholic church.

Healey and David McCann, who founded Helpline six years ago, said only a public inquiry can resolve controversies that now surround the reconciliation process.

Earlier this week, all parties in the Ontario legislature passed a unanimous motion apologizing to former students for the abuse they suffered. Similar apologies were made in April by the Ottawa and Toronto archdioceses, as well as the Ottawa brothers who ran St. Joseph’s in Alfred.

Sixteen Christian Brothers, 11 from St. Joseph’s and five from St. John’s in Uxbridge, have already been convicted of assault, buggery or indecent assault relating to incidents.

Under the agreement between Helpline, the provincial government, the Catholic church and the Ottawa Christian Brothers, 565 abuse victims have received counselling, vocational rehabilitation, cash settlements and other benefits costing more than $19 million. Another 232 ex-students are also expected to receive settlements soon.

Healey said under an internal Helpline agreement, some of the St. Joseph’s victims shared $1.7 million of their cash awards with St. John’s victims, in the belief they would be repaid when legal action forced the Toronto Brothers to pay comparable awards to their former students.

However, the Toronto Brothers launched their own settlement process. Many of the 400 former St. John’s students who took cash settlements have since complained they were forced to accept much lower awards than those obtained by ex-students from St. Joseph’s.

The larger reconciliation process is now being officially wound up by the province and the Catholic participants.

Helpline members are split into two angry camps. St. Joseph’s students haven’t been repaid the money owed them by St. John’s students, and some are out anywhere from $1,000 to $20,000 each.

When David McCann walks into church for the first time in more than 30 years today, it will be to hear an apology.

Ottawa Archbishop Marcel Gervais will stand up in Notre Dame Cathedral at the noon mass and say the church is sorry for the sexual abuse inflicted on McCann and about 500 other former students who attended two Catholic-run training schools during the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

“For me, it’s closure,” McCann said in a telephone interview from Vancouver. “It’s the final acknowledgment that as a child, I wasn’t to blame for what happened to me,” said McCann, who was to fly to Ottawa Saturday night.

The apology is one result of a three-year reconciliation process undertaken by the church and former students of St. Joseph’s training school in Alfred, east of Ottawa and of St. John’s in Uxbridge, north of Toronto.

Hundreds of boys sent to the schools as orphans, delinquents or truants were physically and sexually abused by the Brothers of the Christian Schools, who ran the institutions on behalf of the Ontario government.

In addition to formal public apologies from the province, the Christian Brothers and the Roman Catholic archdioceses of Ottawa and Toronto, the former students have also received financial settlements.

The same pastoral letter along with an apology will also be delivered today at St. Michael’s Cathedral in Toronto by Archbishop Aloysius Ambrozic.

So far, the reconciliation process has cost Ottawa’s Christian Brothers more than $8 million, the Ottawa and Toronto archdiocese about $600,000 each, and the provincial government about $6.4 million.

Because counselling may continue for some time, ex-students and others may still choose to sue, the final costs may not be known for years.

McCann, 49, founded the the Helpline association of ex-students and is credited with bringing the scandal into the open.

He says today’s service will be tough emotionally.

“It shows to me the church has recognized the seriousness of this problem and they’re really prepared to stand up publicly and say we’re really sorry this happened and we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

“It puts a lot of devils to rest,” he added tearfully, before going on to praise Gervais. The archbishop, McCann recalled, came to a meeting six years ago when Helpline began, to face angry victims.

“I think he truly understood the spirit and the intent of what the victims were trying to say,” McCann added, noting that Gervais has been exceptionally supportive, and helped victims and their families.

The Ottawa service will begin at noon today when Gervais will welcome the ex-students and others involved in the reconciliation process. The archbishop will then celebrate mass and deliver a homily about what happened and the final agreement, said spokesman Guy Levac.

“Then at the end of the mass we will be distributing a pastoral letter from the archbishops of Ottawa and Toronto, basically reflecting on the experience and what they learned from it and there is public apology there as well,” Levac said.

Gervais will meet all of the people involved at a reception after mass.

Never before has there been a legal settlement like this in a sexual abuse case. Reconciliation, not confrontation, has been the goal for both sides in the sexual abuse scandal at the St. Joseph’s training school in Alfred, east of Ottawa.

As the three-year-old reconciliation process winds to a close, all sides agree they’ve achieved much of the healing they sought.

The victims of the sexual abuse at St. Joseph’s are “the most seriously damaged individuals there are,” says Douglas Roche, Canada’s former disarmament commissioner and chairman of the committee that’s been overseeing the reconciliation process over the last three years.

“They’ve been damaged physically, psychologically, emotionally and spiritually.

“If you don’t take an ethical approach, a spiritual approach to that, you can’t get the healing that’s so sorely needed.”

Roche says what also has set the settlements in this case apart is their scale.

Already, $16 million has been spent to help 500 men who were abused as children at St. Joseph’s and at another Catholic-run Ontario training school, St. John’s in Uxbridge, north of Toronto. Claims for the last 300 men are expected to be approved by May 31.

“There’s nothing else like it in the world. It’s the largest known case of societal response to victims of institutional sexual abuse,” says Roche.

