Halifax, Nova Scotia: Clergy abuse class-action victims still awaiting payment from $10 million settlement

Timothy Clark, now 55, said he felt a duty to speak up about abuse he suffered as a young teen. He recalled using a school payphone to call the office of the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Halifax to report that a priest had touched him inappropriately. A member of the archdiocese staff answered, took his home phone number, and said someone would reach out. Clark said no one ever called. “They basically just ignored me,” he said in a recent interview at his home in Wileville, N.S.

Clark had kept the abuse private for nearly four decades. In 2023, he decided to submit a claim as part of the settlement of a class-action lawsuit involving abuse by priests in what is now the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Halifax-Yarmouth. The settlement, reached more than three years ago, set aside $10 million. Clark said he was approved for $60,000 in compensation nearly three years ago but has not received any of it.

Clark is one of more than 60 victims of clergy abuse whose claims have been formally accepted but who have not yet been paid. The post-settlement process has continued for an extended period. Clark said that what troubled him most was a lack of communication. When he sought answers, he said he was passed between employees of the company hired to administer the claims process and lawyers for the class members. “The more I went through it and the less information I got, the more helpless it was,” he said.

One frustrated claimant wrote directly to the Nova Scotia Supreme Court in December, saying he had been told his payment was delayed and that he had “not received assistance, guidance, or a clear explanation for the repeated extensions.” That letter led to a court hearing in January, at which lawyers for the class members and for the archdiocese updated Justice Christa Brothers. She had approved the settlement agreement in November 2022.

John McKiggan, a Halifax lawyer who helped launch the class action, said the settlement created a fixed pool of money. As a result, payments can be made only after all cases are fully assessed, because the number of approved claimants determines how much each person receives. McKiggan said the main cause of the delays was the “large number” of cases in which the archdiocese sought interviews with claimants. He noted that the archdiocese had the right to pursue that step. Some claimants were reluctant to be questioned about the abuse they experienced, he said, and in some cases arranging the interviews took time.

Melanie Comstock, a lawyer for the archdiocese, said the right to question claimants had been used “sparingly” and that fewer than a third of claimants had been asked to attend a “clarifying interview.” She said the archdiocese had sought to be trauma-informed. According to Comstock, the most common reasons for an interview were that the completed claim form lacked detail, that the accused priest had no known history of complaints or prior claims, or that the time frame alleged by the claimant did not match where the priest had been posted.

Source: Read the original report