Everyone has the right to defend themselves. But when we are a religious congregation, it seems to me that we are held to a… higher moral standard.
At least that is what the Marist Brothers preached to those under their supervision in the last century.
Yet, faced with a class-action lawsuit from their sexual assault victims, the brothers’ lawyers are using tricks that wouldn’t make very good sermon material.
Earlier this fall, the Marist Brothers attempted to submit into evidence an expert report on “the customs and customs of the time.” The era being essentially all of the 20the century. The expertise would serve to “enlighten the court on the social context”, in order to “clearly understand the seriousness of the fault” of the brothers. Because to properly judge the seriousness of sexual assaults, and the fact that the congregation did not prevent them, or protect pedophiles, it would be necessary to “take into account the morals, knowledge and ways of doing things of the time” .
Judge Sylvain Lussier was not impressed. He rejected the request for an expert opinion.
Not that “historical context” is ever relevant. In another case involving a religious community, an attempt was made to distinguish by expertise the “physical corrections”, previously legally permitted, from pure and simple assault.
But in the case of the Marist Brothers, it concerns sexual assault: 10, 100 or 200 years ago, it was a crime, therefore automatically a civil “fault”.
Attempting, 50 years after the events, to play on the “ignorance” of the attackers or that of their complacent protectors is particularly odious.
Judge Lussier says that he is “repugnant” to see that this “ignorance of facts clearly prohibited by the Criminal Code, and very certainly constituting capital sins according to the doctrine of the Church”, is invoked to try to do “ excuse the conduct of those who perpetrated them.”
In this case, there are worse things than this altogether crude attempt to sugarcoat the crimes of the past.
The Marist Brothers tried to shield from prosecution two “funds” created around twenty years ago, to which no less than 160 million from the congregation would have been sent.
Officially, these funds were created to ensure the retirement of the few dozen brothers still in this world.
But as luck would have it, the money was placed in these funds between 1999 and 2004, when the first sexual scandals broke out in the Catholic Church.
Why create separate funds if the only goal is to manage the money that the community has always managed?
One of the legal arguments, repeatedly argued by religious communities, is that we cannot prosecute entities created 20 years ago for acts committed 30, 40, 50 or 60 years ago.
The Canadian judges were not fooled by these maneuvers: the communities’ money has simply changed address, but it is the financial continuity of the same organization.
In January, therefore, Judge Lussier also decided that these funds would be included in the lawsuit. The Brothers appealed. Without success.
Sometime next year or in 2025, then, there will be a trial – or a settlement.
But remember all the same that a congregation which preaches Catholic virtues attempts to protect its victims from considerable funds… funds collected by donations from the very parents of these victims… and which have benefited from the tax shelter .
Is that Christian?
In the United States, there are so many lawsuits from victims of sexual assault that the Catholic Church is filing for bankruptcy diocese by diocese. San Francisco, Oakland, Baltimore, Albany… At last count, 36 dioceses or religious organizations had filed for protection under the American bankruptcy law.
This can be helpful in avoiding lawsuits, and victims’ organizations say it’s another way to silence them. But the fact is that over the past 20 years, the Catholic Church in the United States has paid more than 4 billion Canadian dollars to victims of sexual assault. The laws of 18 states have removed the statute of limitations, so that you can sue for facts dating back 50 or 70 years.
Bankruptcy is not, however, a free pass; As recently as Tuesday, a Long Island judge refused a $200 million settlement until the local (bankrupt) diocese provides him with all the documentation. Bankruptcy may even allow for an orderly distribution of compensation.
The prescription was also abolished in Quebec – and it was entirely relative, because we could already successfully invoke the trauma and the psychological impossibility of acting to continue after 30 or 40 years.
We have not seen any bankruptcies here, in particular because it is almost exclusively fairly well-off religious communities, and not parishes, which have been sued in Quebec – especially teaching communities. In Quebec, it is the desertion of churches that threatens parishes with bankruptcy.
We will see what will happen with the case of the Marists, which follows that of the Clerics of Saint-Viateur, the Redemptorists, the brothers of the Holy Cross, etc.
The Marist Brothers may have caused hundreds of victims in Quebec, according to Pierre Boivin, lawyer for “B.”, the group’s representative.
But these “men of God” are still fighting to minimize crimes, dilute their responsibility, and place their money out of reach.
Is that really Christian?