The following report by Brent Butcher appeared in the The Chronicle Herald, a Novia Scotia online newspaper on 3rd December.
Former school for boys workers get compensation
Wayne Butler has finally been compensated for being falsely branded a child molester more than a decade ago by the province of Nova Scotia.
He and 78 other former workers in provincial youth correction facilities started getting their share of a $5.5-million compensation package this week.
"It’s hard to believe this is over," Mr. Butler, who worked at the Shelburne School for Boys, said Wednesday. "It got to the point the money didn’t mean anything anymore, I just wanted closure."
Six months may seem like a long time, but not compared with the 11 years Mr. Butler says he hasn’t been able to go to work.
"I’m still on long-term disability because of post-traumatic stress disorder," said Mr. Butler. "Shortly after I got the sexual allegations, I just couldn’t work with the young offenders anymore. I’ve lost everything. Like, my career is gone, and it’s because of this."
Mr. Butler was one of hundreds of workers accused of sexual and physical abuse in the mid-1990s after the province launched a compensation program for victims of abuse in youth correctional facilities. More than 1,200 residents and former residents of the facilities claimed they’d been abused, and more than $30 million was paid out with little or no investigation into the claims.
Only one man was ever convicted of abusing boys at the facility where Butler worked. Patrick MacDougal, a youth counsellor, was found guilty in 1993 of sexually abusing five boys at the Shelburne school and later pleaded guilty to abusing five other boys.
Dale Dunlop, the lawyer who represented the 79 workers, said the compensation program branded his clients as criminals.
"The province, when it started the compensation program, for some reason didn’t seem to realize that . . . paying money out to people who claimed to be abused meant that there had to be abusers," Mr. Dunlop said. "Naturally there would be a police investigation."
A 2002 report by retired Quebec judge Fred Kaufman found the compensation program to be severely flawed. More than 600 people were eventually cleared of wrongdoing by the RCMP, and later that year the government sent letters of apology to the people who had been falsely accused.
Dunlop’s firm received the $5.5 million from the province last Thursday and started handing out cheques this week. Individual compensation for the former workers ranged from $20,000 to $120,000, depending on factors such as the number and types of accusations.
Some of the former workers had voiced concern in recent months that the payment was taking so long to come from the province.
Michelle Lucas, spokeswoman for the Public Service Commission, said changes in the way individual payments would be decided were responsible for slowing things down.
Source: ChronicleHerald