BC sex abuse victim wins church promise to publish documents in case

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A civil trial in which a sex-abuse victim poised was to confront the Roman Catholic archdiocese of Vancouver has been called off after an out-of-court settlement.

The church agreed to settle the lawsuit late last month, with a promise to publish all documents produced in the case against Westminster Abbey in Mission, the archdiocese and the late Father Placidus, who the church has acknowledged was credibly accused of serial sexual abuse during his lengthy tenure at the B.C. Benedictine abbey’s Seminary of Christ the King for teens and young adults.

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It’s the first time such a demand has been accepted in a church sexual abuse case in Canada, said Sandra Kovacs, the lawyer for the survivor identified in court documents only as D.H.

D.H. becomes the first civil litigant who successfully “made it a term of his settlement that the defendants list all documents produced in the litigation on a public website, so that the documents become a matter of public record,” said Kovacs.

D.H. attended the seminary as a 13-year-old Grade 8 boarding student in 1977-78, when the civil suit alleged he was raped by Father Placidus, whose birth name was Harold Vincent Sander.

A 1997 criminal trial involving D.H. and two other male teens ended with Sander’s acquittal, after a B.C. judge ruled the evidence given by the victims — nearly two decades after the offences allegedly took place — had too many “inconsistencies and contradictions.”

But in June 2022, a year after his death, the Vancouver archdiocese added Placidus Sander’s name to a list of those it acknowledged were credibly accused of sexual assault. The church now says its willingness to publish the details of D.H.’s case is intended to continue its commitment to “restorative justice” for victims of clergy abuse.

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“We will provide further transparency by publishing all documents we disclosed in this litigation,” the archdiocese said in a statement. “In so doing, and in response to hearing D.H.’s recount of the abuse and its impact on his life, we freely acknowledge and accept the credibility of D.H.’s claims of abuse by Father Placidus and the grievous harm he has suffered and continues to suffer as a result.”

D.H. provided a statement to a victim advocacy blog, bernadettehowell.com, where he said he hopes the “public disclosure of information will herald a new era of improved transparency between Roman Catholic institutions, survivors and the Canadian public.”

“While I appreciate that monetary settlements or judgments alone are intended to validate a survivor’s harms and losses, I have struggled with the practice of financial awards being the only way survivors’ injuries can be recognized and compensated for through civil court proceedings,” wrote D.H.

He said his intention was not the downfall of the church, but to strengthen its commitment to truth and justice.

“It has been inferred that I hold ill will for the (church),” said D.H. “This could not be further from the truth, and … I want to make it abundantly clear that I am not an enemy of the Roman Catholic Church. However, I am averse to their systemic denial of child sexual abuse by the bad actors amongst them.”

Monetary terms of the settlement were not disclosed.

jruttle@postmedia.com

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