Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

The Arch­dio­cese of Port-of-Spain yes­ter­day said it was not go­ing to com­ment on a law­suit brought against it by five men, as the mat­ter is now be­fore the courts.

In a me­dia re­lease, the arch­dio­cese said that while it ac­knowl­edged the me­dia re­ports con­cern­ing St Do­minic’s Home, be­cause the mat­ter is sub ju­dice, it was not go­ing to com­ment.

“We un­der­stand the con­cern this has raised with­in the com­mu­ni­ty and recog­nise that mat­ters of this na­ture re­quire the ut­most sen­si­tiv­i­ty. How­ev­er, as the is­sue is cur­rent­ly be­fore the courts, we are un­able to pro­vide fur­ther com­ment at this time. We re­main con­fi­dent in the ju­di­cial process to bring clar­i­ty and jus­tice,” the re­lease said.

The men ac­cused the State of fail­ing to pro­tect them against sex­u­al and phys­i­cal abuse at a chil­dren’s home in Bel­mont decades ago and have filed a law­suit su­ing the Ro­man Catholic Church and the State.

In a law­suit filed on Oc­to­ber 8, the men are su­ing the St Do­minic’s Chil­dren’s Home (al­so re­ferred to as the Bel­mont Or­phan­age), the Ro­man Catholic Arch­dio­cese in Port-of-Spain, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, the Statu­to­ry Au­thor­i­ties Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, and a for­mer em­ploy­ee at the chil­dren’s home who was lat­er charged with bug­gery, at­tempt­ed bug­gery and se­ri­ous in­de­cen­cy.

The fil­ing of the law­suit comes af­ter the men is­sued pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters in 2022, seek­ing at the time some $2.5 mil­lion for six al­leged vic­tims. Then at­tor­ney Gre­go­ry Delzin, now a se­nior coun­sel, said the law­suit was filed out­side the le­gal lim­it as al­lowed un­der the Lim­i­ta­tion of Cer­tain Ac­tions Act.

Ac­cord­ing to the Act, a claim must be made with­in four years of the al­leged of­fence. The law­suit said the of­fences are al­leged to have oc­curred be­tween 1986 and 2005.

At­tor­neys Christlyn Moore, Joshua Ham­let and Adan­na Joseph-Wal­lace are rep­re­sent­ing the men and must con­vince Jus­tice Car­ol Gob­in to ac­cept their po­si­tion that an ex­cep­tion to the lim­i­ta­tion is need­ed be­fore the law­suit is ad­ju­di­cat­ed, in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 9 of the Act. The mat­ter comes up for hear­ing on Mon­day.