YOUTH JAIL ABUSE CLAIMS
Province pays out more than $2.7M in settlements
SASKATOON The Saskatchewan government has continued to quietly settle dozens of decades-old physical and sexual abuse claims brought forward in a 10-year-old class action lawsuit centred on a youth jail in Regina.
Public records show government ministries paid $357,500 to Merchant Law Group LLP during the last fiscal year, adding to the $147,500 it paid out the year before. According to the government, the total now stands at $2.79 million.
That money was then redirected to the victims, who were teenagers at the time of the alleged abuse at what is now called the Paul Dojack Youth Centre, with each receiving $30,000$40,000, said Merchant Law Group partner Tony Merchant.
“I think this is an example of the provincial government acting very commendably,” said the Regina-based lawyer, who is best-known for his work on two major class actions related to the government’s abduction and relocation of Indigenous children.
“Rather than putting people who were wronged through another stressful process of testifying about it … where the government was satisfied something wrong had occurred and there ought to be compensation, they’ve paid the compensation.”
Ministry of Justice spokesman Noel Busse confirmed the total paid out to date. The settlements, he said, “are confidential and will not be discussed by the government.”
Many of the victims who filed claims led troubled lives and some are incarcerated in jails and prisons across the country, Merchant told the Regina Leader-Post in 2012. Among them are killers, sex offenders and offenders designated as dangerous serving indeterminate sentences.
One man named in the majority of the allegations, Ronald Anthony Sawa, admitted to sexually abusing nine victims and was sentenced to 41/2 years in prison in April 2010.
The provincial government said in 2012 that it had settled 11 claims by paying out a total of $296,000. At the time, it was facing more than 150 individual claims with another 74 expected in the coming month. Busse said Friday there are 57 claims remaining in the system.
According to the claims, former residents suffered sustained abuse by multiple staff members between the 1970s and the 1990s.