January 5, 2009
by Anglican Journal Staff
The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) announced on Nov. 21 that no charges will be laid in connection with allegations of past abuse at the now-closed Grenville Christian College (GCC), a private school run by Anglican priests in the mid-1970s.
Meanwhile, the diocese of Ontario said that its own inquiry into allegations of psychological and physical abuse involving two of its priests, one of whom served as headmaster for 20 years at GCC, has been delayed as a result of the OPP’s investigation and because its incorporated synod had been named defendant in a class action lawsuit filed by former students in October 2007.
“The completion of the bishop’s inquiry remains delayed because the diocese cannot breach the rules of civil procedure as he (the bishop of the diocese of Ontario, George Bruce) would have direct contact with the various litigants if he resumed the canonical process,” said Archdeacon Wayne Varley, diocesan executive officer, in a message sent to members of the diocese. He explained that the diocese “operates according to the laws of the civil province of Ontario and the Criminal Code of Canada.” But, he said, “our pastoral responsibility continues to be stewards of Christ’s healing, justice and reconciliation within our parishes and the communities we serve in his name.”
Archdeacon Varley said that Bishop Bruce intends to complete the investigation “at the appropriate time.”
This article was found at:
http://www.anglicanjournal.com/issues/2009/135/jan/01/article/no-abuse-charges-laid-at-grenville-college/
?cHash=e743ec3b93
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A class action must be preferable for systemic abuse cases
ReplyDeleteby Margaret L. Waddell, Canadian Lawyer Magazine June 11, 2012
In August 2007, Grenville Christian College, a private boarding school near Brockville, Ont., closed its doors, citing changing demographics, declining enrolment and rising costs for the closure. At the same time, allegations of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, including cult-like practices at the school, were gaining publicity. Indeed, by September 2007, the chairman of the board of the school had issued a personal apology to the students, and advised that the board was considering a more formal apology and possible financial compensation for the victims. No such compensation was forthcoming. Instead, a class action lawsuit — Cavanaugh v. Grenville Christian College — was commenced naming the local Anglican diocese, the school, and two senior school administrators and their wives.
The motion for certification a class proceeding finally reached the court at the end of April 2012. On May 23, Justice Paul Perell released reasons declining certification, concluding that a class proceeding was not the preferable procedure, although all other aspects of the test for certification had been met, except as against the diocese. The decision denying certification of this institutional abuse case stands in stark contrast to the decisions of the Supreme Court and courts of appeal in Ontario and British Columbia, and with all due respect to the learned motions judge, I would argue that it is in error.
Several cases of institutional abuse have been certified as class actions. In these cases, such as Rumley v. British Columbia and Cloud v. Canada (Attorney General), the focus of the claims has been on allegations of systemic negligence by the defendants, rather than focusing on the injuries sustained by the individual class members. In Cavanaugh, the same theory of systemic negligence was advanced.
The one aspect of the case against the Grenville Christian College that differentiates it from the residential school cases are the allegations that the school officials engaged in psychological abuse through religious, cult-like practices. But those allegations are not actually any different than the overt purpose of the residential schools to assimilate native children to western culture, including the Christian faith. It matters not in what form the abuse was occurring. The challenges of establishing historical abuse on a systemic basis are comparable, regardless of the manner in which it was manifested.
In his decision on certification, Perell conceded that he was bound by the higher court decisions in Cloud, Rumley, and Slark (Litigation Guardian of) v. Ontario, with respect to the common issues requirement, and found there were common issues as to whether the defendants owed and breached either a duty of care or fiduciary duty to the class. Similar issues were certified in the residential school abuse cases.
Perell was reluctant to certify these common issues, as he was of the view that they actually lacked in commonality “principally because, in my opinion, the resolution of the proposed common issues would not avoid duplication of fact-finding or legal analysis.” In his view, asserted without explanation, the evidence and legal analysis from the common issues trial would have to be repeated in proving individual causation and damages.
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ReplyDeleteHere is where the motions judge made his first in a series of analytical errors, which lead to his finding that this case should be distinguished from Cloud, and that a class action was not the preferable procedure. However, for the purposes of the common issues analysis, Perell did concede that he was bound by the higher courts’ rulings, including the general admonition from the Court of Appeal in Cloud, that “an issue can constitute a substantial ingredient of the claims and satisfy s. 5(1)(c) [of the Class Proceedings Act, 1992] even if it makes up a very limited aspect of the liability question and even though many individual issues remain to be decided after its resolution.”
Perell commenced his preferable procedure analysis, by misstating the test for preferable procedure as including the issue of whether the class proceeding would be better than other methods of “resolving the dispute.” That is, of course, not the test at all. As s. 5(1)(d) states, and the Supreme Court decision in Hollick explains, the issue is whether “a class proceeding would be the preferable procedure for the resolution of the common issues,” taking into account the importance of the common issues in relation to the claims as a whole.
The issue is not whether answering the common issues will lead to resolution of the entire dispute. Rather, the question for the court to determine is whether a class action is a fair, efficient, and manageable method of advancing the claim, taking into consideration the common issues in their context. The preferability requirement in s. 5(1)(d) of the CPA can be met even where there are substantial individual issues that remain to be determined at individual hearings. So long as the answers to the common issues will significantly advance the action as a whole, then the preferability test will be met.
In concluding that a class action was not the preferable procedure, Perell accepted the defendants’ arguments that the plaintiffs would have to “replicate the fact-finding and legal analysis of the common issues trial.” This completely misses the point of the class proceeding. The findings of fact and law determined at the common issues trial are then binding on the parties, and form part of the record for the individual issues trials.
There is no need, at all, to revisit the issues of systemic negligence when the class members present their cases to prove individual causation and damages. The table is already set with the findings of the school’s breach of duty of care and/or breach of fiduciary duty. It will only remain for the individual to establish that the breach(es) caused or contributed to the class members’ individual damages.
Perell suggests that proof of systemic negligence will make proof of the individuals’ claims more difficult, and will impede access to justice. He does not explain how this is so, and the example he advances in paragraph 158 of his reasons does nothing to shed light on why the allegations of systemic negligence will actually make the individual claims more difficult.
If the plaintiffs are able to establish their allegation that it was a systemic breach of the defendants’ duty of care to inflict psychological abuse, including to “indoctrinate students in the fanatical teachings of the Community of Jesus,” (a much more serious allegation than the tempered language of “the school’s adoption of Mother Cay’s and Mother Judy’s teachings” as Perell frames the allegation) then it only remains for the individual plaintiffs to establish how this indoctrination damaged them, personally.
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ReplyDeleteThe difficulty in the plaintiffs’ case will be in establishing systemic negligence and breach of fiduciary duty. But, should they succeed, there will be nothing more onerous or difficult about proving causation and damages in this case than in Cloud.
In stark contrast to Cloud, Perell concluded that the plaintiffs’ complaints should proceed as individual, jointly case-managed actions, which was not an option argued for by the parties. However, case managing many individual actions does not promote judicial economy, nor will it result in any procedural benefits to the defendants. Nor will it promote access to justice.
This case is not analogous to the Hudson v. Austin case Perell cites as an example of proceeding effectively with multiple claims against the same defendant. That was a case of medical malpractice where the plaintiffs’ counsel conceded that the case was not appropriate for certification, but was prepared to act on a contingency retainer for the 99 affected individuals. In Cavanaugh, there is no evidence of any such concession in the reasons, and no evidence that the class’ claims could or would be taken on by class counsel on an individual contingency retainer.
Furthermore, the Class Proceedings Fund funded the claim. The reasons do not suggest that there was any evidence before the court that individual class members would be prepared to assume the risks of a negative costs award — a risk from which they are protected by the fund. Hence, compelling the class to pursue individual claims will be entirely antithetical to the goals of judicial economy and access to justice.
It appears that Cavanaugh is in all respects comparable to Cloud. In both cases, the plaintiffs allege systemic abuses in the manner in which the schools were operated. Those issues focus on the conduct of the defendants, and the scope of their duty of care to a class of children left under their care. Both actions, in my view, should be certified as class actions for the same reasons.
Margaret L. Waddell
is a senior partner at Paliare Roland Rosenberg Rothstein LLP in Toronto. She has a varied advocacy practice including a broad range of complex commercial and shareholder litigation, professional liability cases, class actions and appellate advocacy. She can be reached at marg.waddell@paliareroland.com.
http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/4194/a-class-action-must-be-preferable-for-systemic-abuse-cases.html
Appeal filed in school abuse case after class action lawsuit denied
ReplyDeleteBy Adam Miller, The Canadian Press Winnipeg Free Press 08/25/2012
TORONTO - A group of former students of a Christian college in eastern Ontario claiming abuse do not have the emotional strength to pursue individual lawsuits, their lawyer is arguing.
A judge denied certification earlier this year for their proposed $200-million class-action lawsuit against Grenville Christian College and its two former headmasters and the Anglican Diocese of Ontario, saying it isn't the preferable procedure.
But Loretta Merritt, one of the three lawyers for the plaintiffs, said that individuals would struggle to move forward with the case on their own and a class-action suit is the best way for them to be heard.
"If this decision were to stand then each individual survivor would have to come forward and say 'I want to pursue an individual action,'" she said.
"Will those people want to launch individual actions? I don't know. That's one of the concerns we have and one of the reasons why we are appealing. We are concerned that individuals may not have the emotional or financial wherewithal to pursue it on their own."
Currently there are five plaintiffs, but Merritt said about 300 people have been in touch with her and her co-counsel to pursue becoming part of the lawsuit.
"We do believe that a class action is a preferable procedure," Merritt said. "He did find that all the other criteria for certification had been met."
Grenville Christian College, which was run by Anglican priests, closed in August 2007 as allegations surfaced that psychological, physical and sexual abuse extended to the late 1970s.
At that time the chairman of the board of directors cited "changing demographics, declining enrolment, and increasing operating costs" as reasons for the closure.
