Legal Commentary

The NYT reported last week that "The government of Canada formally apologized...to Native Canadians for forcing about 150,000 native children into government-financed residential schools where many suffered physical and sexual abuse." (Click here for full story.) All but a few of the 130 residential schools involved were operated under contract by religious denominations, including the Catholic, Anglican, and Presbyterian Churches.

This historic apology is part of a larger story of clergy sexual abuse in government-funded and church-operated residential institutions throughout Canada. Public concern in Canada over sexual abuse by clergy in residential schools became widespread with explosive revelations in 1989 of sexual abuse at the Mount Cashel orphanage operated by the Christian Brothers' religous order in Newfoundland. Concurrent church and government investigative commissions heard testimony from dozens of victims who described physical and sexual abuse at the hands of the superintendent, staff, and other residents over the course of more than two decades. The commissions also found evidence of collusion among church officials, law enforcement, and the press to cover-up abuse allegations in the late 1970s and 1980s. Subsequent government inquiries, criminal investigations, and civil lawsuits in the 1990s and 2000s uncovered similar abuse and cover-up at dozens of residential institutions for children throughout Canada.

Even before the revelations at Mount Cashel, however, the Canadian news media carried stories of U.S. litigation for clergy sexual abuse, notably claims in 1984 and 1985 against the Catholic Church for the sexual molestation of dozens of boys by Father Gilbert Gauthe in Louisianna. In response to this U.S. litigation, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops first adopted guidelines for responding to abuse allegations in 1987. The Canadian public, exposed to media coverage of clergy sexual abuse litigation in the U.S. in the mid-1980s was more willing to believe the claims against Canadian clergy that began with the Mount Cashel affair. While it might be overstating the case to suggest that U.S. tort litigation played an essential role in Canada's coming to terms with clergy sexual abuse, it certainly primed the Canadian public and prompted Canadian Churches to begin addressing the problem.

I offer a fuller analysis of the influence of U.S. tort litigation on Canada's attempts to confront clergy sexual abuse in residential institutions (as well as similar attempts in Ireland), in Holding Bishops Accountable: How Lawsuits Helped the Catholic Church Confront Clergy Sexual Abuse (Harvard, 2008).