A disgraced former Roman Catholic Bishop convicted of sexual abuse has died. Hubert O’Connor was convicted of sexually abusing children at the Cariboo Indian Residential School in British Columbia.
During his trial O’Connor’s lawyers sought access to the victims’ psychological records. The right of an accused to make an application for a court order to receive copies of a victim’s therapeutic records was eventually upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada; a procedure that became known as an “O’Connor application”.
In response to an outcry from women’s groups and abuse survivors, the Government of Canada eventually passsed Bill C-46 amending the Criminal Code of Canada to protect the privacy rights of victims of abuse.