The school had an elite reputation among Ontario private schools, charging up to $35,000 annually, and listed former lieutenant governors, a senator and a Canadian diplomat among its patrons.
The plaintiffs in the case are former students at the college, which operated both as a junior school and residential high school, and they alleged in the lawsuit that they were subjected to years of abuse.
The suit claimed the school was run as a mind-control cult that left the former students traumatized.
None of the allegations have been proven in court.
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ReplyDeleteThe allegations prompted the Anglican Church to launch an inquiry in 2007 into the activities of two priests who were headmasters, Rev. Charles Farnsworth and Rev. J. Alistair Haig, in addition to an investigation by the Ontario Provincial Police.
The OPP investigation concluded in November 2008 and no charges were laid. After consultations with the Crown they decided that charges were not in the public interest.
The plaintiffs have serious claims that should be tried in court, Justice Paul Perell of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice ruled in May. But a class-action lawsuit is not the way to go, he found.
"The technique is a penny wise, pound foolish way to secure access to justice because it will make proof of the individual members' claims more difficult," Perell said in his decision.
"In the case at bar, the expediency of framing the claim as systemic wrongdoing would not facilitate but will impede access to justice for the individual class members."
The lawsuit had also been filed against the Anglican Diocese of Ontario, but Perell dismissed the claim against them.
The diocese was unavailable for comment.
Lawyer Geoff Adair, who represents the defendants, said he expected the judge's decision because of the wide range of claims made by the plaintiffs.
"I argued for that result so I'm not surprised by the fact that it was granted," he said. "My reasoning was that there was such a variety of complaints that they really didn't fit in a class action and had to be tried individually."
Adair said that allegations varied from psychological, physical and sexual abuse, in addition to failing to accommodate learning disabilities and failing to promote Anglican values, which he said would be too far-reaching for a class action lawsuit.
Perell acknowledged in his decision that there were commonalities between this case and other cases of alleged abuse at residential schools in former Supreme Court rulings, but that there were too many individual issues that overwhelmed the common issues.
Plaintiffs have argued for "systemic negligence" at the school in their appeal, indicating that the way the school was run was in breach of duty to the students.
The plaintiffs would have to prove that injuries were as a result of the school's adoption of the teachings of a small Orleans, Mass., group called the Community of Jesus, "which is a far more difficult task than proving that he was injured because Father Farnsworth beat him with a paddle," Perell's decision said.
Merritt said she and her co-counsel are "cautiously optimistic" after perfecting the appeal. They are now waiting for the defendants to file their responding materials so that the court can set a date for an oral hearing at the Court of Appeal, which is expected to occur before the end of the year.
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/life/faith/appeal-filed-in-school-abuse-case-after-class-action-lawsuit-denied-167412805.html
Class action appeals: a game of snakes & ladders
ReplyDeleteTrials & Tribulations
by Margaret L. Waddell, Canadian Lawyer Magazine July 08, 2013
The pressing need for legislative reform of appeal routes in class action proceedings was highlighted in the recent Ontario Court of Appeal decision Cavanaugh v. Grenville Christian College. In that case, the Court of Appeal heard and decided only one part of an appeal from a denial of certification, and refused to hear the balance of the appeal, which it sent sliding down the snake’s tail to the Divisional Court.
This case demonstrates that ascertaining the appropriate appeal route for decisions taken in class actions can be convoluted and downright illogical in some cases. In my opinion, the Class Proceedings Act, 1992, should be amended to completely bypass the Divisional Court, so all appeals are brought to the Court of Appeal — either as of right from a final order including a denial of certification, or with leave in respect of interlocutory orders, such as granting certification.
Given the high stakes inevitably involved in class proceedings, more often than not there are multiple appeals and multiple layers of appeal in every case as it makes the long journey to the common issues trial. Every layer of appeal adds to the expense and increases the delays in reaching a final determination of the merits of the case.
Streamlining appeal routes in class proceedings makes eminent good sense, as it would substantially reduce the demands on courtroom time, as well as reducing the expenses for all parties in bringing or responding to appeals.
At the outset of its decision in Cavanaugh, the Court of Appeal identified the current legislative morass in which class action appeals are tangled:
“Appellate jurisdiction in proceedings under the CPA is divided between the Court of Appeal and the Divisional Court. Some appeals go to the Divisional Court under s. 30 of the CPA and others go to this court. The general appeal power provisions in the Courts of Justice Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. C.43 are also relevant when the specific provisions of s. 30 have no application.”
In addition, under s. 6(2) of the Courts of Justice Act, the Court of Appeal has the discretionary jurisdiction to permit an appeal that should properly be heard by the Divisional Court to climb up the ladder, bootstrapped on to a concurrent appeal that is to be heard by the Court of Appeal.
The plaintiffs in Cavanaugh asked the Court of Appeal to exercise that discretion, but it declined to do so. While the appeal court certainly had no statutory obligation to hear the entire appeal from the denial of certification, its refusal to do so resulted in an inefficient use of court and lawyer resources. Particularly, the full certification motion record would have been before the Court of Appeal, and the parties’ facta would have fully addressed all the issues which the appellants were asking the court to determine, either with or without leave.
Since all the issues were fully briefed, it would merely be a matter of the additional court time allotted for oral argument on the second issue, and the judge’s time in deciding that issue that would have to be expended. Instead, the practical result of the Court of Appeal sending half of the appeal back to the Divisional Court is the parties will each have to prepare new appeal books and new facta, three more judges will have to review those materials, hear the argument, and render a decision.
Then, there will likely be yet another foray to the Court of Appeal from whatever the Divisional Court decides. This is by far not the highest and best use of judicial resources, and yet, it is currently what the legislation mandates.
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Additionally, the Court of Appeal’s reasons in Cavanaugh could have the unintended result of creating more bifurcated appeals from certification. Particularly, it invites every case where the court finds the requirements of s. 5(1)(a) of the CPA have not been met to include a term in the order from the certification motion that expressly dismisses that aspect of the claim. The plaintiff must then bring an appeal from that aspect of the order directly to the Court of Appeal.
ReplyDeleteSection 5(1)(a) requires the plaintiff to establish that the pleadings disclose a cause of action. The test for this section engages the same test as a Rule 21 motion to strike a pleading for disclosing no cause of action. In some cases a defendant will bring a separate motion under Rule 21 either before or at the same time as certification.
In other cases, the defendants will simply challenge the adequacy of the pleading under s. 5(1)(a). The substantive effect is the same in either case — if the attack on the pleading is successful, that cause of action cannot proceed. If the attack results in no cause of action remaining against a defendant at all, then the action is at an end as against that party.
The Court of Appeal’s decision in Cavanaugh accepts that in these circumstances the appropriate appellate forum should be determined from the substance of the order (i.e., dismissal of the claim), and accordingly the appeal is to the Court of Appeal when certification is denied against a defendant for failure to meet s. 5(1)(a).
That is what happened in Cavanaugh. The certification judge found no reasonable cause of action had been pleaded against the Incorporated Synod of the Diocese of Ontario, and he ordered the claim be dismissed as against that defendant. The motions judge also denied certification of the action as against the remaining defendants, finding a class action was not the preferable procedure. (I have expressed my views on the correctness of the preferability decision in a prior article.)
The diocese has not brought a motion under Rule 21 of the Rules of Civil Procedure to strike the claim against it. However, the appeal court concluded, effectively, the motions judge had exercised his inherent powers to dismiss the action brought against the diocese, since no motion had been brought seeking that relief, and s. 7 of the CPA did not authorize the judge to make that order. The dismissal of the claim against the diocese was a final order, therefore, the appeal from that part of the certification motion was as of right to the Court of Appeal. Denial of certification of the rest of the plaintiffs’ claim was based upon their failure to meet the requirements of s. 5(1)(d), therefore s. 30(1) of the CPA dictates the appeal is to the Divisional Court, (since the appeal court refused to exercise its discretion under s. 6(2) of the Courts of Justice Act).
Viewed through the lens of judicial efficiency and access to justice for all the parties, it is hard to accept a multi-streamed route to appeals from certification makes sense. There should be one combined appeal to one appellate court from all aspects of a certification motion (whether combined with a Rule 21 motion or not).
There is no logical purpose served in sending different issues to different courts. If one court could hear the whole motion at first instance, then one court should hear the whole appeal. In my view, the Court of Appeal is the appropriate forum for all class action appeals. Excising the Divisional Court layer will avoid duplication of costs, result in a speedier resolution of pretrial motions, and ultimately create a more robust and efficient certification process.
http://www.canadianlawyermag.com/4716/class-action-appeals-a-game-of-snakes-ladders.html
Divisional Court says overwhelming individual issues not necessarily bar to certification
ReplyDeleteJulius Melnitzer | Financial Post February 24, 2014
Ontario’s Divisional Court has issued an important ruling that confirms the use of class action lawsuits to broaden access to justice.
The decision released Monday, Cavanaugh v. Grenville Christian College, arises from complaints of physical and psychological abuse by students of an Anglican boarding school in Brockville, Ont.
The case exemplified a “powerful economic barrier” to access to justice, the appellate court said. “One need only look to the costs order made following the certification motion to understand that ‘most individuals cannot afford to pursue litigation on this scale,’” the court held.
A class action would streamline the legal process, advancing the goal of judicial economy and avoiding the risk of inconsistent outcomes, the divisional court concluded.
The divisional court certified the action based on criteria set out in a recent Supreme Court of Canada decision, AIC Ltd. v. Fischer. That case sets out a framework for a “preferability analysis,” which is an inquiry a motions judge must make to determine whether it would be better to continue the case as a single class action or as a series of separate individual lawsuits. The frame work requires the judge to consider the three goals of class proceedings: judicial economy, behaviour modification and access to justice.
Motions judge Paul Perell had originally denied certification. In his view, the case met all the requirements for certification except that he couldn’t consider it to be the “preferable procedure.” Judge Perell was concerned the unique circumstances of each individual plaintiff would overwhelm the common issues that could be decided at a single trial.
