Bishop’s letter not a coverup in abuse case: lawyer

By Deborah Gyapong

Canadian Catholic News

OTTAWA (CCN) — A 1993 letter from the Pembroke bishop to the Vatican’s ambassador about sexual abuse by a priest has led to media criticism of a high-level coverup to avoid church scandal.

But the lawyer representing the Pembroke diocese in the civil litigation brought by victims of former Msgr. Bernard Prince insists Bishop J.R. Windle was not encouraging a coverup at all.

“The Diocese of Pembroke was up front and proactive with respect to the complaint,” said lawyer Charles Gibson. The only reason officials did not divulge it or pass it along to the police was because the victim (in his early 30s, according to the bishop’s correspondence) asked them not to, he said.

But Robert Talach, the lawyer from the LeDroit Becket firm representing eight remaining plaintiffs (six have already settled), said he would be “terrified” if the determination of a crime were left up to victims.

“If someone commits an egregious crime and because of my psychological state I don’t want to report it doesn’t mean a crime was not committed,” said Talach, who said the abuse against his client began when he was nine or 10.

Prince, who has been defrocked, is serving a four-year sentence in British Columbia after he was convicted in 2008 of one charge of indecent and sexual assault and pleaded guilty to 12 others. Talach said his client was involved in that prosecution, but was not the first to lay charges.

His client is struggling with “visceral reaction that everything is bad about the church,” Talach said, describing him as believing “in the faith and the entity of the church on a grander scale but less faith in the human component and the hierarchy.”

The letter came to light as the result of the current civil litigation. In it, Windle tells Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Carlo Curis he is “adamantly opposed to Father Prince receiving any papal honour or ever being promoted to the episcopate.”

Windle warns the consequences would be “disastrous” for the Canadian church and the Holy See. “I can say without hesitation that all of the Ontario bishops and the president of the CCCB would support me in this assessment.” Windle indicated such an honour would create resentment in the victim and prompt him to lay charges.

The president of the CCCB at the time was now-retired Ottawa Archbishop Marcel Gervais, who is out of the country and unavailable for comment. The letter names several other Ontario bishops, all of whom are retired, as having been informed of the concerns about Prince’s behaviour. Windle had notified all ecclesial authorities who might have worked with Prince, Gibson said.

Windle said the charge against Prince was “very serious” but he would not object to his being “given another chance since it would remove him from the Canadian scene.”

The bishop added that since Prince had been appointed to Rome the diocese had learned that there was not only one victim, but possibly four or five. Windle wrote that when he had first informed the previous nuncio, there had only been one complaint, leaving him “under the impression that the incident was isolated, in the distant past, and there was little or no danger of any scandal ever emerging.”

Gibson said that while the diocese had investigated the first complaint and found it credible, the other complaints were just rumours. “Nobody had a name,” he said. Now Windle and others are dead.

The Pembroke diocese acknowledged the document in a statement.

“The Bishop of Pembroke, Michael Mulhall, wishes to reiterate the sympathy and concern felt for the victims of Bernard Prince expressed in the past for these tragic events and confirm the commitment of the diocese to open and transparent treatment of the facts of the case,” it said.

“The diocese is confident that the recently released documents demonstrate that it has done its best to be proactive and responsible in following its policies in dealing with these allegations,” it said. “The diocese took the initiative in contacting the victim in October 1990 in response to rumours that began circulating early in 1990.”

When Talach launched the lawsuit in 2008 he said wanted to know whether the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops knew of Prince’s sexual abuse before he worked at the CCCB’s general secretariat in the 1980s. Prince also taught briefly at Saint Paul University and worked at the nunciature.

The CCCB released a brief statement April 9, saying that commenting on a 17-year-old letter from a bishop to the nuncio was “beyond the competence of the conference.”

The CCCB statement said the bishops have been “working tirelessly” on diocesan protocols, and cited its 1992 document From Pain to Hope. It said no interviews would be granted.

But Windle’s letter was written a year after the guidelines for handling sexual abuse were published.

Talach said both the letter and From Pain to Hope speak for themselves. “Compare the two, and see whether they dovetail or whether they conflict.”
The Globe and Mail publicized the letter to the public on April 9. Talach said he had nothing to do with the release, but awoke that morning surprised to be receiving media phone calls. Though the case has not gone to trial, the letter was part of court documents that are available to the public.

The Prince case is not the only one haunting the Pembroke diocese, located less than a two-hour drive up the Ottawa River from the national capital.

Criminal charges laid in April 2009 against Msgr. Robert Borne for gross indecency, indecent assault and breach of trust related to five victims are wending their way through the court. The alleged abuse took place between 1977 - 1995.