Jerome and Johnny: twin tragedies
A shared unhappy past wrecked the lives of two brothers in different ways
Twin brothers Johnny and Jerome Williams would still be alive today, living good, happy lives if they had never set eyes on Mount Cashel orphanage, their sister says.
“You shameless, bloody people, go to hell,” said Selina Williams, her voice rising with emotion as she spoke of the Christian Brothers who abused boys at Mount Cashel in St. John’s, and the church officials and authorities who covered up the scandal in an attempt to protect the Brothers’ reputations and assets.
“I am so thankful for the boys who were able to move on and have reasonably normal lives. They deserve it. … I wish Johnny and Jerome could have had that.” Johnny died in 1998 in Placentia. “After the inquiry, Johnny was able to move on in some small ways with his life, but unfortunately he had issues with ulcers and pancreatitis and died the way he had lived, in pain and alone at 39,” said Williams, who lives in B.C.
“He had so few needs. He never asked for anything and expected nothing, but always gave anything he had, whether it was material or emotional.”
Jerome committed suicide in Red Deer, Alta., a few years ago.
“Jerome disconnected from everyone after Johnny died,” Williams said.
“He never talked about it, not about Mount Cashel or his twin brother. … I lost a shining star in my life, but I lost it a long time ago, not three years ago.”
Despite their shared date of birth, the two were unalike in looks, personality or their reaction to the abuse at Mount Cashel Orphanage.
Johnny was small, struggled academically, but was outspoken, Williams said.
Jerome was taller, studious and athletic, especially at basketball and soccer.
Johnny was among the boys who tried to expose the abuse in the 1970s. He testified for four days at the Hughes Inquiry in 1989 and spoke of it freely in the years afterwards.
Jerome, who was interviewed by investigators, appears to have taken many of his secrets to the grave and would only speak of the orphanage in reference to sports achievements or the bond he had with fellow residents.
The twins were born in September 1960 in Placentia. When her parents separated later in the decade, ending a tumultuous marriage, Williams said the boys were placed in Mount Cashel and she and an older sister in Belvedere Orphanage, which was run by the Sisters of Mercy. A younger sister was placed with relatives.
To Williams, who was around five years old at the time, the couple of outings the girls made to Mount Cashel to visit their brothers left a far different impression than the horror that was really going on — physical and sexual abuse.
“I remember thinking as a little girl that Mount Cashel was so much more fun than Belvedere,” Williams said, recalling the swimming pool and activities available to the boys. After Belvedere closed, she and her sister were put in foster care.
At age 15 in 1975, Johnny Williams was among the boys to give a statement to the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary about the physical and sexual abuse he’d received from Brother Edward English. On a previous occasion, he’d shown severe bruising to his cousin and she brought him to the welfare office on Harvey Road.
But the abuse of the Mount Cashel boys was covered up until the scandal broke in 1989.
Another victim, Billy Earle, can still hear bare-chested Johnny screaming as he was beaten for dawdling at the sinks in the morning.
Johnny would stand up to the abusive Brothers, calling them “jiggers.”
The twins’ cousin reported in a 1976 police statement that she saw Jerome in the hallway one day with Brother Doug Kenny. Jerome was crying, but refused to tell her why, and Kenny said it was none of her business and drove the boy to his bed, according to the statement.
But he would never have talked about any abuse, his sister said, adding he may have been ashamed and felt guilty for the abuse Johnny received.
“As children (taken into care), you do what you can to get the best life for yourself. … It’s a war,” she said.
“( Jerome) never talked about it, but there’s no way he lived there without receiving some abuse. Certain kids are susceptible, and Johnny would have been one of those. … He was a little guy with a big mouth, and I don’t say that in a bad way. He had no idea how small he was when he would cheek off at people. He’d stand up for himself.”
Williams moved around to various foster homes after Belvedere closed and managed to get out of care at 15. By age 18, she had left for Fort McMurray, moving on to Red Deer and then out to B.C.
According to Williams, when Johnny left the orphanage he told his father about what had happened, but he wasn’t taken seriously.
“He drank quite a lot. He was a very angry kid then,” Williams recalls, adding he moved through a series of make-work jobs before eventually living on a small monthly stipend from the abuse compensation settled in the 1990s.