The plaintiffs, represented by Kirk Baert of Koskie Minsky and Russell Raikes of McKenzie Lake, appealed. The divisional court ruled that Judge Perell erred in deciding the case without considering the correct criteria in his preferable procedure analysis — though it should be noted that Judge Perell ruled on Cavanaugh v. Grenville Christian College before the Supreme Court released its Fischer decision.
The divisional court also said Judge Perell erred by imposing an alternative procedure not advocated by the parties. A judge, the divisional court ruled, ought not to grant relief for which no request was made and no submissions heard.
http://business.financialpost.com/2014/02/24/divisional-court-says-overwhelming-individual-issues-not-necessarily-bar-to-certification/
$225-million lawsuit against Christian school can go ahead
ReplyDeleteby NICK GARDINER | QMI AGENCY Sun News February 25th, 2014
BROCKVILLE, ON ─ A $225-million class-action lawsuit alleging abuse against students attending Grenville Christian College from 1973 to 1997 has been given the go-ahead to proceed.
A nine-page decision released Monday by an appeal tribunal of the Superior Court of Justice Divisional Court overturned a May 23, 2012 ruling by Judge Paul Perell.
The decision concluded that Perell was mistaken in refusing to certify the class-action suit.
The now-closed school and the individual respondents cited in the claim must pay $35,000 to the appellants for the cost of the appeal.
Similarly, the respondents are ordered to pay the cost to certify the motion of $150,000.
The $225-million lawsuit filed in 2007 alleges physical and sexual abuse, including bizarre rituals to punish students' sins, which they claim left them traumatized.
The claim led by five plaintiffs names the school, the Incorporated Synod of the Diocese of Ontario, Rev. Charles Farnsworth, Betty Farnsworth and Judy Hay, executrix for the estate of Alastair Haig and Mary Haig.
Don Farnsworth, spokesman for the school and respondents Rev. Charles Farnsworth and Betty Farnsworth, his parents, said a trial "is the one way for the truth to come out.
"I look forward to getting this settled once and for all and to renew the trust and confidence that people had and that many continue to have in Grenville Christian College and its mission," he said.
"Grenville Christian College was responsible for the education of our students, in body, mind and spirit. The values that we shared with students are the values we believe were part of that education."
Spokesmen for the complainants and their legal firm could not immediately be reached for comment.
http://www.sunnewsnetwork.ca/sunnews/canada/archives/2014/02/20140225-214348.html
NOTE: the author of this report is a survivor of Grenville Christian College who escaped the worst abuse.
ReplyDelete+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Cults can spring up from anywhere
By BRUCE BENSON BlueRidgeNow.com Columnist May 31, 2014
“Why don’t you do a column on Scientology?” my son asked me the other day. “It’s a harmful cult that hurts a lot of people.”
I’ve had some experience with cults.
Founded by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1952, Scientologists believe that millions of years ago an evil alien ruler named Xenu kidnapped millions of aliens and brought them to Earth in spaceships that looked like golden DC 8 airplanes. He then dropped them inside volcanoes and blew them to smithereens by dropping hydrogen bombs into said volcanoes.
The souls of these aliens, called Thetans, were captured, brainwashed and released. They attached themselves to humans, and that’s why people get sick and have emotional problems. It’s the Thetans.
Scientology has been hugely criticized as a cult that uses and abuses its members physically, emotionally and financially.
I had an encounter with Scientology when I was 17 years old. Wandering down a street one day, a pretty girl approached me. She was a Scientologist and asked if I was willing to take a type of IQ test. Once the test was put in front of me, she disappeared, and soon I was bored and left.
Had I stayed, I might’ve found myself in the company of the likes of Tom Cruise and John Travolta, arguably Scientology’s most famous members. Some 25,000 people in this country are Scientologists.
This is a cult that sprang from the mind of a science fiction writer reputed to have said that if you want real power, create a religion. And then he proceeded to do just that.
He wasn’t the first and won’t be the last person to create a religion, I’m sure. Just as I’m reasonably sure Hubbard’s creation is a far cry from Jim Jones and the People’s Temple religion that ended with more than 900 dead, including 300 children, in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. Or David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, who ended up with more than 80 people dead when the FBI stormed their compound and it caught fire in Waco, Texas, in 1993.
But just because nobody dies doesn’t mean a cult is harmless. Anytime members of any group are forced or manipulated to do or believe something, harm is happening. Cults can spring from anywhere, quite often the branching out of a mainstream religion.
Bob Pardon, director of the New England Institute of Religious Studies in Lakeview Maine, in naming the top 10 most dangerous groups in America, includes the Nation of Islam, the United Pentecostal Church, the Christian Identity Movement (Aryan Nations, Ku Klux Klan) and the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity (Moonies) and others right along with Scientology. In a sense, to single out Scientology is unfair.
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My personal experience with a cult was at the innocuous-sounding Grenville Christian College when I was 20. I was working for the Company of the Cross, a Christian group that ran three boys’ schools in Canada. One day at morning prayers, I was told that instead of running a school, all the staff would be moving to GCC for a yearlong sabbatical where we would work for free.
ReplyDeleteMany of the leaders of the company had traveled to New Brunswick a month before and bore witness to a nun speaking in tongues. Another nun was there to interpret, and the whole thing was recorded. The instructions to go to GCC, we were told, came from God.
I was skeptical, but the others were convinced. So I went.
Upon arrival, I was put on a kitchen crew, and as I bent to whatever task they gave me, a man showed up. He wasn’t working — he was just talking to me as I worked. Before long, he started to try to recruit me.
“Don’t you realize, Bruce, that the reason you have an emptiness inside you, that you feel alone, unsure of yourself, like there’s something missing, is because you haven’t given yourself up to God? You should become a member here. Join us.”
He was right. I did sometimes feel just like that. But I figured that everybody has feelings like that from time to time. (Or is it those darn Thetans?) Besides, I already belonged to a Christian group.
He stuck with me for three days. The message was always the same, and it made me uneasy to be stalked like that, but it didn’t bother me enough to want to get out. However, working with another young guy like myself in a freezer that my stalker didn’t want to enter, I had my first unobserved conversation with a contemporary. (We were not allowed to leave the property, speak to others or use the phone without supervision. Why did I let myself get in that situation?)
“So, there seem to be a lot of pretty girls around here,” I said.
“Yeah, there’s one girl I really like,” he said. “I want to ask her out on a date, but I need to ask (the leader) for permission, and I haven’t been here long enough.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Three years.”
I was outta there.
We all escaped eventually, wondering what happened and swapping stories of how we were each approached for indoctrination. For reasons it would take too long to detail here, the experience was the beginning of the end of the schools I so loved.
Nobody died, but a lot of harm was done. I feel bad to this day that I wasn’t strong enough to prevent it.
“Believe what you like,” I was told years ago. “Just make sure it’s your belief.”
I hate to proselytize, as cults do, but I am going to be ever vigilant that I’m not in that situation again. There’s more than Scientologists to be leery of out there, son.
Bruce Benson is a Canadian writer and journalist who makes Hendersonville his home. Reach him atbensonusa@hotmail.com.
http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20140531/ARTICLES/405311000/1042/news01
CTVs W5 investigates claims by students at former Grenville Christian College
ReplyDeleteCKWS TV / Kingston, ON, Canada / CKWS Newswatch February 05, 2016
Grenville Christian College near Brockville has been closed for a decade. But allegations about the treatment of former students continue to swirl around the former boarding school. Now, some students who attended the private school are speaking out about allegations of their treatment in a CTV, W-5 Documentary. Newswatch’s Heather Senoran has a preview.
The allegations are disturbing. Hundreds of former students who used to attend grenville christian college — located here on the outskirts of brockville — have filed a 200-million dollar lawsuit. They want an apology and validation for what they went through. …. claiming the christian school was run like a cult. Here’s a sample of what they’re saying.
“They took Christianity, which is a religion of love, which was my experience of growing up Anglican… and they inverted it into a cult of hate.”
“What was I called? I was called a mutt. I was called an animal. I was called a pig.”
“We were told that women were responsible for anything sexual, for turning men on, whatever, turning the boys on. That men just looked at us as pieces of meat. And if a woman got raped that was her fault because she was a temptress as eve was a temptress.”
“There are women teachers there. Are they not standing forward and saying don’t talk to the girls like this.”
“Well it was a very strange thing. No. No women teachers did that.”
Grenville christian college closed its doors in 2007. what happened in the school for decades is the focus of a “ctv w-5″ documentary … that airs this Saturday on CKWS at 7pm. w-5′s Victor Malorek met with some former students.
Here’s a preview of the documentary called — “In The Name Of God.”
http://www.ckwstv.com/2016/02/05/ctvs-w5-investigates-claims-by-students-at-former-grenville-christian-college/
Former students allege psychological, physical and sexual abuse at Ont. Christian school
ReplyDeleteVictor Malarek, CTV News W5 Senior Reporter February 6, 2016
For hundreds of former students, the school, which now sits empty having closed its doors in 2007, is a place haunted with painful memories.
W5 spoke with several alumni who recounted disturbing stories about their years at the school and the abuses they suffered – allegations of physical, sexual and psychological abuse during the 1970s, '80s and '90s.
Mark Vincent attended Grenville in the '70s. “Probably the worst memory, they beat the crap out of me with a desk top to the point where I couldn’t stand, because God told them to do it to me.”
Standing at the edge of the property, Jacqueline Thomas could barely look up at the sprawling campus. She was a student in the '90s. “This is the first time I’ve been here in 22 years. I’m trying really hard not to cry. But I feel sick. I’m terrified.”
With a Grenville brochure in hand, Andrew Hale-Byrne recalled his family’s search for a school and thinking they’d found a place like the finest boarding schools in his native United Kingdom.
“My mother commented that it looked better than most country clubs she’d seen. It was beautiful. It was actually breathtaking,” Andrew said.
But soon after arriving at the school, he witnessed first-hand the dark side.
