A settlement reached last week closes a chapter in the long saga of a Sudbury sex predator and numerous male victims.
But whether it is the final chapter remains to be seen.
On Monday Denis Beland, 61, accepted just shy of $1 million in a pre-trial agreement concerning the abuse he suffered as a youth at the hands of Father William Marshall, who taught at St. Charles College high school in Sudbury between 1961 and 1979.
Beland is one of at least seven known Sudbury victims of the priest and the last of the St. Charles students seeking compensation through civil suits.
Had an agreement not been reached on Monday, the case would have gone to a jury trial on May 14.
Just four days earlier, another Sudbury victim, Rod MacLeod, had been awarded $2.5 million — an unprecedented payout for priest abuse that included $500,000 in punitive damages for negligence on the part of the church — in a jury trial in Toronto.
That almost certainly factored into the deal reached between the Basilian Fathers of Toronto, who operated the St. Charles school, and the last Marshall litigant, said lawyer Rob Talach, who represented both McLeod and Beland.
“I think they recognized there was a good shot that a trial would replicate what happened in Toronto,” he said. (more...)
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