‘My God, you’d think that we would have learned’
MHAS urge province, again, to end statute of limitations for child abuse
Some members of the province’s House of Assembly lauded Jack Whalen as a champion this week. As he sat with his family in the gallery, they described him as an advocate for children abused in the past and those who could be abused in the future, giving him a round of applause.
Whalen, 63, feels more deflated than heroic. He’s tired — low on energy due to the cancer he’s fighting, and weary from the battle he’s been waging with the province in his attempts to get justice for the abuse he suffered as a youth at the former Whitbourne Training School.
Now living in Ontario, Whalen was last in St. John’s in June 2023, when he brought a hand-built replica of the isolation cell in which he spent 730 days to the Confederation Building in the hope of giving provincial politicians a glimpse of what he endured.
With his lawyer — his daughter, Brittany — at his side, he was back at the House of Assembly this week as four MHAS brought forth petitions to change the Limitations Act, which would allow him and other survivors of child abuse to receive compensation.
“He’s very moved by the community support that he’s received,” Brittany told The Telegram. “But he’s feeling deflated that the people who have the power to make the change are blind to the trauma of survivors of child abuse. He had to actually recreate his cell and get in it to get attention, and still no change.”
While there’s no time limit to bring criminal charges against those who abuse children, survivors of childhood physical abuse in Newfoundland have a two-year limit after reaching the age of majority to bring forth civil action against their abusers, unless the abuse was sexual. It’s one of only two provinces — the other is New Brunswick — that has not changed its legislation to remove the deadline.
Those who were sexually abused as youth at government-run facilities, including the Whitbourne Training School, in the 1970s and 1980s received compensation through a $12.5-million class action lawsuit in 2022. Those who experienced physical abuse that wasn’t sexual are out of time.
As The Telegram reported last year, Brittany chose a career in law with the goal of taking on her father’s case. She has filed a statement of claim on his behalf in Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court against the province, the attorney general of Canada and a now-deceased local magistrate, alleging their actions and failures resulted in Jack’s long-term and continued suffering.
A native of St. John’s, Jack entered the Whitbourne facility as a 13-year-old, and remained there until he was 17. Brittany says in that time he was physically and emotionally abused by staff, deprived of the necessitites of life and tortured. He made dozens of attempts to escape and was punished each time.
Jack’s claim alleges he was arrested after escaping when he was 16 and taken to the holding cells at the Holyrood RCMP detachment, from where police escorted him to the office of a magistrate who sexually assaulted him.
“We’ve been trying to access the records related to him but have been told they’ve all been lost in a flood,” she says of the magistrate.
She suspects her father was not the only boy who was sexually assaulted in the office.
PC MHA Helen Conwayottenheimer, NDP MHA Lela Evans, and independent MHAS Eddie Joyce and Paul Lane each brought forth petitions in the House of Assembly this week, calling on the government to amend the Limitations Act to allow child-abuse survivors to receive compensation.
“Treating child sexual abuse differently from non-sexual child abuse for limitation purposes is inconsistent with the shift in society’s awareness of the damaging effects of child maltreatment,” Evans said. “Who in their right mind would say that some child who spent 730 days in a small cell in solitary confinement (did not suffer) a form of torture?”
Removing the limitation would not only ensure access to justice, she said, but would hold abusers accountable and serve as a deterrent to others.
“Given what happened here in this province with residential schools, what happened in this province with clergy abuse in general and all that stuff, my God, you’d think that we would have learned,” said Lane. “We should be ashamed of what happened and we should make sure and commit that nothing like that will ever happen again.”
The civil trial involving Jack Whalen is scheduled to happen over two weeks in October, and will involve a constitutional challenge to the legislation, if it isn’t changed first.
“He was a ward of the Crown and they had a duty to protect him,” his daughter says. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”