“One thing that stuck out in my mind and I found this particularly disturbing from the very first moment I witnessed it was the public humiliations in the chapel and the dining room where they (the headmaster and teachers) would drag a student onto the stage and that person would be ripped apart, humiliated, shamed in front of the entire student body.”
What Andrew found troubling was that the brochure promised “love and Christian teaching,” but, he says, they got neither.
“They took Christianity which is a religion of love which was my experience of growing up Anglican and they inverted it into a cult of hate.”
“I was told that in order to be loved by God I had to pass through the light and that involved going through what they called a ‘light session’ which is one of these public humiliations. And you had to die to self they said in order to be loved by God, and that involved hating yourself,” Andrew explained.
“After two years of being there I came to believe that I was garbage, filth, trash. We were told ‘God hates you. God doesn’t love you. You’re damned.’ And I came to just normalize this.”
Andrew has written a book about his experiences, which is available online.
Dan Michielsen entered Grenville in 1985 in grade 10. He described himself as a happy go lucky 15-year-old but all that changed within a couple of weeks with a rude awakening.
Dan recalled being dragged out of bed along with other boys in the dormitory in the middle of the night by staff. “Lights would be turned on and we were berated and screamed at for being sinful boys.”
Sinful boys, but the girls were singled out by headmaster Charles Farnsworth and other staff for far more degrading attacks simply because they were female.
Sheila Coons recalled the headmaster seeing her as the Devil incarnate.
“He would say that I had a devil inspired body and that I was tempting men by my devil inspired body. He compared me to Lucifer because at the time I was blonde and Lucifer apparently had blonde hair.”
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According to Sheila and confirmed by other former students W5 interviewed, Farnsworth often accused girls of inviting sexual attention.
ReplyDelete“Father Farnworth took me into the Vestry and told me that I was a whore and I looked like a whore and I had really no alternative in life but to be a whore,” Sheila said.
“We were told that women are responsible for anything sexual, for turning men on, turning boys on, that men just looked at us as pieces of meat. And if a woman got raped that was her fault. She was a temptress as Eve was a temptress, as Jezebel was a temptress and then the list goes on.”
Farnworth’s tirades about women may have hidden his own lust.
“He would call me up to his office frequently, take me out of class and tell me what an awful, sinful creature I was.
“On this one occasion he stood up, pressed his body against mine. He said, ‘you smell good’ and he clenched me to him and he put his mouth on my neck and licked it and he pressed his hips up against mine.
“At the time I thought he was obsessed with me. I found out later that he was doing it to other girls as well.”
Today, these students are grown up but they still feel the pain, and are now part of a $200-million lawsuit – a class action – on behalf of hundreds of former boarding school students, claiming systemic abuse and bizarre religious practices at the hands of Grenville staff, especially Father Charles Farnsworth.
Farnsworth’s version of what went on at Grenville may never be fully known. He died in March 2015. But former students had already launched their class action against the school by this time.
Farnsworth came to the school in 1972 and by 1983 he was named headmaster, a position he held for the next 14 years. What students likely didn’t know back then was that he and other staff members were disciples of an American group called the Community of Jesus based in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Reports by U.S. news media beginning in the 1980s described the group as a cult which practiced communal living and extreme rituals, particularly when it came to disciplining each other.
As a devout follower, Farnsworth applied the teachings of the Community of Jesus at Grenville on unsuspecting students.
Before his death, Farnsworth wrote about the allegations in a document obtained by W5. “The whole reason for being in our mission was to bring these people into the realm of the Christ ….”
Farnsworth added: ‘We have been accused of many things that I never knew of and never heard of … But I honestly think some of the people have gone delusional. Some of the things they said happened, some of the accusations of sexual abuse by me, they just didn’t happen.”
Many former Grenville staff also vigorously deny the allegations put forward in the lawsuit.
However, Joan Childs, a former teacher and administrator at the school, as well as a follower of the Community of Jesus and one of Farnsworth’s inner circle, told W5 that the students are telling the truth.
“They aren’t exaggerating. They aren’t making these things up. As sad as it is, these things happened.”
She has apologized for what was done to students at the school while she was there.
Victor Malarek is an investigative reporter with W5. His documentary In the Name of God can be seen on CTV’s W5 Saturday at 7 pm.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/w5/former-students-allege-psychological-physical-and-sexual-abuse-at-ont-christian-school-1.2766446
Former Grenville Christian College students tell harrowing stories of abuse
ReplyDeleteCharles Farnsworth and J. Alastair Haig, founders of the Brockville, Ont., private school, were members of the Community of Jesus, described in a 1981 Boston magazine story as a cult that practiced physical and psychological abuse.
By: Ben Spurr Staff Reporter, Toronto Star February 29 2016
It’s been nearly a decade since the Grenville Christian College closed, but some of the institution’s former students say they’re still haunted by what happened behind its doors.
From 1973 until it shut down in 2007, the elite private boarding school northeast of Brockville, Ont. promised pupils a world-class religious and academic education at an idyllic campus on the shores of the St. Lawrence River.
But a $225-million class action lawsuit alleges that pupils who lived and studied there got something much more damaging — a strict regime of arbitrary discipline, bizarre religious practices, and systemic abuse that left them “sexually, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually traumatized.”
Grenville denied the accusations in the suit, which was launched in 2008 and certified in 2014. According to a statement of defence the college filed in 2010 “there is no truth whatsoever” to the allegations. “The representative plaintiffs were never, advertently or inadvertently, subjected to any conduct in the nature of physical or mental abuse,” the statement said.
In fact, the school’s defence stated, “Grenville enjoyed a good reputation over the years in Ontario and elsewhere for its academic prowess, extracurricular activities and caring approach toward the betterment of young people in its charge.”
In affidavits to support the class action, five former students described life at the school as being dominated by fear, humiliation and occasionally violence. Two more Grenville alumni interviewed by the Star described similarly traumatizing experiences.
The class action covers people who attended the school between 1973 and 1997, and according to a lawyer representing the plaintiffs, so far 182 former pupils have come forward expressing interest in making a claim.
Dan Michielsen enrolled at the college in 1985 when he was 15 years old. In an interview with the Star, he said that by the time he left four years later, he was “a wreck.”
He alleged that two weeks after arriving at Grenville a staff member woke him up by punching him in the groin, an apparent punishment for talking in his sleep. Michielsen said he was then dragged into the washroom and forced to clean it with a toothbrush. The staff member urinated on him as he scrubbed the floor, he said.
Michielsen said he was often berated by staff, who called him “disgusting,” “evil,” a “pig,” and a “mutt.”
Now 46, he says he has been left with debilitating self-esteem problems as a result of the alleged abuse. “After a while, I just accepted that I was a loser, that I was a s---, that I should just shut my mouth,” he said. “The doubt is always there.”
Another former student, Andrew Hale-Byrne, alleged in his affidavit that while at Grenville between 1988 and 1990, he was physically assaulted, punished with sleep deprivation and forced labour, and even subjected to an exorcism to “cure” his dyslexia.
In an interview, he said he left the college believing that he deserved to be abused and that he was “damned” to hell.
“(Grenville) destroyed you to the point where you thought you couldn’t achieve in life, and you didn’t deserve to achieve,” he said. He likened life at the college to “waking up in a horror movie.”
Central to the lawsuit are allegations of close ties between Grenville faculty and a small religious sect founded in Massachusetts in the 1970s called the Community of Jesus. A 1981 Boston magazine story reported that former members of the Community described it as a cult that practiced physical and psychological abuse. The group’s leadership at the time denied the report.
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According to the plaintiffs’ statement of claim, while the school presented itself as Anglican, the college’s staff engaged in a “systematic campaign . . . to promote and indoctrinate students in the teachings” of the Community of Jesus.
ReplyDeleteFathers Charles Farnsworth and J. Alastair Haig, who co-founded Grenville,were members of the Community of Jesus, but in 1977 they were also ordained Anglican priests. Haig served as headmaster until 1983, at which point Farnsworth took over until 1997.
In affidavits for the suit, two former teachers said many staff were either members of the Community of Jesus or shared its values, but the college’s statement of defence denied the school promoted the sect’s beliefs to students.
In an interview with CTV’s investigative news program W5 that aired Feb. 6, Joan Childs, who was a teacher and administrator at Grenville for 32 years beginning in 1972, said one of the techniques Grenville staff imported from the Community of Jesus were so-called “light sessions.”
The former students who filed affidavits and spoke to the Star described these sessions as a form of ritual humiliation in which they were compelled to confess sins, real or imagined, while staff screamed abuse at them. The sessions could occur day or night, in front of a group or alone.
Childs told W5 the sessions “could get out of hand. It could get verbally abusive, it could get physically abusive at times,” she said.
“They were intensely frightening,” according to the affidavit sworn by Lisa Cavanaugh, who boarded at the school for two years, beginning in 1987. “The only way to make it stop was to cry and to tell them that I accepted that I had sinned.”
Cavanaugh, who was 14 when she entered the school, said that girls were often singled out during light sessions and “accused of being whores.”
The statement of claim alleges that other abuses included putting students “on discipline,” periods of excessive or abusive punishment during which children could be forbidden to speak or forced to perform tasks like scrubbing the kitchen with a toothbrush or cleaning out grease traps with their hands.
Richard Van Dusen, who was a boarding student for two years beginning in 1979 when he was 18, swore in his affidavit that when two teachers found out he bought a younger pupil a case of beer, they bent him over a chair and beat him with a wooden paddle.
Afterward his underwear was “soaked through with blood.”
The Ontario Provincial Police investigated allegations of abuse at Grenville in 2007, but a spokesperson for the force told the Star that after consultation with the crown attorney, a decision was made not to press charges. The spokesperson couldn’t say why that decision was reached.
The two men in charge of the school during the alleged abuses are no longer living — Haig died in 2009, and Farnsworth passed away in March 2015.
Not everyone has bad memories of Grenville. Nine former students presented evidence in support of the school’s defence, denying there was abuse. David Webb, who attended the college from 1984 to 1987, said in an affidavit that staff exhibited “the kindest and most caring spirit imaginable” and pushed the students to achieve more they thought themselves capable of.
