$30 MILLION 150 VICTIMS 42YEARS OF ABUSE
Deaf students who were abused by priests at Clercs de Saint-Viateur win record settlement
For the 150 victims, deaf and mute and severely traumatized, it took decades to come forward with their accounts of sexual abuse at the hands of the Clercs de Saint-Viateur.
But they finally named the 33 priests and religious staff and five lay people who they say abused them at the Montreal Institute for the Deaf, a boarding-school for young boys run by the Clercs, and on Wednesday they were awarded $30 million — by far the largest settlement for sexual assault in Quebec history.
At the top of the list is Father Anthime Paiement, accused by 24 young boys at the Institute of sexual assault. Most of the boys were around 10 or 11 years old at the time; some were as young as seven.
Paiement’s obituary in 1998, at the age of 91, said he devoted his entire life to the deaf and mute, as a teacher and chaplain at the Institute, among other places.
Then came Brother Philippe Paquette, who 10 victims said repeatedly assaulted them, in the dormitory or the classrooms or priests’ quarters, where he lived from 1949 to 1984.
According to his obituary, his tasks included teaching the “little ones,” surveillance, cinema, and discipline. He died in 2009 at the age of 82.
Brother Gérard Barrette, meanwhile, was accused by seven plaintiffs in the class action suit of anal rape, among other things. Perhaps he is still alive.
The abuse spanned from 1940 to 1982. Some of the victims were abused over the Christmas holidays. Some were abused throughout their first year at the school on St-Laurent Blvd. in Villeray in 1962. Others were assaulted on a regular basis, over their entire stay — up to seven years’ time.
The list of abusers also includes the director of the institute, the nurse, the dormitory supervisor, and the priest at the confessional. According to one victim, the boys soon stopped going to confession. Another said he was abused by a priest, and when he sought help at the infirmary, he was assaulted there too.
For Robert Kugler, who has represented the victims since the class action lawsuit was launched in 2010, the amount of the award reflects the extent of the abuse and the vulnerability of the victims.
“All the victims were handicapped — they were deaf and had difficulty communicating. They were stuck,” said Kugler, of the firm Kugler Kandestin. “It’s simply tragic.”
While no amount of money can replace what the victims lost in their lives, Kugler continued, it can help them move forward, get therapy and improve the rest of their lives.
The Clercs de Saint-Viateur du Canada will pay $20 million, while the Institut Raymond-Dewar — the new name for the Montreal Institute for the Deaf, as of 1984 — will pay $10 million.
If divided equally among the 150 victims, the $30 million would amount to $200,000 each.
But Kugler expects more victims will likely come forward, now that they have reason to believe it will lead to compensation. And an adjudicator, former Court of Appeals Judge André Forget, will be tasked with interviewing the plaintiffs, in private, to determine whether they deserve the base amount of compensation, 25 per cent more, or 50 per cent more, depending on the gravity of the abuse, and the gravity of the consequences of the abuse.
In 2011, the Congrégation de Sainte-Croix accepted to pay $18 million to former students who were sexually abused between 1950 and 1991 by members of the order in various schools, including Notre-Dame College in Montreal.
“One of the important points for us with this type of case is to make it as easy as possible for the victims to feel free to come forward,” said Kugler, describing the lawsuit as the hardest the firm has ever had to work on. “No claim can be rejected because it was filed too late. The victims will not be cross-examined and there won’t be an abuser who will deny the abuse or someone challenging them on the damage done to their lives.”
The list of consequences is long, from anxiety and shame and depression, to drug abuse and difficulty earning a living and/or having sexual relations.
As for the abusers, it is not clear how many are still alive to even read about the judgment.
In 2012, the defendants tried to have a publication ban placed on the names of the alleged abusers, but Superior Court Judge Eva Petras denied the motion.
While the identity of victims in sexual assault cases is protected — here they are grouped together under the name of an organization for the deaf, the Centre de la communauté sour de du Montréal Métropolitain — suspects are named in criminal cases, so they should be named in class action lawsuits as well, Petras ruled.
Then the plaintiffs filed a motion to have the defendants disclose who among the abusers was still alive, which was accepted. But as the Clercs settled the suit through mediation, that motion was not fulfilled. The trial was set to begin in September.
The Clercs de Saint-Viateur did not return calls Wednesday. But in a statement made in November, after the order had reached an initial settlement, father Nestor Fils-Aimé, a Clercs superior in Quebec, said that the congregation will have to make “important sacrifices” financially in order to pay the amount of the settlement, but that it was satisfied with the result of the “difficult litigation for all parties involved.”
On Tuesday, the day the judgment was released, the Clercs published on their website an updated “Policy toward the sexual assault of minors” on how to prevent sexual abuse by clergy and intervene when it happens, including sections on relations with police and the media.
Carlo Tarini, communications director of Quebec’s association of victims of priests, said the settlement will allow the victims to finally turn the page on one of the saddest chapters in Quebec history.
“A whole generation of deaf children went through outlandish suffering at this facility,” Tarini said. “Children from all over Quebec
were told they could come to this school and learn a trade and be successful. That was the pitch made to the parents... But I have never heard such sad tales of abuse as the ones I heard from these children.”
He remembers one victim telling Tarini and the lawyers about the dormitory supervisor who would choose a different child every night. When it was this boy’s turn he refused to go and held on to the bedposts. But the man pulled him off by the feet.
“There wasn’t a dry eye in the room — you could feel the pain he had to go through.”
Some of the victims also told Tarini that when they first tried to report the abuse, no one believed them.
“They say it takes a village to raise a child. Here it took a village to close their eyes — those that didn’t abuse them could not have been unaware of what was going on. As the lawsuit alleged, even a director of the Institute was a pedophile. What message did that send to those below him?”
Both Kugler and Tarini said that to their knowledge, no criminal charges had ever been brought against any of the priests or lay people named in the lawsuit.