The Brothers of Saint-Gabriel have reached an agreement to settle a class action lawsuit brought by victims of sexual assault committed by religious or lay people in the congregation.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Brothers of Saint-Gabriel promised to create a compensation fund whose amount will be between $9,405,000 and $26,895,000, it was specified in a press release from the law firm Arsenault, Dufresne, Wee.
The amount of the settlement fund will be determined based on the number of claims accepted by the adjudicator
added the document.
The role of adjudicator will be handed over to retired judge Jacques R. Fournier.
To be eligible for compensation, you must be a victim of sexual assault when the person was a minor. Excluded are people who signed an individual release in favor of the Brothers of Saint-Gabriel in relation to allegations of sexual assault, or within the framework of the National Reconciliation Program with the orphans of Duplessis.
determines the law firm.
The agreement must, however, be approved by the Superior Court of Quebec.
Filed in December 2019, the class action bringing together sixty victims was approved in December 2020 to compensate victims of sexual assault committed by members of the congregation from 1940 to the present.
The plaintiff at the origin of this collective action is a man who suffered about ten sexual assaults between 1964 and 1966, while he was attending the Saint-Arsène Orphanage, run by the Brothers of Saint-Gabriel in Montreal.
The Saint-Arsène Orphanage, which houses an elementary and secondary school, was founded in 1906 and administered until 1976 by the community of the Brothers of Saint-Gabriel in Canada founded in Quebec in 1888.
The old part of the building located on rue Christophe-Colomb, in the Villeray district, burned down in 1970. The rest of the building and the land were then purchased by the City of Montreal.
