The former insurance company for the Catholic church in Newfoundland has abandoned a court action that sought to compel a therapy centre for priests to turn over records after it was revealed they destroyed them more than 20 years ago.
Lawyers for Guardian Insurance believed the Southdown Institute’s records could show the Diocese of Grand Falls knew about abusive priests before entering into an insurance policy in the 1980s. That evidence could be used in a separate court action, where the insurer is seeking to avoid covering the church’s liability to abuse survivors.
Guardian was looking for documentation on one priest in particular — Father Leonard Joseph Kelly — who was sent to Southdown in 1970 under a cloud of suspicion after unspecified incidents in the rural community of Baie Verte.
The institute was able to confirm Kelly was admitted in 1970, but had no other information.
“Southdown does not maintain archives for the long-term storage of documents, nor is Southdown required by any statute or law to maintain archives with respect to clinical or patient records or materials,” reads an affidavit from Dr. Samuel Mikail, the institute’s interim clinical director.
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Mikail said Southdown adopted a records management policy in 2000, which allowed for the destruction of materials 12 years after the date of the last clinical contact. Any files on Kelly would have been erased at that time.
The institute does have a database that shows when individuals are admitted and discharged from programming. The database shows Kelly was admitted three times:
Those dates correspond with the unspecified allegations in Baie Verte, as well as later allegations that resulted in jail time.
With no chance of getting records, Guardian Insurance filed to discontinue the court action late last month and agreed to cover the costs incurred by Southdown.
The Southdown Institute has been in existence since 1965 in the Greater Toronto Area. It has been used by the Catholic church as a rehabilitation centre for abusive priests. (CBC)
Guardian was also seeking an order compelling Southdown to hand over records on an unnamed priest mentioned in a 1990 investigation into clergy abuse in Newfoundland.
The Winter Commission final report stated a priest from the Diocese of Grand Falls was sent to the Southdown Institute in 1975, which would also pre-date the church’s insurance policy with Guardian.
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Without a name, Mikhail said the institute was unable to find more information.
“There is no way in which Southdown could possibly identify the priest,” he wrote.
If there’s any resolution from the information provided by Southdown, it’s that Kelly couldn’t have been the unnamed priest sent to Southdown in 1975 based on the admission and discharge dates provided.
Kelly’s personnel file shows he took up a pastoral assignment in Gander in 1977, before moving home to Grand Falls-Windsor in 1983.
The diocese is currently facing a lawsuit, filed in 2022, accusing Kelly of sexual abuse in Gander.
The plaintiff alleged he was “subjected to regular and frequent forced oral sex and occasionally other invasive sexual touching by Kelly” between 1977 and 1983, when he was between the ages of six and 12.
Kelly was also convicted of sexually assaulting a pair of 12-year-old boys in the mid-1980s. A provincial court judge sentenced him to two years of probation, contingent on him returning to the Southdown Institute for treatment.
The province’s court of appeal found that to be inappropriate, and instead sent Kelly to jail on a four-month sentence in 1988.
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