And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED],[EMAIL PROTECTED]
From: Lynne Moss-Sharman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Canada 9/24/99
:
:
Diocese faces bankruptcy in abuse case
Vancouver Sun 9/23/99
Damages in a number of decades-old sex-abuse suits has Anglicans in the
Cariboo facing the prospect of selling off church buildings.
Douglas Todd, Sun Religion Reporter
The Anglican diocese of the Cariboo is considering declaring bankruptcy
following a B.C. judge's landmark ruling that the church must pay damages
for the sexual abuse 30 years ago of a native Indian boy at a residential
school. The Cariboo diocese, which includes 45 Anglican congregations from
Prince George to Kamloops, is preparing contingency plans for how to
operate a diocese without church buildings --which might have to be sold to
pay a string of victims, said Archbishop David Crawley, the province's top
Anglican.
Crawley said that as far as he knows it would be the first time in Canadian history a
Christian denomination has filed for bankruptcy. "It's a sad possibility. If there is
a move to bankruptcy, and the physical assets are lost, then there will have to be a
massive restructuring of the diocese," Crawley said Wednesday. "In small towns, many
people say the community dies when the church dies -- there goes the place where you
and your children were married, where you went to Girl Guides and Cubs, where you sent
your loved one off to war. Yet, if the buildings go, we'll still have the priest and
the worshipping congregation." The Cariboo diocese, Crawley said, may have enough cash
and liquid assets to cover the undisclosed award Justice Janice Dillon awarded Aug. 30
to Floyd Mowatt, who was abused while attending St. George's Indian residential school
near Lytton. But at least four other abuse lawsuits are still to be ruled on by the
courts and "if the costs awarded are similar,!
!
" th
e diocese might have to declare bankruptcy , Crawley said. There is no immediate plan
to sell any of the Cariboo diocese's large or small sanctuaries, he said.
All the lawsuits against the Cariboo diocese relate to abuse inflicted by St. George's
dormitory supervisor Derek Clarke, who was convicted six years ago for his sexual
reign of terror in the early 1970s on many boys at the defunct federally funded,
church-run school. Dillon decided the Anglican church was 60% and the federal
government 40%responsible for the abuse. One of Mowatt's lawyers, Allan Early, said
the judge's decision strengthens the case for thousands of abused native Indians who
have launched similar lawsuits against the Anglican, Roman Catholic and United
Churches, which ran dozens of other residential schools in the Canadian West. The
roughly 5,000 active Anglicans in the Cariboo may have to consider meeting in homes
and rented facilities if the lawsuits force bankruptcy on the church, said Crawley,
who is making public comments on the cases.
Cariboo Bishop James Cruickshank is not speaking to the media. Crawley said the court
has ordered that the amount of Mowatt's award not be publicly disclosed. But the
denomination's national Anglican Journal newspaper has said the amount is "believed to
be about $200,000." That does not include the church's legal expenses, which Crawley
described as "enormous." It remains legally uncertain whether the court could order
the sale of church buildings to pay off Cariboo diocese's debt, the archbishop said.If
the churches are seen as being held in trust for the purposes of worship, then a
liquidator may not have access to them. Crawley noted the question of whether church
buildings must be sold to pay damages is one of the key issues that has to be resolved
in the crucial legal dispute involving Christian-brother-run Vancouver College and the
sexual-assault victims of Mount Cashel orphanage in Newfoundland. The liquidator of
the Christian Brothers order has maintained that Vancou!
!
ver
College must be sold to cover the cost of damages to dozens of young men molested by
Christian Brothers at Mount Cashel. But Vancouver College's lawyers say the school is
held in trust and therefore protected. The Vancouver College case has not yet gone to
trial.
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine
of international copyright law.
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