The criminal cases are also winding down. Sixteen Christian brothers or former brothers, 11 from St. Joseph’s and five from St. John’s, have already been convicted of criminal charges for assault, buggery or indecent assault relating to incidents in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. Four more former St. John’s brothers are awaiting trial over the next few months.

David McCann, the former St. Joseph’s student who founded the Helpline association of ex-students, said victims of the sexual abuse at Newfoundland’s Mount Cashel orphanage were only further traumatized by litigation and a public inquiry. After eight years, only one of the victims, Shane Earle, has been compensated.

“We wanted a kinder, gentler process,” says McCann.

The order of francophone Christian Brothers who once operated the provincial training school in Alfred also decided they wanted to help, not go to court. “They wanted to be seen as doing something now to help those who did suffer,” said Ron Caza, lawyer for the dwindling number of brothers, few of whom ever worked at Alfred.

Financially, the ex-students from St. Joseph’s and St. John’s received considerably less than the rumored $400,000 paid to Earle. But they didn’t have to go through the courts, or pay any legal fees.

To date, their settlements have averaged $10,000 each from Ontario’s Criminal Injuries Compensation Board, plus counselling and, in some cases, money for vocational rehabilitation, medical and dental expenses and educational upgrading.

Former St. Joseph’s students also got extra from the Ottawa Brothers: an average $6,000 each plus some compensation as wages for their work at the school.

The ex-students at both schools also received personal written apologies from the province, Ottawa’s Christian Brothers and the Roman Catholic archdioceses of Ottawa or Toronto. Formal public apologies to the victims by all these groups are also expected soon.

So far, the reconciliation process has cost Ottawa’s Christian Brothers more than $8 million, the Ottawa and Toronto archdioceses about $600,000 each, and the provincial government about $6.4 million.

Because counselling may continue for some ex-students and others may still choose to sue, the final costs may not be known for years.

The procedure worked out by Roche, McCann and lawyers for all sides has now become the model for settling other sexual abuse cases: by a Jesuit priest, George Epoch, in the Bruce Peninsula, and at the Grandview girls’ training school in Cambridge, Ont.

The one sour note is an ongoing dispute between Helpline — the students’ association — and the Toronto branch of anglophone Christian Brothers who operated St. John’s. They refused to participate in the 1992 reconciliation agreement. Since then, the dispute has taken on a venomous tone.

A year ago, ex-St. John’s students finally began filing lawsuits, and the Toronto brothers set up their own compensation scheme to top up the criminal injuries awards.

But Helpline says the awards are less than half of the extra money received by St. Joseph’s students, and many have been deceived by negotiators. What complicates it further is that St. Joseph’s student shared their extra awards with St. John’s students, in hopes that they would be paid back when Helpline made a similar agreement with the Toronto brothers.

Now Helpline is threatening to picket the papal nuncio’s residence in Ottawa and the Toronto brothers’ De La Salle School on Easter Sunday in order to get a public inquiry into the actions of the Toronto brothers.

“We couldn’t care less about the protests,” says Melville O’Donohue, lawyer for the Toronto brothers. He says the Toronto group refused to participate in the reconciliation process with Helpline because McCann is “a fraud artist. We won’t do business with him or any organization he’s involved in.”

McCann still regards the reconciliation process as a success. He wipes away a tear as he says, “It’s so valuable to be given a chance to start again.”

After leaving Alfred, McCann spent time in jail for burglary, and then worked for 10 years as a police informant on drug cases. He quit Helpline late in 1992, after getting threats on his life, and went into hiding under a witness protection program. Now he’s been diagnosed as HIV positive, and believes he has only a few years to live. So he’s out of hiding, and working with Helpline again.

Counselling has helped him become reconciled with his family. He plans to start an art gallery on the West Coast with his sister.

McCann gives examples of what the settlement has meant to others:

After intensive counselling, one man is sleeping with his wife. For 19 years, he slept alone behind locked doors because of his fears of what had happened to him in the Alfred dormitories.

Another received $3,000 in dental work to replace teeth knocked out at St. Joseph’s. Now he can eat a Big Mac instead of having to live on bread soaked in soup.

Others have used their cash awards to start businesses. Some have blown their cash awards on drugs or drink. For 32 others, the help came too late. They had committed suicide.

Helpline members were sent to the training schools as orphans, delinquents, or truants. Many simply went on to other institutions. Most have criminal records, for everything from theft to murder. Some have spent time in mental institutions. Few have more than a Grade 8 education.

Gerry Deane, an Ottawa member of the Helpline executive, says he’s typical of many ex-students, in the help he’s received through counselling. Like McCann and others, he was the victim of attempted sodomy by one of the brothers on his first night in Alfred. Later he was beaten repeatedly until he was finally hospitalized and then released from the school. “Now I’m coming to grips with my own shame, and my doubts about my masculinity, and my intelligence.”

McCann has developed some understanding for the brothers who began abusing him at the age of 12.

“It would have taken a miracle not to happen. They took young, untrained, unsupervised brothers and put them in an isolated community for 24 hours a day, 356 days a year (and only nine days off).

“They got less than half the money provincial institutions received, and three times as many students.

“It was a miracle they didn’t kill the kids.”

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