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Who let the wolves in?
Mount Cashel survivors horrified as more than 60 Vancouver men come forward
with allegations against the teachers who abused them
By Ryan Cooke
CBC News
Nov. 24, 2022
Warning: This story contains details of sexual abuse and suicide
Bob Connors is waiting for a reckoning.
At 59 years of age, he spends many nights trapped in the orphanage where he grew up. The walls of his suburban home transform into a darkened dormitory, and he’s haunted by the men who crept from one bed to the next.
His dreams reflect the terror he experienced as a little boy at the hands of the Christian Brothers at Mount Cashel Orphanage in St. John’s, Newfoundland. His abusers may have disappeared from the dormitories, but Connors has spent his entire life fighting off their forceful hands in the dark.
“The scars and the bad memories — that’ll stay with me for the rest of my life,” he said in a rare interview from his home near Kitchener, Ont.
Newfoundland and Labrador has spent decades trying to quantify the horrors at Mount Cashel. Hundreds abused. More than a dozen men charged. Tens of millions paid out in settlements.
Bob Connors chooses to measure Mount Cashel by its death toll — how many young men couldn’t stand the nightmares anymore?
It’s a count that includes his two younger brothers, Greg and Darrin, whom he tried so hard to protect.
“There was no other way out for them and eventually they took their lives,” Connors said. “And it all had to do with what happened in Mount Cashel.”
Connors holds a devastating place in Newfoundland and Labrador’s history: he was one of the boys who went to police in 1975 and told them children were being abused at the orphanage. His statement, along with about 23 others, were buried in a coverup that saw six Christian Brothers sent away and the investigation called off without charges.
The Catholic Church's penchant for molesting boys could have been 'outed' more than 25 years before it was had St John's had something equivalent to Boston Globe's Spotlight.
Connors is only now learning what happened after the coverup, as new allegations emerge in a Vancouver courtroom, and another city struggles to quantify allegations of systemic, institutional abuse by the very same men who were removed from Mount Cashel.
Connors is waiting for a reckoning — but not for the people who abused him or those who covered it up. Instead, he’s waiting for the day it all catches up with him and the gates he’s built around his suburban life come crashing down.
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Colin Wilson says his experience at Vancouver College left him with trauma he’s struggled with for decades.
(Ben Nelms/CBC)
II. ‘I never told my parents’
Colin Wilson remembers the rain hitting the roof of the van as he sat in silence, his teacher gripping the wheel as they drove farther from the school.
It was a cold evening in December 1984. Some kids at Vancouver College were helping out with the annual Christmas tree sale in the parking lot, but Wilson and three other boys were inside.
Wilson remembers the four Grade 9 boys sitting outside Joseph Burke’s office at the back of the cafeteria. Burke, a math teacher, called them in one at a time, checking over their schoolwork. It was late by the time Burke called for him, Wilson said, and he could tell he was angry.
Wilson wasn’t always afraid of his math teacher. He was an athletic student, and Burke was the coach of the football team. In a school filled with more “militant” Christian Brothers, Wilson said he trusted Burke and found they had things in common.
“He started to kind of take me under his wing with a few other kids and have us after school,” Wilson said. “Check up on our homework and make sure that we were being good students.”
Joseph Burke, left, became the head coach of the Vancouver College Fighting Irish football team after a stint across town at St. Thomas More Collegiate. A former standout football player himself, he returned to teach and coach in the 1980s. (St. Thomas More Collegiate yearbook)
Burke was collegial in the corridors and on the football field, Wilson said, but he began to show a different side of himself as the after-school sessions progressed. There were days where Burke would be looking for problems, Wilson said, and he was quick to anger.
Wilson said there were three stages to Burke’s discipline: spanking over the pants with the palm of his hand, spanking with a piece of wood about as thick as a hockey stick, and a bare-bottom spanking.
Burke has not responded to CBC’s requests for comment on the allegations in this story. Wilson’s allegations have yet to be tested in court.
On this particular December evening, Wilson said Burke told him they were going straight to Stage 3 — but it was too late to stay at the school.
Wilson said Burke took him along as he locked up, and then told him to get in his van. He said they sat in silence as Burke drove south to the Marpole neighbourhood, stopping outside his apartment and telling the 13-year-old boy to go inside.
Wilson recounts the story without hesitation.
“He then asked me to drop my pants, which I did, and I stood there in my underwear, and he said, ‘All of it.’ At this point I’m crying, you know, snot and everything coming out of my nose, and he put me across his lap and hit me.”
Wilson said Burke hit his bare bottom about 10 times while they were alone in his apartment, then told him to get dressed. He remembers sobbing as they got back in the van, and drove to a bus stop.
“I never told my parents.”
Colin Wilson was in eighth grade when he transferred to Vancouver College, a private Catholic school.
He says his life was turned upside down a year later when he was abused by a teacher.
(Submitted by Colin Wilson)
Wilson’s parents were devout Catholics, and Vancouver College was considered an elite private school for Catholic boys. It was run by the Christian Brothers of Ireland in Canada, who operated institutions across the country and were revered by the communities they served.
The brothers were something less than priests, but their charitable work and close ties with the Catholic Church made them respected figures. Wilson said his parents would have never believed they could allow something so heinous to happen.
The bishops who arranged the transfer of these perverts should have been sent to prison for enabling the destruction of so many children's lives. Many of the survivors of Mount Cashel ended up in prison. Many of them got into hard drugs to numb the pain. Terrible things happen when you are on hard drugs.
There is so much more to this disturbing story at CBC.
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