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In Reply to: Rocky, what about non-validated victims of sexual abuse? posted by Curious on June 12, 2002 at 12:00:27:
Hi Curious! Thanks for your response;
In my case a validated claimant means the following.
Due to the huge number of victims over approx 50 years the Catholic Church and government of Ontario aggreed with us and our lawyers to develop a reconciliation model that would avoid the court process. A large number of my fellow victims were in prisons for serious crimes.
Each victim's case was officially recorded by police or the crown and reviewed by a panel of people appointed by all parties involved. Our lawyers supervised the procedure. When a victim's case was accepted as true by this panel he became a validated claimant. It frequently came out that a large degree of our individual testimonies recorded the same type of abuse by the same individuals over and over again. The public record and official position is that the abuse did occur. This then allowed for counselling, a cash settlement and an apology from the church. I was awarded all three of these things. In addition the committee appointed a historical recorder who compiled a history of the case and all the legal conclusions and each victim received a copy in 1997.( approx 400 pages with appendixes)
In the case of family abuse such as Mene and others I feel that their reports of abuse have been validated. I feel that Ward failed to follow through on the reality of the abuse. All of the family's officers should have been required to testify and arrested and charged. A larger investigation should have happened. Sadly it comes out that Berg and Maria had false documents. In most western countries there is no statute of limitations on sexual abuse. Berg is so damn lucky he died and that all us exers have been so busy trying to deal with what he did.