Donald Farnsworth, Father Charles Farnsworth’s son, conceded in an affidavit he filed as part of the suit that Grenville was strict, but asserted “that was one of its strengths.”
Donald attended grades nine to 13 at the college, and after graduating in 1976 went on to serve for two decades as a teacher and administrator at Grenville. In an interview, he said the school gave him “a fantastic education.”
Even though Grenville staff sometimes “disciplined me in a way that I found painful at the time,” he said, “I am very grateful for the growth that I experienced.”
With files from CTV’s W5.
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2016/02/29/former-grenville-christian-college-students-tell-harrowing-stories-of-abuse.html
Ontario Christian school tells court it was unaware abuse would cause emotional damage
ReplyDeleteTimothy Sawa, CBC News May 05, 2021
A now-defunct Ontario Christian college and the estates of two former headmasters shouldn't be held accountable for verbal and emotional abuse suffered by students, their lawyers argued in court on Tuesday, saying their clients had no way of knowing it would cause harm.
In February 2020, a judge presiding over a class-action lawsuit on behalf of former students found the staff at Grenville Christian College responsible for systematically abusing girls and boys who attended the boarding school in the 1970s, '80s and '90s.
That abuse included repeated references to girls in their care as "sluts, whores, Jezebels [and] bitches in heat" and saying rape is the result of girls and boys being too "tempting to men."
An appeal of the trial court decision in favour of the students was heard in the Ontario Court of Appeal in Toronto on Tuesday.
The school, located near Brockville, Ont., about 350 kilometres east of Toronto, was founded in 1973 and advertised itself as an Anglican institution. It also had ties to a controversial Christian group in the United States called the Community of Jesus. The school closed in 2007.
Students testified about public shaming, abuse
At the trial in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice, former students testified they were routinely publicly shamed in what the school called "light sessions." Fellow students and staff would scream at them and call them names, sometimes for hours, for transgressions such as smoking or being caught alone with a member of the opposite sex. Some say they also experienced beatings with a paddle hard enough to make them bleed.
Others were told their parents were "evil" and said they endured exorcisms. Girls were chastised for behaving like "prostitutes" and being too tempting for men, while boys suspected of being gay were called "faggots" and told they would be "damned to hell."
One former student said he endured 20 "conversion" sessions because staff believed he was gay. He was told it was his fault for "tempting" his abuser when he was sexually molested as a child.
"This led to the student feeling ashamed and isolated," Justice Janet Leiper, the trial judge, said in her ruling. She noted that the sessions didn't stop until the student "pretended the conversion worked" and said he was no longer gay.
Punishment for infractions came in the form of manual labour, the trial heard. Students were forced to clean bathrooms with a toothbrush or cut the lawn with a small pair of scissors.
Discipline could last several days, during which students were made to sleep separately from their peers and banned from attending classes or speaking to classmates.
Students said they lived in "constant fear" and that life was "like a horror film."
"Grenville knowingly created an abusive, authoritarian and rigid culture which exploited and controlled developing adolescents who were placed in its care," Leiper found.
Trial judge found 'duty of care' breached
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During the Appeal Court hearing lawyers acting for the school argued that the trial judge erred by relying on expert testimony based on a set of standards established by representatives from a group of children's aid societies in Ontario in 2016. The class-action suit covers a period from 1973 to 1997.
ReplyDelete"It could not be foreseeable to the people who were running the school, during the period of time for the class period ... [that] calling people these names was a form of emotional abuse," lawyer Paul Pape said, referring to the sexually degrading labels used to describe girls at the school.
The trial judge described this kind of treatment as "sexualized abuse." This included requiring sexual confessions, berating students for inciting lust, degrading name-calling, requiring girls to bend over to check for bathing suit coverage and vilification of homosexuality.
Leiper found that the school "breached its duty of care" in this area and that the harm to students was "reasonably foreseeable."
Pape agreed that the facts of the case are "emotionally evocative" but said the trial judge had no proof from the time period covered by the class-action suit to arrive at this conclusion.
"That's the major error in the case," he said.
Lawyers representing the students argued it's irrelevant whether the emotional harm was foreseeable or not, given that the abuse was proven to be out of step with standards of the day.
Loretta Merritt told the court that staff at the school had several warnings that students were being harmed by their actions.
She said students were running away or asking to be taken out of school, parents repeatedly wrote to the school expressing concerns about their methods, students were crying during lectures about sexuality and during "light sessions" and one student attempted suicide while attending the school.
"The defendants can't say it wasn't foreseeable that their behaviour or actions would cause harm when they saw the harm their actions were causing," Merritt said.
"I suggest they did know ... and they did it anyway."
'This is important for those who suffered in silence'
One former student who watched the proceedings said it's ironic that defence lawyers are criticizing the expert witness called by lawyers for the plaintiffs when the defence presented no expert testimony at the trial.
"The defence had no expert witnesses, because they could not find any expert witnesses willing to justify the abusive practices at the Grenville cult," said Andrew Hale-Byrne, who attended the school from 1988 to 1990.
Another former student said they will not give up their fight for justice.
"I think of how so many of those in authority have used their power to cover up the abuse and how these decades of silence and voicelessness have only compounded the emotional impact of the abuse, violence and harm that have left so many damaged," said Ewan Whyte, who attended Grenville for three years in the 1980s.
"This is important for those who have suffered in silence."
The three judges hearing the appeal reserved their decision.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/grenville-christian-college-lawsuit-appeal-1.6014135
ReplyDeleteThe Cult That Raised Me
When I was 11, my parents sent me to Grenville Christian College, a prestigious Anglican boarding school in Brockville. It turned out to be a perverse fundamentalist cult that brainwashed, abused and terrorized students. For decades, the school tried to intimidate us into silence. It didn’t work
By Ewan Whyte | Toronto Life | January 5, 2021
The first time I saw Grenville Christian College, I was 11 years old. It was an Anglican boarding school a few hundred metres from the St. Lawrence River, just east of Brockville. At its centre was an impressive four-storey stone building, originally built as a junior Catholic seminary in 1918. There was a large chapel on the west end of the building and some new additions on the east, with several trailer homes behind the school, hidden from view. It was summer 1980, and I was living with my parents in rural Ontario, in a small town near the Quebec border. My mother told me we were just visiting—that we were going to see the headmaster, Charles Farnsworth, who would provide me with what she called “child guidance and correction.”
We met with Farnsworth in the school cafeteria. He was a short, angry, small man, with greasy black hair and a pronounced Georgia drawl. He wasn’t particularly articulate; I remember, even at my young age, being surprised that this person could be a headmaster at such an impressive school. My mother told Farnsworth I needed correction because I’d asked for a pair of jeans and to wear my hair longer than a crew cut. All I wanted was to fit in with other kids. When I requested these things, my mother said they were “the way of the world,” which was sinful.
Farnsworth responded by proudly telling us about his experience beating children. He spoke of it with a sense of delight, explaining how he whipped his own sons with a belt, and how good it was for them. He boasted about how he would frequently paddle students at the school. He sounded like a sports fan describing a game, going over the plays, the outs, the runs. About children, he said, “You have to break their spirit.” He was terrifying.
When we drove away from Grenville that day, I never expected I would return. My parents were too poor for me to attend the school, so I figured I was safe. A number of months after our visit, my mother excitedly announced that I was going to be a boarding student at Grenville, and that she would be teaching English and remedial reading there. What I didn’t understand at the time was that this expensive, impressive school, marketed as a respectable Anglican institution where wealthy Torontonians could send their children, was nothing of the sort. It was a cult.
I would spend the next few years enduring violence, isolation, humiliation and brainwashing at Grenville. It would take more than 25 years before this culture of abuse became public—and another decade before I and some 1,359 other former students got something resembling justice.
I was not a happy child. When my parents weren’t belittling me, they ignored me. My father was an ordained pastor with the United Church of Christ, while my mother was a devout Christian from North Carolina who’d taken courses in literature at Harvard and earned an MA in education from Boston University. Often moody and detached, she seemed to resent being a mother. She was also caught up in the Charismatic Christian Revival, an interdenominational movement that borrowed many elements of Pentecostalism and promised a personal, emotional connection with God that would inspire a Christian lifestyle.
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The Community of Jesus, a Christian commune on the shores of Rock Harbor in Cape Cod, attracted some of the biggest players in the charismatic movement. When I was eight, my mother convinced my father to join the Community, which she’d heard about through one of her acquaintances. It was founded by Cay Andersen and Judy Sorensen, two American housewives who’d visited the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, a Christian commune in Darmstadt, Germany. At the Community of Jesus, Andersen and Sorensen anointed themselves as “Mothers” and copied every aspect of the Evangelical Sisterhood, from their strict ideas of discipline right down to the fonts on their brochures. She moved us there for a year and a half, and I was forced to live in a house of unhappy boys, only rarely seeing my parents. The Mothers called parental love “idolatry”—the sin of loving anybody or anything aside from God—because they believed it made parents blind to their children’s transgressions.
ReplyDeleteAndersen and Sorensen claimed to “see things in the Spirit” about people or a situation, and said that God spoke directly to them about our sins and atonement. Everyone was subjected to daily “light sessions,” in which adult members spent hours publicly berating and humiliating the victim until they broke down completely. They were called light sessions because they were supposed to help us “live in the light.” At the Community, I found brief moments of peace—looking out at the salt flats, walking through shrubs lining the paths toward the water, and most of all, in lines of poetry. Poetry has always been an escape, a friend. I started secretly memorizing at least one poem a week. They became part of me, part of how I related to words, meaning and time. These moments of eternity were short respites from the fear and pain that were woven into all aspects of my daily life. When I was 10, my father—never an enthusiastic acolyte of the Mothers—convinced my mother to leave. By this point, the child I was when I first arrived at the Community had been erased. The loneliness was crushing.