She believes Johnny found some relief in finally testifying at the Hughes Inquiry.
“I also knew it would be a hard road,” she said.
“I wasn’t with him, but it couldn’t have been easy. He had waited a long time for somebody to listen … even though you can’t punish these people enough for what they have done. There is no appropriate justice. It would never be enough. You never shake that.”
Williams talked on the phone with him when she learned about his stomach problems, but he said he was “just fine.”
“He knew he wasn’t supposed to drink or eat certain foods. He’d go for a while and not drink and then just go on a bender,” she said.
She found out after he died that he’d obtained his high school credentials, and imagines it must have been a proud time for him.
He hadn’t put much of a dent in his compensation and left it to Jerome, Williams said.
When she and her younger sister approached Jerome — who was by then living in Red Deer — about Johnny’s funeral, he refused to go home. Then suddenly he showed up in Placentia two weeks later and stayed for about a year. When he announced he was heading back to Red Deer, Williams told him to check in with her from the road. He never did.
Jerome had stayed at Mount Cashel while he attended classes at Memorial University before deciding to take a year off to work. Williams connected him with a friend who was heading out to Fort McMurray and he never got back to his nearly completed studies.
Jerome operated his own taxi there and seemed happy, reading his beloved daily newspapers — the Financial Post, the Globe and the local paper — between fares. But as the city filled up with more and more Newfoundlanders, he moved on to Red Deer, where Williams was living at the time.
He claimed he wanted to avoid friends who would coax him to go to bars. But Williams said he really wanted to go where no one knew him and could not connect him to Mount Cashel.
“All he wanted to do was forget this ever happened,” she said.
Williams had left her first marriage when she was pregnant with her second child and Jerome moved in with them, connecting instantly with the children. He would have made a fabulous father, his sister said.
“I was absolutely astonished at his parenting skills,” she said.
He dated, but the one serious relationship he had, of several months’ duration, ended with him being jilted.
Jerome then moved to his own apartment until his sudden departure for Placentia.
By the time he got back to Alberta, he had changed drastically, and pretty much severed the family ties he once had.
Near the end, Jerome — always a hard worker — got fired from a job in the oil patch and an eviction notice was slipped under his door. When the landlord acted on the notice weeks later, it was still on the floor.
“There was nothing in his apartment with his name on it, not even a piece of mail,” Williams said.
There was a $700 set of unopened Le Creuset cookware, a box of exercise videos and untouched supplements and other items ordered off the shopping channel.
His car was found abandoned at a shopping mall.
And when Jerome’s remains were found, he had long, stringy hair and was wearing seven layers of clothes.
“That just absolutely would never have been him,” Williams said. “He was always clean-cut, fresh-shaven.”
Williams, who has no emotional ties now to Newfoundland, still plans to bring Jerome’s ashes home to Johnny’s resting place in Placentia.
“I hope that’s what he wants. Nobody knows,” she said.
She imagines if things had played out differently in their childhood, Johnny, with his gift of gab, would be in Newfoundland working, perhaps in marketing, with a social circle and family of his own.
Kind, thoughtful Jerome would be the head of a household, with no limits to his ability to soar in some profession.
“He just was a very authentic individual. You never wondered where he was coming from, he was so genuine and so authentic,” she said.
“Everybody has a version of greatness in them. And there are some people who just shine. He was one of them.”
St. John’s lawyer David Day, who was the commission’s co-counsel, said his eyes moistened but he smiled when The Telegram asked him about Johnny Williams this week.
He recalled that Johnny had a gregarious personality and liked to wear cowboy boots and hats.
“He could be encountered waiting for a meeting with me singing a country and western ballad,” Day recalled of Johnny, who was so eager to help the commission.
He struck up a lifelong friendship with inquiry investigator Weldon (Buck) Orser, who has since died, Day said.
Before Johnny testified, Orser took him downtown and outfitted him in a suit of clothes out of his own pocket.
But there were many victims who were not forthcoming because they were not ready, Day said.
“They were limited in what they told me, and many years later, I learned from reacquainting with them there was a great deal they could have said, but chose not to.”
Monday: darkness and light