Tonight on CBC’s 5th Estate Linden MacIntyre explores the effects of the Antigonish Diocese Sexual Abuse Class Action.
The documentary is airing on CBC television at 9pm here in Atlantic Canada.
Betrayal: How Nova Scotia’s Catholic Church is trying to pay it’s debts to abuse victims.
Toronto anesthesiologist Dr. George Doodnaught Doodnaught, worked at Toronto’s North York General Hospital.
Charged With Sexually Assaulting Sleeping Patients
Doodnaught was charged six months ago with sexually assaulting three of his female patients while they were under anesthesia.
From time to time sexual abuse survivors have named the Vatican as a defendant in priest sexual abuse lawsuits.
So far as I am aware, none of these claims have been successful.
I read an interesting post recently on the SLAW blog about the basis of the Vatican’s claims for sovereign immunity (the right of the head of a foreign state to be immune from arrest and prosecution).
Ontario Priest Charged With More Sexual Abuse Crimes
Catholic Priest Rev. William Hodgson Marshall a former Windsor high school principal is facing two criminal charges of indecent assault in Toronto when Marshall was teaching and coaching basketball at St. Michael’s College school in 1953.
More Charges
Today Windsor police announced that Marshall has been charged with six additional charges of indecent or sexual assault for incidents alleged to have occurred in Windsor during the 1950s and ’80s.
Terry Kohut has kept a dark secret for nearly 50 years. Now he is breaking his silence, becoming a key figure in the sex-abuse crisis in the Catholic Church and the growing controversy over what Pope Benedict XVI did about it.
When Terry Kohut was barely a teen, he says he was sexually molested and assaulted by Father Lawrence C. Murphy, the headmaster and priest of the school where he lived, St. John’s School for the Deaf, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
According to court and church documents Murphy raped and molested as many as 200 deaf boys who lived at the school between 1950 to 1974.
Father Charles J. Picot is a former priest from the Roman Catholic Diocese of Bathurst, New Brunswick. Picot was ordained in 1974 and served in the Bathurst Diocese until 1993.
In 1993 Picot was found guilty of two counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent assault.
In March of this year he was found not guilty of the indecent assault against a boy who was a member of his parish in Dalhousie, New Brunswick in the 1970s.
A story about the survivors of the Shubenacadie Indian Residential School and their families.
I am proud to have played a small part in helping Nora Bernard (rest her soul) achieve accountability and justice for the Shubenacadie survivors and thousands of other residential schools students across Canada.
Pope Benedict XVI is in London. Today he offered an apology for the “unspeakable crime” of sxual molestation by priests.
Benedict expressed:
“…his deep sorrow and shame over what the victims and their families suffered,”
Time Limits for Sexual Abuse Claims
This week the Supreme Court of Canada released its decisions in a pair of historical sexual abuse cases arising out of Nova Scotia. In Borden v. Attorney General of Nova Scotia and Smith v. Attorney General of Nova Scotia, the plaintiffs filed claims against the Nova Scotia Home for Colored Children and the Children’s Aid Society alleging the defendants were liable for damages for sexual assault and breach of fiduciary duty relating to sexual abuse that allegedly occurred in the home between 1966 and 1984.
The Home for Colored Children and the Children’s Aid Society applied for summary judgment to dismiss the claims on the basis that they were statute barred pursuant to Nova Scotia’s Limitation of Actions Act.
A new class action has been filed in Quebec alleging sexual abuse by priests.
The class action names the Community of the Clerics of St. Viateur in Montreal and the Raymond-Dewar Institute (also known as the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb) as defendants.
The representative plaintiff, Serge D’arcy says he was a victim of sexual abuse by priests while attending the institute between 1967 and 1972. D’arcy states that he was subjected to physical and sexual abuse by priests who were members of the religious group who taught and worked at the Dewar Institute.