Just as my mother promised, I began my Grade 7 year at Grenville Christian College in the fall of 1980. Almost immediately, I knew that most of the staff and teachers I met were Community of Jesus people. I had seen many of them at the commune in Cape Cod, including Charles Farnsworth. I’d seen their rings—flat gold, with a Jerusalem-style cross stamped out of it. I knew they had sworn vows of obedience to the Mothers. I soon learned that my mother had struck a deal with Andersen and Sorensen: that she’d become a teacher at Grenville, I’d attend as a student, and my father would find a parish nearby. At Grenville, children were subjected to extreme verbal, physical, psychological and sexualized abuse, all in the name of the Community. We were beaten with paddles, publicly humiliated, creatively punished for a range of incomprehensible “sins.” We were isolated from our families and from each other.
Running the show alongside Farnsworth was his co-headmaster, Al Haig, who’d become involved with the charismatic revival. He’d been a teacher at Albert College in Belleville before his enthusiasm for speaking in tongues and talking about the movement of the Holy Spirit got him fired. He moved to New York to work for Norman Vincent Peale—Donald Trump’s one-time pastor and the author of The Power of Positive Thinking. Haig later ran a Pentecostal school out of a basement in Brooklyn.
Haig met Andersen and Sorensen in the 1960s, and was impressed by the Mothers’ preaching: the women once prayed for the Haig family dog, supposedly curing it from distemper. A few years later, Haig and Farnsworth were working at the struggling Berean Christian missionary school, which would later become Grenville.
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When the Mothers visited the school in 1973, Haig took their trip as a sign of divine intervention. From then on, the staff dedicated themselves to following the Mothers’ teachings. The majority of the staff took vows of membership to the Community of Jesus, attended retreats at their compound on Cape Cod, wrote reports to the Mothers and tithed 10 per cent of their earnings to the Community.
ReplyDeleteIt was around this time that the Anglican bishop in Kingston ordained both Haig and Farnsworth as ministers. On average, the school paid $100,000 each year to the Community, and the Mothers appear as directors on Grenville’s Ontario letters patent. In 1983, Farnsworth took sole leadership. His henchmen were known as the A-Team, and his son Donald later taught math at the school and served as dean of men.
Like the Community, Grenville was organized around a rigid hierarchical structure. Orders from the top were akin to the word of God, and punishment was administered based on Farnsworth’s whims. Students with influential parents received more care, while staff children like me were disciplined with impunity.
Light sessions were the main form of punishment and control at Grenville. They were used when students committed serious violations, like smoking or stealing, but also to humiliate bedwetters or students caught masturbating. Even trivial infractions—being alone with a student of the opposite sex or simply having a bad attitude—were punished in this way. Staff would haul the offending child up in front of the whole student body and berate them for their “sins,” which were often incomprehensible to us—things like haughtiness, rebellion, hiddenness, covetousness, lustfulness. Sometimes, these sessions would take place in the chapel or dining room, where everyone could see everything, and students might even be encouraged to participate in the shaming. Other times, the punishment was in private with one or several adults, who would put their faces an inch away from the child’s and scream at them as loudly as possible—condemning, shaming, terrorizing. Farnsworth would occasionally take students to the boiler room and push them close to the open flames as a glimpse of the hell they were destined for if they continued to sin.
Light sessions often involved physical abuse, too. At Grenville, they used a long wooden paddle resembling a cricket bat. Staff kids and low-status boarders were beaten so hard that they bled, urinated on themselves or could no longer stand. This is what was going to bring children into the light and make us true disciples.
I was subjected to countless light sessions over my years at the Community and Grenville. Once, at the Community, I was feeling unwell at dinner and told the adult members in charge—whom we were forced to call Aunt and Uncle—that I thought I might throw up. I was told to eat what was on my plate: “We will beat you if you don’t.” I suddenly vomited on my plate and then on the floor. One of the adults struck me on my back and screamed at me to eat it. By the end of the ordeal, I was scooping it off the floor and into my mouth with my hands. Another time, at Grenville, I was locked in the walk-in freezer for an hour as punishment.
I knew I could not be friends with any of my fellow students. The staff created networks of informants: they extorted us to tell on each other for any transgression, supposedly to help our friends “see the light.” There was a lot of incentive to rat each other out—when we did, we were showered with praise and, best of all, kept out of the hot seat, at least for that day. There was little trust among the staff children, who were alternately pitied and shunned by the paying students. Even if close friendships did emerge, they were quickly broken, as friendship was considered a form of idolatry.
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Meanwhile, I rarely saw my mother. She lived in staff quarters, while my father lived in his parish nearby. I, on the other hand, slept in a cramped mobile trailer around the back with other staff children. When I did see her, I knew better than to complain. Her allegiance was with Grenville and the Community of Jesus, not with me. I was completely alone.
ReplyDeleteAnother central feature of Grenville life was the punishing schedule of daily activities. First there were morning assemblies, which sometimes devolved into spontaneous light sessions involving the entire school. Then chapel, classes, extracurricular activities, late-night study hall and the dreaded unpaid “work-jobs.” We worked in the kitchen, served meals, cleaned the dorms, kept up the grounds, built and maintained structures, mostly during our so-called free time, after school and on weekends. Sometimes we were assigned jobs as a form of discipline, or “being on D.” Staff removed the child from class, forbade them from speaking to other students, and forced them to complete the most difficult, menial or demeaning jobs until they were deemed sufficiently repentant.
Being on D could last from a day to a month for paying students, while staff children were sometimes put on D for entire semesters. We’d scrub pots in the kitchen, pound stakes, shift rocks, clear ice, clean bathrooms with a toothbrush. I remember cutting a section of the lawn with scissors. It was hopeless and absurd, but I had to cut away until a staff member or a prefect had decided I’d had enough. It’s stunning just how much of the regular upkeep of Grenville was done by students—it certainly must have saved them a lot of money. There was almost no free time for us to simply relax and be children. This labour stunted the imagination and compounded our loneliness. We lived in a constant state of stress, exhaustion and fear, all of which helped ensure emotional and spiritual compliance.
The most incredible part of the Grenville story is the fact that its systemic child abuse went on, unknown to authorities, for more than 30 years. To prospective parents, Grenville billed itself as a respectable Anglican boarding school with a strong relationship to the Anglican Church. Henry Hill, the Anglican bishop of Ontario, was an episcopal visitor at the Community of Jesus. A later bishop, Peter Mason, also knew about the Community connection.
David Ardill, a paying student who attended Grenville in 1979, told me that his mother had no idea what the school really was when she sent him there. “Its true nature was all disguised. I would never have been sent there if my mother knew it was a crazy cult school. She was a straight-laced Anglican. They flew the Anglican flag. They read from the Anglican book. Wore the Anglican garb,” he said. The Anglican Church, however, denies any authority over Grenville Christian College. When approached for comment, they referred to a 2012 judgment that found that the diocese never had any jurisdiction or power over the school’s operations, administration, affairs, staffing, funding, enrolment, discipline or other student affairs, education criteria or curriculum. “The diocese assigned no tasks, had no power or control or legal right to intervene in the operation of the school,” they said.
In the 1980s, when I attended Grenville, I’d heard that tuition was around $20,000 per year. Many illustrious and wealthy Toronto families sent their children to Grenville, and the board was a who’s who of old-money Ontarians, the kinds of people whose lineage goes back to the Family Compact. They attended lavish dinners and gave commencement speeches and made generous donations.
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Sir Arthur Chetwynd, a Toronto-based aristocrat with ties to the Empire Club of Canada and the Royal Commonwealth Society of Canada, was a powerful promoter, introducing many friends to the school and sending his grandson there for a year. The Royal Commonwealth Society funded an obstacle course at Grenville in Sir Arthur’s name in 1990, and the 1993 Grenville yearbook was dedicated to him and his wife.
ReplyDeleteTrevor Eyton, the Ontario senator who worked at Torys and sat on the boards of Coca-Cola, GM and Nestlé, was a strong supporter of the school. The singer Tommy Hunter sent one of his sons there. Rosemary Sexton, the Toronto socialite and Globe and Mail gossip columnist, was also a cheerleader for Grenville. She sent two of her kids to the school, and I remember her daughter receiving the special care given only to children of the rich and powerful. “The school itself had some wonderful programs and dedicated staff, and many students derived much benefit from attending,” she told Toronto Life. “That is not to diminish the suffering that those who were abused went through, which was egregious and unwarranted.”
Three successive lieutenant-governors of Ontario—Pauline McGibbon, John Black Aird and Lincoln Alexander—sat on the school’s board, and a fourth, Hal Jackman, Toronto’s great arts and humanities benefactor, gave a commencement speech at Grenville. I’m sure most of these families had no idea what went on at the school, as the administration monitored our mail and calls and imposed a strict code of secrecy. Even if they had heard rumblings, I don’t know if they would have believed them. For some, what happened at Grenville is still too much to swallow.
In 1995, Maclean’s sent journalist Scott Steele to write a feature story about Grenville. He says the administration provided him with a carefully controlled narrative. Parents used the piece to refute their children’s accusations of abuse. Steele later spoke to me to say how bitterly he regrets being used in this way, and he has apologized to other ex-students for writing the article in the first place. Reading a glossy, flattering magazine story about the school where we’d experienced so much terror compounded the trauma for me and so many other students.
In Grade 8, I was exhausted from the routine. I’d have a full day at school, then cross-country running practice (a rare source of comfort at Grenville). Then there was dinner, dish crew, then homework from 7 p.m. into the late evening. One night, I came back late to the tiny room in the trailer where I bunked with three other staff kids. When I found myself last in line for the bathroom, I lay on my top bunk and waited for it to become available. Someone turned the lights off, and I fell asleep. I woke up urinating in my bed. The other boys woke up, and the staff were summoned. They told me I was disgusting and sinful. I was given a choice of being beaten with a two-by-four or sleeping in my own urine until laundry day, which was six days away. I chose the latter. Each day, I had to make my wet and stinking bed, with the other staff kids in the room complaining. By the end of the week I was sick with intense chills, and berated intensely in light sessions for deliberately becoming sick in order to get attention. I half-believed what the staff were telling me. I thought I must be a terrible person who would burn in hell.
