YOUTH JAIL ABUSE CLAIMS

Province pays out more than $2.7M in settlements

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 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 sum in the vicinity of $30,000 to $40,000, said Merchant Law Group partner Tony Merchant.

“I think this is an example of the provincial government acting very commendably,” said the Reginabased 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 in an email the total paid out to date and said the settlements were paid to Merchant Law Group and other firms. 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 Postmedia News 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.

The Paul Dojack Youth Centre opened in 1950 — at the time it was called the Saskatchewan Boys School — to care for “delinquent” boys, as well as those without a parent or guardian.

In 1975, the facility became a residential treatment home and remand centre for boys aged 12 to 15. Ten years later, the complex was renamed and became a closedcustody youth facility.

According to the claims, former residents suffered sustained abuse by multiple staff members in between the 1970s and the 1990s. In 2010, the provincial government said most of the settlements ranged from $25,000 to $35,000.

“This hasn’t been large amounts of money on a per-person basis,” Merchant said. “But for the victims it’s helpful, and it’s a part of closure and they sort of see it that the government says, ‘We’ve done something wrong and here’s compensation.’”