Montreal:
The Catholic Church will pay C$104 million ($76 million) to hundreds of sexual abuse victims in eastern Canada, according to a statement released Friday.
In 2020, the Archdiocese of St. John was found responsible for one of Canada’s largest child sexual abuse scandals, at the Mount Cashel Orphanage, a now-defunct orphanage for boys in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
The court concluded that sexual abuse was perpetrated by priests and other church employees at the orphanage beginning in 1940 and continued over several decades.
A total of 292 victims will receive payments ranging between 55,000 and 850,000 Canadian dollars, according to the report seen by AFP.
The accounting firm Ernst & Young was chosen as an intermediary to determine the amount distributed to each victim.
Geoff Budden, one of the lawyers representing the victims, told AFP that the amount is in line with “similar compensation from other courts”.
“People didn’t really understand the scale of the problem and how widespread the abuse was,” he said.
The Archdiocese of Saint John declared bankruptcy in 2021, although it raised 40 million Canadian dollars from the sale of buildings it owned.
However, Budden said he is optimistic that the victims will receive the full amount awarded by the court.
“There are still assets that need to be processed, including insurance products,” he said.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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