When I was 15, under instructions from Mother Judy Sorensen, Grenville staff suddenly moved me to a small, shoddy stone cottage that the school owned in nearby Maitland, where I would live with my parents for the first time in years. In this cold, unpleasant house, I was separated from the student body and endured frequent surprise light sessions from Farnsworth.
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At meals, I was forced to sit with staff at a table and subjected to more light sessions. I even received personal phone calls from the Mothers on Cape Cod. I realized that they all wanted me to become a brother in the Community of Jesus, and these efforts were designed to “turn me.” My mother had enlisted the Mothers and Farnsworth to keep me in the fold.
ReplyDeleteI refused to let it happen. Shortly after I turned 16, and as soon as I was legally able, I left both the Community of Jesus and Grenville forever. I broke with my parents as soon as I could. I had learned that these were all weak people in every way. I had endured their abuse for eight long years, and I was intensely angry. The damage done to me at Grenville would stay with me my whole life.
My 20s were a decade of precarity and periodic homelessness. I had little contact with either of my parents; my mother remained a devout member of the Community until her death a few years ago. During my stretches of homelessness, I would sleep in the daytime because the night was too dangerous. I did a series of menial jobs to put myself through university, memorizing poetry and reading obsessively even when I should have been working. But I found it too difficult—financially and psychologically—to finish school at that time. I eventually found some stability as a writer, and finally sought professional help. The first psychiatrist did not believe my story. He thought I was delusional and told me I was probably schizophrenic. I’ve always wondered how things might have gone if an adult had tried to help me. Perhaps I might have had a chance for a normal life. As it is, I’ve struggled with the long-term effects of complex trauma.
Meanwhile, Grenville continued to abuse children. A Brockville newspaper, the Recorder and Times, was ready to publish a story about the abuse in 1989, but it was quashed when the school got wind of it. In 1997, Farnsworth finally retired; he died in 2015 at age 83, denying everything to the end.
It was only in 2007, as rumours of abuse kept surfacing, that the OPP launched an investigation. Many former students reported feeling that the police were not on their side; when the OPP interviewed me, they accused me of lying about my story. In the end, they declined to press criminal charges. “It wasn’t in the interest of the public,” said Sergeant Kristine Rae in an interview with the Recorder and Times. “When you’re looking at historical allegations, you’re looking at the whole picture.”
The damage had been done, however. The school closed its doors in 2007, though it didn’t acknowledge the role of the investigation in its decision. “Changing demographics, declining enrolment and increasing operating costs have forced this decision upon us,” said then-headmaster Gordon Mintz at the time. (Mintz, meanwhile, had been ordained as an Anglican priest in 2001 and is now a chaplain in the Canadian Armed Forces.) The public exposure also encouraged hundreds of students to come together on a now-defunct website called FACTNet, established as a forum for survivors from American cults to relate their experiences. It was incredibly cathartic—the first time many of us had spoken to others who had suffered at Grenville and the Community.
Our story finally reached the public eye thanks to the tireless efforts of Andrew Hale-Byrne. Andrew is a British citizen whose family sent him to Grenville for what they were promised was an elite education in a school that promoted traditional Anglican values. “I was told I had unconfessed sins that invited Satan to cause my dyslexia,” he says. “I was forced to undergo exorcisms in the chapel to rid me of the demons.”
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Scarred by his experiences at Grenville, outraged by the stories he heard from others, Andrew was doggedly determined to expose the abuse. He did extensive research and helped the Globe and Mail break the story a few weeks after the school closed. Then he retained a legal team, formed a class of 1,360 ex-students—including me—and launched a civil class-action suit. Named in the claim were the school and the estates of Al Haig and Charles Farnsworth. Andrew was the primary representative plaintiff.
ReplyDeleteIn September 2019, after 12 long years of litigation, the class-action trial commenced in Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice. Our legal team argued that the defendants were systemically negligent and breached the duty of care and fiduciary duty it owed its students. We sought $200 million in compensation, along with $25 million in punitive damages. I sat in court for much of the five weeks with a rotating group of former students. We were there not only to bear witness to horrors past, but to make the case for the past’s insistent, debilitating and at times unendurable effect on our present lives.
The five weeks of trial revealed many instances of abuse, as well as an intense focus on sexual sins exquisitely tailored to destroy the natural sexual and emotional development of the pubescent teen. Andersen and Sorensen, unbeknownst to all of us at the Community, were lovers who nevertheless railed against homosexuality, saying they could “feel it in the Spirit” if a gay person walked onto the property. As a former member and United Church minister wrote in a sworn statement, the Mothers were so obsessed with what they considered deviant sexual practices that they forbade married couples from engaging in oral sex.
Always in mimetic rivalry, Farnsworth took the Mothers’ Christian sexual repression and guilt complex to an extreme level, preying sexually on students himself. One student, a staff child who was born at the school, recounted that Farnsworth constantly slut-shamed her and quizzed her on her sexual fantasies. Another former student testified how, after a classmate reported that the witness was gay, Farnsworth held 20 counselling sessions with him, calling him satanic and interrogating him about his sexuality. “I started to form this understanding in my mind that I was worse than a killer, and I was definitely going to hell,” he said. When the boy admitted that two neighbours had molested him as a child, Farnsworth was fascinated. “He wanted to know the age of the men who molested me, how frequently I was molested, where it occurred, what kind of sexual abuse. He wanted details.” Farnsworth informed the student that even as a young kid he had Satan in him—that he’d been running around all summer long in a Speedo, tempting these men to touch him. That Satan had a firm hold of this student even then, using this boy as temptation, a tool of evil. It wasn’t these men’s fault.
One paying student, Bradley Merson, told me about being light-sessioned several times by Farnsworth while naked. Another student testified that Farnsworth ran his hand up his leg and touched his penis. Two students described being injured and traumatized from excessive paddling. Once, when I was in Grade 7, Farnsworth saw me looking down a hallway—I think I had forgotten something. He accused me of having sexual thoughts toward the girls who were standing there. I was shocked and horribly ashamed to be accused of those things. I had not gone through puberty yet.
The legal team for Grenville and the estates of Farnsworth and Haig denied our claims in court. They argued that punishments were never abusive or imposed without justification. Furthermore, they insisted, Farnsworth did not foster an atmosphere of fear or intimidation, or isolate students from their families.
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The defendants also categorically denied that there was any “systemic campaign to promote and indoctrinate students in the teachings and practices of the Community of Jesus.” When Toronto Life wrote to the Community for response, their lawyer said that the lawsuit did not allege any wrongful conduct by the Community of Jesus or by anyone there. “The conduct that the author apparently alleges is said to have taken place some 700 miles from the Community of Jesus nearly 50 years ago,” he wrote. “No fair-minded person could expect comment about allegations about things that are said to have occurred a half-century ago in another country.”
ReplyDeleteThe judgment finally came in February 2020. In her decision, Justice Janet Leiper clearly identified Grenville’s mission: to enforce on its students a way of living, using Community of Jesus practices, including violence, shame and humiliation for students who were insufficiently obedient, too haughty or too proud. She found that Grenville failed to meet the standard of care and ruled in the plaintiffs’ favour on every count. Her final conclusion is damning. “Grenville knowingly created an abusive, authoritarian and rigid culture which exploited and controlled developing adolescents who were placed in its care,” she wrote. “Some students ran away, hid or asked to be taken out of the school. Others were not believed or suffered in silence. I have concluded that the evidence of maltreatment and the varieties of abuse perpetrated on students’ bodies and minds in the name of the [Community of Jesus] values of submission and obedience was class-wide and decades-wide.” Her judgment will be followed by a separate trial for damages, although the defendants have appealed the ruling.
Grenville may be closed and dismantled, and the students finally granted their day in court, but the Community of Jesus in Cape Cod continues to operate. As late as 2000, Community leaders were writing to Grenville staff. Farnsworth, under the spiritual authority of Andersen and Sorensen, learned to follow their lead, surrounding himself with legitimators, acolytes, powerful patrons and supporters who would ensure he could do whatever he wanted.
Farnsworth’s son, Donald, who’s currently undertaking a divinity degree at Wycliffe College at U of T, objects to Justice Leiper’s decision. In conversations with Toronto Life’s fact-checking department, he said he had a fantastic time as a student at Grenville; he played basketball, ran track, acted in school plays. He acknowledged that Grenville was strict—he even admits that he once got the paddle—but he said that discipline helped him become a confident human being, and to acknowledge Jesus as his saviour. The same was true of the work-jobs, he said. The school had farm animals for a time, and Donald often had to wake up early to clean the barns. “It was quite a good experience for us to learn the value of manual labour,” he said. He admitted his father was “an authoritarian,” but insisted that he followed God and looked after the best interests of students and staff.
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He disputes the abuse allegations, even though there were more than 1,300 plaintiffs. “Every single one of those allegations, when they claimed abusive behaviour, they were either embellished or totally made up,” he said. “And how do I know this? Because I was there. I was there the whole time.” He said the judge simply took the defendants’ word for what happened without external corroboration, and that most students would say they had a positive experience. Of the others—the “squeaky wheels,” as he calls them—he said: “This group had a few ringleaders with issues. And they might have had a terrible time at Grenville. Maybe we weren’t the right place for them. I don’t think we did anything to damage them, and we certainly didn’t do it intentionally.”
ReplyDeleteDespite the denials and repudiation, the successful trial against Grenville and the judge’s acknowledgment of the Community of Jesus’s influence have spurred me forward. I’m currently writing several other articles, and I’ve finished a book about my experience at Grenville and the Community. It was very different from my previous five books of poetry and cultural criticism—my research took me across Europe, where I visited every group that’s still associated with the Community. I reckon somebody has to do something for the children still inside.
