Judge rules Roman Catholic corporation not liable for abuse at Mount Cashel
ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — The Roman Catholic Episcopal Corporation of St. John’s, N.L., is not liable for abuse in the 1950s at the notorious Mount Cashel orphanage because a senior priest likely didn’t believe boys who reported it, a judge ruled Tuesday.
One of the lawyers representing many of the more than 80 plaintiffs swiftly announced plans to appeal.
Justice Alphonsus Faour of the provincial Supreme Court says in a 174-page judgment that he believes men who testified they told a senior priest about abuse at least seven times. Plaintiffs in the case are from an earlier era — long before sexual and physical abuse emerged as a public scandal with criminal convictions and a public inquiry starting in 1989.
But Faour concludes it’s doubtful whether that priest, who can’t be named under a publication ban, would have fully understood or believed the boys who reported similar horrors decades before.