Christian Brothers Have 422 Claims of Systematic Sexual Abuse on Boys for Years
There is now a final number for claims against the Christian Brothers in North America which are total number of 422 claims approved.
“We knew that more claims would come forward in the bankruptcy, and that in fact happened,” according to sources who spoke with CBC News.Everything changed last month, when an anonymous California man came forward and accused former Iona College President James A. Liguori of sexually abusing him at the academy in 1969. Liguori was a member of the Congregation of Christian Brothers and a teacher at the school.
“None of us could possibly know exactly how many. I think the lawyers involved certainly were all expecting more to come forward, but we would not have necessarily expected 422 claims.”
That record made it stand in sharp contrast to some other Christian Brothers institutions, like the notorious Mount Cashel Orphanage in Newfoundland, where Christian Brothers were found to have systematically abused boys sexually and physically for years.Many of these claims from this province go back as far as 1940 and continue into the early 1960s.
The bankruptcy case that has engulfed the group — an order of the Catholic Church — has brought an additional 422 alleged cases of abuse from across the country to light, however, and even if a large portion of those are never substantiated, the sheer number of allegations suggests that the abuse at the Christian Brothers
About a third of the American claims come from Washington state; another third come from New York state and the rest originate from places as scattered as New Jersey, Illinois, Montana, California
and Hawaii.
Source, Source