None of the plaintiffs expect to get any damages—that’s not what the trial was about. We even learned that Grenville operated without insurance for 10 years, leaving many students, like me, with no possibility of restitution. But our brief day in court was enormously important. For me, the testimony of the expert witness, a psychologist and former psychology professor, about the degree of damage Grenville’s abuse caused, was an epiphany of sorts. That day, the courtroom was well-attended by former students, some of whom had flown in from across the country. Many were suddenly crying. Several had to leave the courtroom. For the first time, these former students heard someone in authority recognize that their suffering was real. For the first time, our voices were heard and believed.
https://torontolife.com/life/grenville-christian-college-boarding-school-brockville-toronto-fundamentalist-cult/
The Grenville Christian College Class Proceeding
ReplyDeleteUPDATE: March 24, 2022
We have met with the Case Management Judge multiple times since January 2022 to discuss how the next stage of this class action (assessment of damages) will proceed. We are working on a formal proposal respecting that process, and will present it to the Court for its approval in August 2022. Once we have the Court’s decision, a formal Notice will be issued, setting out the details of those next steps, the timelines and other requirements for participation therein.
In the meantime, if you have not already provided us with your statements respecting your experiences at GCC and the impacts of those experiences on your life, please consider doing so sooner rather than later.
UPDATE: January 5, 2022
The defendants have not filed an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. As such, a Case Management Conference has been scheduled with the case management judge in mid-January to discuss how the next steps will proceed.
We will post an update explaining the next-steps over the coming weeks.
UPDATE: November 1, 2021
Systemic Negligence verdict upheld – School’s appeal of common issues trial judgment denied!
The Ontario Court of Appeal released its decision October 26, 2021, confirming the common issues trial judgement. The Honourable Justice van Rensburg, writing the decision for the Ontario Court of Appeal, confirmed the trial judge’s finding that the School was systemically negligent in its operation, and its practices breached the standards of the day and were harmful to students.
While a wonderful victory for the plaintiffs and class, this does not mean the class action is at an end.
While the defendants do not automatically have the right to seek an appeal of this decision from the Supreme Court of Canada, they do have the right to ask permission to do so (within 60 days of the release of the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision). We have not yet been notified of their seeking leave.
We will continue to post updates and explain next-steps on this website over the coming weeks. https://www.mckenzielake.com/the-grenville-christian-college-class-proceeding/
Airman who set self on fire grew up on religious compound, had anarchist past
ReplyDeleteBy Emily Davies, Peter Hermann and Dan Lamothe, Washington Post February 27, 2024
Less than two weeks before Aaron Bushnell walked toward the gates of the Israeli Embassy on Sunday, he and a friend talked by phone about their shared identities as anarchists and what kinds of risks and sacrifices were needed to be effective.
Bushnell, 25, mentioned nothing violent or self-sacrificial, the friend said.
Then on Sunday, Bushnell texted that friend, who described the exchange on the condition of anonymity to protect his safety.
“I hope you’ll understand. I love you,” Bushnell wrote in a message reviewed by The Washington Post. “This doesn’t even make sense, but I feel like I’m going to miss you.”
He sent the friend a copy of his will on Sunday. In it, he gave his cat to his neighbor and a fridge full of root beers to the friend.
Twelve minutes later, Bushnell, who was a senior airman in the U.S. Air Force, doused himself with a liquid and set himself on fire. He had posted a video online saying he did not want to be “complicit in genocide.” He shouted “Free Palestine” as he burned.
Secret Service officers extinguished the blaze. Bushnell died seven hours later at a hospital.
His suicidal protest instantly won him praise among some antiwar and pro-Palestinian activists, while others said they were devastated that he would take an action so extreme. But how a young man who liked The Lord of the Rings and karaoke became the man ablaze in a camouflage military uniform remains a mystery, even among some of his closest friends.
Bushnell was raised in a religious compound in Orleans, Mass., on Cape Cod, according to Susan Wilkins, 59, who said she was a member of the group from 1970 to 2005. She said that she knew Bushnell and his family on the compound and that he was still a member when she left. Wilkins said she heard through members of Bushnell’s family that he eventually left the group.
Wilkins’s account is consistent with those of multiple others who said Bushnell had told them about his childhood in the religious group or who had heard about his affiliation from his family members.
The group, called the Community of Jesus, has faced allegations of inappropriate behavior, which it has publicly disputed. In a lawsuit against an Ontario school, where many officials were alleged to be members of the U.S.-based religious group, former students called the Community of Jesus a “charismatic sect” and alleged that it “created an environment of control, intimidation and humiliation that fostered and inflicted enduring harms on its students.” The school, now defunct, disputed the allegations. Last year, an appeals court in Canada awarded 10.8 million Canadian dollars to the former students, who attended the Ontario school between 1973 and 1997.
A receptionist who answered the phone at the Community of Jesus declined to put a call from a reporter through to someone in authority. Emails to the group were not answered.
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Multiple people who said they were former members of the Community of Jesus described their years after leaving the compound as particularly challenging. They said former members, soon after they depart the group, often long for a sense of belonging.
ReplyDelete“A lot of us that got out are very much into social justice, trying to defend those who don’t or can’t defend themselves, because that is what we went through,” said Bonnie Zampino, 54, who said she was a member of the group for three years in the 1980s.
Wilkins also said it is common for members of the Community of Jesus to join the military, describing the transition as moving from “one high-control group to another high-control group.”
The Air Force said in a statement Monday night that Bushnell’s death is under investigation by military officials, a common practice after the death of a service member. He was a cyberdefense operations specialist with the 531st Intelligence Support Squadron at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland in Texas, and had been in the Air Force since May 2020, the service said.
To support someone going through a mentally tough time: Offer a safe space to talk and listen. Validate and affirm their feelings. Don’t engage in toxic positivity. Don’t be pushy with advice. Ask how you can help.
In recent years, depression, anxiety and suicidal ideation have reached historic highs, especially among children and teens. Experts say urgent reforms are needed for America’s underfunded, fragmented and difficult-to-access mental health system.
Lupe Barboza, 32, said she met Bushnell in San Antonio in 2022 at an event for a socialist organization. She said they bonded over their politics and started working together to deliver clothing and food to people experiencing homelessness.
“He was outraged, and he knew that no one who is in charge is listening to the protesters out there every week,” Barboza said. “He knows that he has privilege as a White man and a member of the military.”
Other friends from San Antonio said they had talked with Bushnell about the Palestinians and their shared distaste for the U.S. role in the Israel-Gaza war. But he had not expressed to them any indication of what would take place in Washington on Sunday.
They also said he moved to Ohio earlier this year for a course for service members transitioning out of the military.
One of his friends, Levi Pierpont, 23, met him for lunch in Ohio in January. Over plates of butter chicken, the two talked about their involvement in the military and what they hoped to do after leaving the force. They had met in basic training in May 2020, when they were both still excited about joining the military and how it could help them experience more of the world, Pierpont said.
Pierpont said he grew disillusioned with the military over time — concerned with what he saw as flippant attitudes toward violence within the force — and said he left as a conscientious objector. (The Air Force did not immediately respond to a request for comment on his account.) By 2024, Bushnell had become more open about his objections to the military, Pierpont said. In the wake of George Floyd’s killing by police in Minneapolis in 2020, Bushnell told Pierpont he had started to research the history of the United States and wanted to take a stand against all state-sanctioned violence.
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Bushnell had considered leaving the military early, Pierpont said, but he had decided he was close enough to the end of his required service to stick it out. Bushnell was scheduled to leave the military in May, Pierpont said.
ReplyDeleteAt the January lunch, Bushnell told Pierpont that he planned to find a job that would let him make enough money to support himself while engaging in political activism on the side. Pierpont said he encouraged his friend to go to college and get a degree in something related to his beliefs.
Self-immolations are rare, but a number are connected to antiwar protests, perhaps most famously that of a Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc, who set himself on fire in Saigon during the Vietnam War. An American Quaker self-immolated in 1965 at the Pentagon.
During the Iraq War, an antiwar protester self-immolated near the Kennedy Expressway in Chicago. In 2010, a street vendor self-immolated in Tunisia, an act of defiance that served as a spark for the Arab Spring, in which numerous heads of state were forced out in uprisings. In 2022, a Colorado man died after setting himself on fire outside the Supreme Court in what his father believed was a climate change protest. In December, a woman self-immolated outside the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta. She had a Palestinian flag with her, authorities said at the time.
U.S. service members are prohibited from acts of political protest, under the Pentagon’s long-standing policy of remaining nonpartisan while civilian leaders oversee policy decisions. While no one else in uniform has stepped out against the war in Gaza as stridently as Bushnell, some service members do have misgivings about it and frustration that critics of the war blame U.S. military support for Israeli military actions.
Since the Israel-Gaza war began in October, at least 29,782 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. Israel estimates that about 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack and says 240 soldiers have been killed since the start of its military operation in Gaza.
Hamas and allied fighters took more than 250 people hostage during the attack. More than 100 were freed in exchange for more than 200 Palestinian detainees during a November pause in fighting. Israeli authorities believe that more than 100 hostages remain in Gaza.
On Monday afternoon, about 80 demonstrators showed up at the Israeli Embassy to support Bushnell and condemn Israel for the war. Among them was Sam Osta, playing an audio recording of Bushnell setting himself on fire.
“I wish I would have known. I would have stopped him,” said Osta, 55, who first met Bushnell at a protest at the Lincoln Memorial in 2022. “His life means a lot, and it’s horrifying what happened.”
Some of Bushnell’s friends, including Barboza, said they last saw him in January at his going-away party in San Antonio. It was at a karaoke bar. He belted out song after song, many of which were from “Les Misérables,” which he was known to love. And one was Mandy Moore’s “Wind in My Hair” from the TV series based on the movie “Tangled.”
“I got a smile on my face,” Bushnell sang, “and I’m walking on air.”
Peter Jamison, Omari Daniels, Ellie Silverman, Hannah Allam and Razzan Nakhlawi contributed to this report.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/02/26/israeli-embassy-airman-fire-death-gaza/