Christian school abused students, lawyer says
Lawsuit alleges since-closed school practised systemic humiliation tactics
Truck driver faces serious charges in eight-vehicle fatal crash
The late headmasters of a Christian boarding school controlled every aspect of children’s lives in order to break their spirits, a lawyer representing former students suing the defunct institution told a Toronto court on Monday.
The school made students snitch on classmates they caught “sinning,” leading to punishments that ranged from psychological torment to physical beatings, Loretta Merritt said in her opening statement at a trial for the class-action lawsuit against Grenville Christian College in Brockville.
Her clients, who lived in residence at the school between 1973 and 1997, are asking the court to find that the institution and its leadership breached their duty of care to the children in their charge.
Merritt alleged students were at turns publicly humiliated and beaten with wooden paddles. All of this, she said, was part of Grenville’s culture — an allegation the defence denies.
“It involves a system of intentional acts done for the purpose of breaking the spirits of the children — and the individuality and autonomy of the children — in order to remake them in the Grenville way, meaning obedient and subjugative,” she said. “In other words, good Christians as the leadership defined that.”
Merritt said the school dictated everything from with whom students socialized to the underwear they wore.
Five representative plaintiffs are set to take the stand over the course of a five-week trial, laying out those allegations and others.
Defence lawyer Geoffrey Adair said some allegations he expects to hear are jarring, but that the court should consider them as outliers rather than symptoms of a system designed to tear students down. A 34-year-old truck driver is facing charges in a deadly multi-vehicle crash on a highway west of Toronto.
Provincial police say the collision took place on Aug. 22 on the Queen Elizabeth Way near Oakville and involved a total of eight vehicles. The fiery crash sent seven people to hospital and killed 34-year-old Elena Kulikova of Niagara Falls, Ont.
Police say Kulikova’s vehicle was pinned between a concrete barrier and a transport truck that burst into flames.
Police say they’ve now laid charges against the man who was driving the truck. The man, from Mississauga, is charged with one count each of causing death by criminal negligence and dangerous operation causing death.
The Canadian Press
Students were held to high standards, and a breach “brought about punishments or detentions,” Adair said. One such punishment was a so-called “light session,” which saw staff and students gather to discuss various transgressions.
The plaintiffs describe the sessions as hours-long affairs during which Grenville staff screamed at students, accusing them of various sins and forcing them to confess. Adair describes them differently. “People would be assembled in the chapel and when there was an issue that affected everybody at the school, this would be publicly impressed. The offenders would be made known and castigated,” he said in his opening remarks. “No doubt that could be humiliating. But those practices are not in and of themselves abuse.”
The defence describes in court documents a picturesque campus that was equal parts school and loving community.
The first witness to take the stand, a former staff member who also lived on Grenville’s grounds, said things weren’t always so rosy.
Joan Childs testified that one headmaster ordered her to discipline two girls accused of misbehaviour — including wetting the bed — by dressing them in the uniform worn by elementary students.
“I sent these two little girls in the eighth grade to class wearing an elementary school uniform and a sign that said ‘I refuse to grow up,’ ” Childs said.
She said that if she didn’t comply with the headmasters’ wishes, she’d be punished. Those punishments took the form of hours of “light sessions,” or periods of forced silence when she was forbidden to speak to her husband, even in private.
The Canadian Press